Claude Forthomme's Blog, page 24

2014 e-Book Market in Review: A Turning Point for Self-Published Authors

This is the end of the year, a perfect day to draw lessons from the main publishing events in 2014.

First, one bit of good news for 2014: it will be remembered as the year audio-book sales took off. In 2013, downloaded audio books hit an all time high in both revenue and units, and that trend continued in 2014 (see Bookstats.org). In February, I wrote on this blog about audio-books (here) reporting on the fast rise of audiobook titles. On Audible there are more than 150,000 titles in every genre - up from less than 5,000 in 2009, an amazing growth.  And 2014 was the year that saw the creation of the Deyan Institute of Voice Artististry and Technology (see here), the world's first campus dedicated to audiobook production. Yes, audiobooks have come of age! Enhanced e-books, containing music and possibly video clips, long announced but not yet really successful, may come next as the technology progresses.


But the news were not all good. We were all captivated by the show put on by Amazon and Hachette in their long, drawn-out dispute that took up half the year. As a result, we tended to overlook what was happening to the e-book market as a whole. Few of us listened when Amazon told Hachette that books should be priced low - maybe like a cup of coffee? - because books in our society are competing with other forms of entertainment, like TV series, videogames, travel and sports. Yet, if we had taken that argument on board, we might not have been so surprised at what happened next - specifically, when Amazon created in July its new subscription service, Kindle Unlimited or KU, that allows you free access to some 700,000 titles for just $9.99 a month - that's a lot of cups of coffee -. 

Actually 2014 had started on the heels of a lackluster year for the e-book market. Here is a chart that shows sales revenues from e-books since 2008 (remember, the starting point was November 2007 when Amazon launched the new publishing digital age with its famous first Kindle sale):



As you can see, US publishers collected $3 billion from e-book sales in 2013 - and (another reminder!) e-books are the preferred environment for self-published authors . $3 billion may look like a big number, but it's not so big if you set it against revenues from the whole US publishing industry: $27 billion if you include journals, and $14.6 for "trade" (fiction and non-fiction books).

What is striking in this chart is the way e-book sales started to flatten out after 2012, suggesting that the e-book market by 2014 had actually reached "maturity" (there's a typo in that chart: 2011 is repeated twice, but the data is right). It is still too early for definitive data for 2014, but the available quarterly data suggests that sales have continued to plateau through the year. I won't bother you further with statistics, but the data is in and tells a discomforting story for self-published authors that have come to rely on the e-book market (though they produce printed books too, they typically launch their books on e-platforms). In fact, if the stigma has been successfully removed from self-publishing and vanity presses have become a thing of the past, it is entirely due to the remarkable e-book sales of a score of self-published authors, including Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath, Bella Andre, Hugh Howey, HM Ward, Russell Blake, Elizbeth Spann Craig and many others (no space here to mention them all!).

The sense of discomfort was strong among self-published authors through the year and I felt it acutely, often blogging about it. Many of you, dear readers, must have felt the same way, because the blog posts that attracted the most traffic all had to do with the problems facing us as independent book publishers (being indies, we run our book selling as a small business). Out of a total 103 posts published in 2014, 35 attracted three to four times the average number of views and they all concerned publishing issues, from book discovery and how to improve the Amazon review system to  marketing advice you can get straight from Amazon's Marketing Central (published in January 2014, that was the most viewed post in the whole year, see here). 

Only one non-publishing post made it in the top 35, and this was about Putin and his “New Russia” dream (here). In a way, I regret that, because I enjoy writing about other things, such as politics and art. The best traffic I had on an art post this year was the one about the Mandela monument in South Africa (here).
The conclusion is inescapable: all the posts that attracted traffic were focused on publishing and book marketing (no surprise there, after all, I'm an economist by training). Noteworthy among them:
The tsunami of books, particularly in the Kindle Store (see here): when I wrote that post last August, the number of titles was around 3.4 million – now, I just checked, it’s close to… 3.8 million! This flood of books that fill up our e-readers is all the more worrisome that publishing as a whole is threatened by our obsession with visuals (here);  books need to be short to grab the distracted reader’s attention, hence the sudden success of the serialized novel (here); by the end of summer, I had become sufficiently preoccupied with the whole issue to try and summarize what was really happening to the digital publishing environment dominated by Amazon (here); remarkably, my concerns were not reflected in any of the debates about e-publishing held at the Women's Fiction Festival in Matera, the biggest writers' conference on the European continent, bringing together editors and writers from both sides of the Atlantic: here the sun was still shining brightly on the e-book market, with Bella Andre and many others explaining how they had achieved success; The role of book reviews as we all drown into a tsunami of books (here) and the urgent need to improve Amazon’s review system by strengthening its Vine Program (here); I suggested that there is space on Amazon for two different types of reviews: the customer review and the literary critique; this would be an important first step to strengthen the e-book market, as it lacks what the traditional printed book market has, i.e. literary authorities who can help guide readers to good reads;The rise of a new genre, cli-fi or what Margaret Atwood prefers to call “speculative fiction”; several posts revolved around the climate change issue and the kind of books inspired by it, notably here, hereand here– including an interview of the father of cli-fi, Dan Bloom (here)- clearly, having just finished writing a cli-fi novel of my own, Gateway to Forever , and bursting with the research I did for that book, I plead guilty – please, consider it “content marketing”!

Looking to 2015, some clouds are accumulating on the horizon.
First, in Europe where Amazon (and other American corporations) have been clobbered by the European Union. They have been forced throughout the EU to apply national taxes on e-books – and the VAT on e-books happens to be high everywhere except in France and of course Luxembourg, a place that, as of 2015, will no longer be the tax haven it used to be for American corporations (see herefor more on this question – yes, published in January 2014, I could see it coming!)Second, in America, the growing furor over Kindle Unlimited; first, JA Konrath annoucing he is pulling out of KDP Select (the way for self-published authors to have their books listed in KU); next, a notablearticle in the New York Times reporting on authors “snubbing their nose” at KU, including HM Ward; most recently, a remarkable blogpost by author John Scalzi who wonders how the damage can be undone. And the latest blog post on the subject that is a must read, is this one, on the Ebook Bargains UK blog. Is publishing about to go the way the music industry went with Spotify? Are authors going to be left high and dry the way musicians are? That is something that requires some serious thinking – I will post about this early next year.
What about you, dear reader? What would you like to see on my blog? More interviews of authors? I did a few, including one with romantic suspense best-selling author Liz Jennings published by Impakter (see here) that got shared many times and one with Marsha Roberts and Bob Rector. This is an unusual couple in many ways: they are both professional writers, Bob is also a film producer and Marsha a theater producer, and they have been happily married for 39 years, something of a feat for two persons working in the same sector and who are artists to boot, each with a strong independent streak. That post, published in May, got a flood of visits (here). I also reported for Publishing Perspectives on several events in Italy, including, inter alia, a reality show for authors on Italian TV that "ignored the psychology of authors", the Women's Fiction Festival in Matera (it's next September, do try and come!) and a publishing startup, Reedsy, a great place to find freelance professional editors and book cover designers. I also covered Reedsy on Impakter, but from a different angle and with some extraordinary images provided by Impakter (strong visuals are a characteristic feature of that site).

And for the first time this year, responding to a request from Impakter, I started to use my real name (Claude Forthomme) whenever I published articles based on my 25 year experience in the United Nations. The Impakter editor argued people were interested in the United Nations, that this was something people knew little about, beyond some (often boring) newspaper headlines. I complied and furnished Impakter with over a dozen articles and much to my surprise, the response was excellent - here is the Impakter section on the United Nations (to go to it, click here):


As you can see, not all the articles are mine: many more people are now writing on Impakter, including a major FAO official, Laurent Thomas, Assistant Director General.
 
I’d love to know how you feel about what you read here and what other subjects you’d want me to cover…And how about yourself if you’re a blogger? What do you plan to write about in 2015? Please share.
Since today is 30 December and it's Holiday time,  let's ignore the gathering clouds for the moment. Look up, the sky is blue and allow me to wish you a very Happy New Year!

For a Happy, Special Day in Florence...

This is how you do it. I just did it a week ago - took three days off and went to Florence, boarding the Freccia rossa, the fast train from Rome, one of the fastest in Europe, we traveled at 250 km/hour, thrilling!

And I wanted to share with you the best day I had in Florence, with my husband of 36 years (that too helped!)

First, consider visiting a monument few tourists ever get to see, yet it's right in the center of the old town, five minutes from the train station, in Via della Scala: the old pharmacy of Santa Maria Novella, recently restored, called in Italian, Officina Profumo - Farmaceutica. 

It has a long story, it began with the Dominican monks, shortly after their arrival in town in 1221. The friars cultivated medicinal herbs in their gardens to prepare medications, ointments and balms for the convent's small infirmary. Then, after the fame of their amazing products had spread beyond Italy, they opened to the public in 1612. By the 18th century, they were known as far as Russia, the Indies and China. Eventually, in the 1800s, the pharmacy was bought by Cesare Augusto Stefani, the nephew of the Officina's last director. Today, the Officina is in the hands of Eugenio Alphandery that has made it a center of excellence for the herbalist's art, using the highest quality of natural, raw materials...Here is the entrance (unobtrusive on the street, look for for number 16):


And here's the second room:


And here's the third, where you can have tea, coffee or hot chocolate and a lovely, light pastry:


When the weather is nice, you can have your coffee outside (but I chose to stay indoors that day, hence the reflection on the window pane!):


And here is the dried herbs room, very artistic:


And here's the heart of the pharmacy, where all the ointments and balms are carefully displayed:


This is what you can buy here:


But you also have more sophisticated displays in other rooms, like this one:


And what would be a pharmacy without its own chapel to pray God when nothing else works? Here it is, recently restored:


And look outside before you leave: you'll see that the pharmacy borders on one of the wonderful Santa Maria Novella cloisters:


Next stop after the pharmacy: the Uffizi, restored back to the old splendor. The galleries full of sunshine are surely one of the more special places on earth:


The light can play wonders with ancient art:


And don't miss out on the view over the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, a fantastic angle on old Florence:


By now, time for lunch! The Uffizi terrace is the perfect place - with a unique back view of the Duomo:


To be honest, after the many hours spent at the museum, we went back to our hotel and collapsed for a well-deserved siesta. The evening was dedicated to roaming the old, narrow streets, and at the beginning of Via del Moro, entering it from the Arno river enbamkment, there's a wonderful, old trattoria, Da Giovanni, on the right (at number 22). This is a classic restaurant that will serve all the traditional florentine dishes like the "ribollita" (a tasty bread-based vegetable soup) to "maialino di latte" (suckling pig). We shared both the maialino and "involtini di melanzane" (eggplant rolls stuffed with meat), with an excellent Chianti, a 2011 Badia a Coltibuono:


But what turned out to be most enjoyable at this place was Giovanni himself. He is short and vivacious, jumping all around his guests, looking after everyone, suggesting dishes, making sure you order the right wine. Here he is in full action behind the bar, a silver-haired elf:


Yes, it was an unforgettable pre-Christmas holiday.

And I hope that, wherever you are, dear reader, you have an equally enjoyable Holiday and a Very Happy and Successful 2015!

Update on my latest book: a new cover! See here:





Hope you like it! The book also exists in printed format from Create Space (here) and as an e-book here in the Kindle Store.

By the way, it's not dystopian in the sense that it is dark, sad and hopeless. The world of "Gateway to Forever" may be going to pieces, and yes, that's pretty dark but some people find a way to survive, there's always hope. Find out how they manage and enjoy what one reviewer called "a thumping good read" for your holidays!

Our Future on Earth: Fab or Scary?

This week, our future is the talk of the town, from Tokyo to Lima.The message from the Japanese designers show, "The Fab Mind", is positive, it's a fab future: "fixing stuff, repairing the world" as Alice Rawsthorn, a British design critic wrote in the New York Times (see her article  here).

Repairing? Not quite, Takram, a Japanese design engineering firm, has produced a visualization of the impact of rising sea levels, heightened radiation and dwindling resources on Earth 100 years from now. More scary than fab!


As to the show in Lima, it's the Climate Change Conference organized by the United Nations,  called in UN-ese language: "the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC" - and here the future is definitely scary. The goal is to build the foundation of a new climate agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late — an agreement to be struck in Paris next December and take effect in 2020 (for more, read this Newsweek article here).

Will it happen with American climate deniers stomping around?

I have my doubts. The recent agreement between Obama and the Chinese President to curb their greenhouse gas emissions over the next five years has encouraged environmentalists. But this is without counting on a Republican-controlled Congress that is bound to block any progress towards global climate measures. In America, financial interests in keeping the way things are have become so politically strong, especially since the Supreme Court opened the door to the financing of political parties, that we cannot reasonably expect  any rational decision-making from the US. Yet America matters, it may only be 5 percent of the world population, but it accounts for 25 percent of total carbon dioxide production. It's still the world's top polluter and China comes second.

Yet, for years now, if you're surfing the Net for pictures of the future, you'll find plenty of evidence, and most of it is the stuff of nightmares. Here's a photo of today's coastline in Spain, snapped in 2009, and what, according to Greenpeace, it will look like 100 years from now as a result of rising sea levels:



This was part of a photo album Greenpeace had put together, hoping to sensitize the Spanish to the effects of climate change (it worked, at least in Spain).

Unfortunately, and in spite of mounting evidence, lots and lots of people in America still don't believe it's happening. They claim there's no scientific proof even though top American scientists, from Princeton University to the Goddard Institute Space Studies, say otherwise. By now, the climate models run by hundreds of scientists prove beyond any possible doubt that climate change is with us and that it has become irreversible.

It's no longer a question of "will it happen" but of "what can we do to mitigate the effects".

For those still hesitant, I urge you to watch this Discovery Channel video about "what you should know about global warming". Done under the guidance of  American news anchor Tom Brokaw, one of 19 recipients of the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed on "inspiring, bold Americans", I think it's one of the best films on climate change. Even though it dates back to 2012, it is still, alas, exceedingly topical:


It will take an hour out of your life to watch, but it really is time well-spent. I predict it will change your understanding of what is in store for mankind, particularly the latter part of the video...

You'll learn about "feedback loops" that can kickstart and accelerate change in unexpected ways. Carbon dioxide by itself cannot cause global warming, it's those feedback loops that make the difference - for example, with the increase in water drops in the air (clouds), heat will be trapped in the atmosphere and you could get a rise of between 4 and 6 degrees in this century. And of course, as spring comes earlier and summers last longer, whole species of plants and animals will disappear, polar bears and corals will be no more - yes, the 6th Extinction is upon us.

At the same time, a warmer climate will favor certain species like insects. Expect them to multiply and insect-borne diseases like malaria to rise (by the way, there are new strains of malaria that cannot be treated - at least for now). Humans of course won't be spared, drought will cause famines, wars will be fought on whatever productive land is left.

So are we doomed?

Available here To figure this out, you need to take into account two other big trends besides climate change:
increasing income inequality, as described by Thomas Piketty in his now-famous book that has become a number one best seller in economic history on Amazon; the fast pace of technological change: the digital revolution is accelerating; there is absolutely no stagnation in technical progress, as shown in this masterly book written by two MIT professors: "Race Against the Machine". And of course, it's not just the digital revolution. NASA with its recent Orion test is giving us an exciting glimpse of the future.  The test was a big success,  a flight to Mars by 2040 - that's just 25 years from now! - is very much in the cards. Here is the key moment when the Delta IV rocket lifted Orion on December 5, 2014:

And here, some 4 hours later, is the recovery of Orion - the spacecraft withstood amazing temperatures (up to 4,000 degrees Farhenheit) and landed in the Pacific exactly where it was supposed to be, 600 miles from San Diego:


So the future is going to be highly technological, profoundly unequal and...very hot!

That's something that is a matter of concern to me, as a mother and grandmother.

In what kind of world will our grand-children and great-grand-children live? Since I also happen to be a fiction writer, I tried my best to imagine the future, when global warming has wrecked havoc to the fullest, when plants and animals are headed for extinction and whatever remains of mankind is trying to survive the best it can on the little good land left.

available hereI figure all that won't happen tomorrow morning, nor will it happen all that fast. Give or take another 200 years before we have to face full extinction. At that point, global warming will no longer be a subject of debate, it will be a given. That is the setting of my novel Gateway to Forever - and in that sense, the book can be said to fit into climate fiction, or cli-fi, a word coined by Daniel Bloom, to define what is fast becoming a hot new genre in both books and films.

What will the world be like? You have to remember the two trends I mentioned above. There will obviouly be a handful of super wealthy individuals facing impoverished masses; the rich will enjoy all the benefits of science, the others won't. That means it will be a world divided not only between the rich and the poor, but the technologically advanced and the backward. The impoverished masses will live in medieval conditions, some worse off like cavemen, others slightly better like the middle classes today.  The rich, the One Percenters, will live in gated communities that will provide them with a perfect, pollution-free environment. They will enjoy the benefits of an Age Prevention Program that will keep them looking young till they drop dead at a ripe old age. They will take control of the only virgin land left on Earth, Antarctica, and they will be able to travel to other planets, even traveling faster than light as the technology to compress space and time becomes available.

In short, they can escape while the rest of us can't.

That makes of Gateway to Forever a very unusual science fiction book. Fans of sci-fi love to imagine a robotic future where the machines are king, but in my book, what matters are not the machines but the machine owners, the One Percenters. I've even had one reader comment that the future I depict in my book is not "futuristic" enough! But that's the whole point: the future will not be "futuristic" at all for the poor masses, only the rich elite will have the possibility to avoid extinction and take refuge in space. And that's what the book is about: how can mankind survive, and in particular, how can one very pretty girl called Alice escape when she wasn't born a One Percenter?

Gateway to Forever will be exceptionally available at the giveaway price of 99 cents from 9 to 12 December. Hurry, grab your copy here, and find out what happens to Alice...This is the portrait I made of her, fiery and defiant, staring at a dead world:


Yes, come and imagine the future with me!

Tom Chalmers, Founder of a Publishing Ecosystem - Interview

Another interview I did under my real name for Impakter magazine. Here it is:
TOM CHALMERS – A COOL ENTREPRENEURClaude Forthomme on 5 December, 2014 In less than ten years, starting when he was 25, he built a whole publishing eco-system ranging from fiction and non-fiction to licensing rightsTom Chalmers is young, perhaps the youngest UK publisher in a generation. In 2005, he was just 25 when he started Legend Press, a fiction publishing house. This was soon followed by a series of publishing companies, one for business (Legend Business), one for non-fiction (Paperbooks Publishing), one for self-publishing (New Generation Publishing) and one for writer events (Write-Connections) – all of them brought together in 2011 in the Legend Times Group while a licensing platform (IPR License) created in 2012, remains completely separate.
All these endeavors run the whole gamut of publishing and cover both traditional publishing sectors and the more technologically advanced digital areas like e-books and self-publishing. IPR License that uses the Internet to reach out to clients is perhaps the most original, and certainly, in terms of travel for the staff, the most demanding.

Mr. Chalmers is a very private individual, when I asked him for a personal picture as Impakter does not use promotional pictures, he said he didn’t have any personal pics to hand and suggested to use the one where he is speaking in China. He is the kind of person who goes at it alone, doing everything pretty much on his own.


In short, a cool, collected and determined entrepreneur. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions for Impakter and here are highlights of a long and fruitful interview.

To read the interview, click here.

Is the Amazon Customer Review System Broken?

In principle, book reviews spur sales. But on Amazon, they don't seem to. Any author who's following the sales of his/her books can testify to this: when good reviews come in, they rarely signal a spurt in sales. Yet book reviews are needed to be able to use the better advertisers like BookBub that will not take an author's books unless a sizeable number of reviews can be shown, and particularly reviews from "authoritative" sources.

Add to this the now confirmed fact that e-book sales have gone very badly in recent months and Amazon's bottom line is showing it. David Streitfeld in an article in the Business Standard, (see here, it was then picked up by the New York Times) has drawn attention to the fact that "to secure its upper hand, Amazon disrupts its own model."

What Streitfeld is talking about is this: some $250 million in profits that had been expected by analysts somehow went missing last summer. Why? It seems Amazon practiced deep discounts and giveaways, offering free music, videos and e-books and that hurt profits. And of course Wall Street took note.  The argument is that Amazon is doing this on purpose to secure an ever-increasing share of the market - until it will be the only retail colossus on the scene.

But a lot of people have rushed forward with other reasons for the slowdown in Amazon sales, in particular attributing it to the long drawn-out Amazon-Hachette dispute (it last 6 months!) and continuing disaffection from once-loyal clients.

Whatever the reason, there is one thing that works poorly on Amazon and it's their customer reviews of books. As long as Amazon doesn't make an effort to organize it better, Amazon's hope to compete with Hachette or any other "Big Publisher" is doomed. Because traditional publishers have got their buzz-around-books model down pat: they get top reviewers to write in major newspapers and magazines, they organize big prizes like the National Book Award or the Puliter, all events that drive traffic and draw the public. All stuff that's closed to self-published authors and where authors published by Amazon imprints get little space, if any.

But we all know the arguments: This is the digital revolution that has enabled self-published authors to compete with traditional publishers. And Amazon rankings work to show who are the top sellers. And Amazon's system in the Kindle Store is totally democratic, driven by the customers likes and dislikes, allowing everyone to express his or her opinion and the sales numbers speak for themselves.

Until they don't.

You have books with thousands of reviews...and they don't sell or don't sell as much as you might expect. You don't believe me? Look here (a book with over 2,000 reviews and a ranking on Amazon above #6,000) and here (over 800 reviews and a ranking above #10,000). Of course, there's a high correlation if you check out the pages with books that have over 1,000 four-star reviews and above (see here) - there are nearly a million titles there, and the correlation is strong at first, as long as the number of reviews is above one thousand, but as you keep going through them, the correlation starts to fail you.

First lesson: you need at least a thousand reviews (more or less) to hope to sell steadily in the Kindle Store. But your book can still peter out, like this one: over 1500 reviews and a ranking that doesn't reflect it, at over #5,000 - and that happens to be one of my favorite books, I highly recommend it, it's an extraordinary combination of dark poetry and suspense.

Second lesson: reviews on Amazon mean relatively little. In spite of Amazon's policing efforts (they've gone after "sock-puppet reviews" in a systematic way since the 2012 scandal), it is still a fact that a 5-star review can be written by a friend or by someone who has absolutely no idea of literature or more simply, doesn't know the difference between a good read and a bad one.  Ditto of one and two-star reviews.

Consider this one, about Elizabeth Taylor's performance (click here), a particularly juicy dyad of 2-star reviews; here's the screenshot:


As the friend who drew my attention to this said: "I'd like to know what Tennessee Williams would have said."

Indeed. And to think that the second reviewer ("Kona") is ranked by Amazon as a "vine voice" and "top 1,000 reviewer"... In short, someone whose reviews are appreciated by both Amazon and its customers. Someone who presumably has an "experienced" taste and a professional touch: you get up there in the Amazon Hall of Fame of reviewers by doing lots and lots of reviews and having lots and lots of people clicking that button which says that "they found the following review helpful".

So what is wrong? I am not going to go into what happens with reviews of other products on sale on Amazon, the endless electronic gadgets, apparel etc - I shall limit myself here to books (a product I happen to know something about).

And books require special handling. You can like or dislike a book but that is not enough to constitute a helpful review. The next person doesn't know you and may not share your tastes. So anyone doing a review should always explain the how and the why a book is likeable or detestable: that's only fair to whoever is going to read your review. And the reviewer needs to come to some sort of conclusion that is reflected in the number of stars awarded. You can't say something is absolutely transcendentally wonderful and then give it 3 stars because it's not the kind of book you normally read or like. If something is transcendentally wonderful, then it deserves 5 stars, full stop. There is an organic linkage between the value judgments expressed and the number of stars given.

Reviews are not easy to do.

In fact, since the 19th century at least, book reviews have been in the hands of literary experts, people who are both widely read and know how to express a judgment clearly. This is far from simple and not everyone can do it or has the time to do it. Professors of literature at universities can do this successfully, they have the time and in a way it's part of their job; best-selling authors can do this, and in general writers are good at this because they were all born readers first. You are never going to be a good writer if you're not an avid reader in the first place; and someone able to read critically, as Francine Prose has so masterfully explained in her book Reading like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them (HarperCollins, 2006) By the way, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it!

On this blog, I have argued in the past (see here) that Amazon should provide help in guiding book reviews, ensuring that major points normally covered in a professional book review are in fact covered (for example, the setting, the development of characters, plot pace, language/dialogues etc). But if Amazon is not willing to help and possibly fears that this type of guidance would be viewed by its customers as an unbearable intrusion, then there is another way to do this.

Amazon already has in place this Vine Program for reviewers (I blogged about it here). But at the moment, the program covers reviews of any sort, and top reviewers tend to review anything they wish, and remarkably enough, the very top reviewers (highest rank) cover all sorts of products but no books!  No books at all, or very few books, and in a most desultory way, reaping in fact very few votes from online viewers.

What Amazon should do is establish a Vine Program for Books Only. Book review guidelines should be issued and reviewers would be able to maintain their rank only if they follow the guidelines. And, once the system is up and running, the ranking of reviewers could start to take place, in order to arrive overtime at 1,000 top-notch book reviewers. My guess is that those reviewers are likely to be literary types of all kinds, including bloggers who specialize in reading  books in given genres.

Once Amazon has got a Vine Program for Books going, they should consider revamping the book description page, separating customer reviews from Vine Program reviews. That would be very important. Because at a glance, you could read the reviews that you can trust, that you know come from people who love books, read them all the time and can talk about them in a meaningful way.

At that point, and at that point only, would book reviews start to make sense and jumpstart the famous book buzz everyone is looking for, readers and writers alike...   

A Pope, a Queen, a King, a Princess and Melinda Gates Meet at ICN2

Another one of my articles on Impakter magazine (I attended this Conference last week):


ICN2: Where a Pope, a Queen, a King, a Princess and Melinda Gates Come TogetherClaude Forthomme on 24 November, 2014 at 09:30
ICN2 is not a new disease, it’s the bizarre acronym for the Second International Conference on Nutrition, held in Rome,  19-21 November 2014, at FAO Headquarters.  Anyone familiar with the United Nations “alphabet soup” won’t be surprised. And in spite of this unpromising name, it drew over 2,200 participants, many from civil society, and delegations from over 170 countries, most of them headed by Ministers of Health – again, no surprise as the Conference was organized jointly by FAO and the World Health Organization.

It also drew the Pope, Queen Letizia of Spain, King Letsie III of Lesotho, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein from the United Arab Emirates and Melinda Gates.

In the photo: Queen Letizia of Spain - ©FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

Pope Francis made a memorable address (he spoke in Spanish) and was interrupted by applause several times. He told the Conference that access to food is a basic human right that shouldn’t be subject to market speculation. “We ask for dignity, not charity” he said, drawing applause. A little later, possibly deviating from his written text as he raised his eyes and spoke ex-tempore, he said, “God always forgives.” Then he paused, adding with a knowing smile, “Man forgives sometimes.” He paused again, looked around and finished, “but the Earth never forgives!”.  He made it very clear: the Earth will not forgive the abuse of its resources for profit. This was also a dramatic and entirely new way to draw attention to an increasing issue and potentially a devastating one – the impact of Climate Change on nutrition -  if we do nothing to “respect the Earth”.

No doubt about it, International Conferences on Nutrition seem to inspire Popes. At the first Conference, held in 1992, also in Rome and in FAO, another Pope made History: this was Pope John Paul II who used a phrase that became famous, the “paradox of plenty”, to decry a world of food abundance where the poor were denied access to food and died of hunger. And in that respect, as Pope Francis noted, little has changed. The poor are still denied access.

In the photo:  Address by His Holiness Pope Francis. Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), FAO Headquarters (Plenary Hall) ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano

The Conference also inspired princess Haya Bint Al Hussein  to share her experience of visiting a hospital ward in Malawi and coming face to face with the drama of hunger. There, she witnessed the harrowing death of...

The rest on Impakter.com, click here.

Why a Best Selling Author Turns to Crowdfunding

I interviewed indie author Marsha Roberts for Impakter to find out why she is turning to crowdfunding for her book, "Confessions of an Instinctively Mutinous Baby Boomer", a highly acclaimed inspirational memoir that has sold very well so far, many thousands of copies. Here's the article:

 
Marsha Roberts, a “Mutinous Baby Boomer”, Turns to Crowdfunding
Claude Forthomme on 17 November, 2014 at 07:00
Memoirs are all the rage lately, as one Norwegian writer famously proved by reporting minutely on his daily life including his breakfast (no need to refer to him by name here), and Marsha Roberts’ Confessions of an Instinctively Mutinous Baby Boomer recounting major events in her life, has turned out to be one of the most popular self-published books with the Boomer generation. And it’s also a big deal with other generations, including younger people, basically with  all those curious about life and its challenges. It has been acclaimed by customers on Amazon that showered it with 5-star reviews (38 to date, a strikingly high number), the prestigious Kirkus Review has praised it as “an optimistic look at the magic of life”, and the book was an instant success in the Goodreads group I created to discuss Boomer Lit. People have said “I’ve enjoyed this so much that I read it twice”, a rare occurrence.
In short, her book has done outstandingly well, yet she’s decided to raise funds for it with a campaign on Indiegogo (here ), a crowdfunding platform often used to gather funds for as yet unpublished books. Of course, I immediately contributed to the campaign, and I urge you to do so too. I know Marsha Roberts from the days we worked together in our Goodreads group, she was a co-moderator, and working with her was a pleasure. I learned what a remarkable person she is on top of being a talented writer. She is someone who always does what she says and gives her heart out to help others. Perhaps that explains why she started her working life as a nurse.Yet I wondered why Marsha would use Indiegogo for an already published book, and a successful one at that, and she kindly agreed to answer my questions.

Your book is so popular, why did you go to Indiegogo, what obstacles are you facing and that you hope to remove with funding?
First off, Claude, thank you so much for having me here and for supporting my IndieGoGo campaign. I really appreciate it. As far as what obstacles I hope to remove with funding, in two words: marketing issues! You have researched and written extensively about the world of indie publishing and you know better than most the difficulties we face.

I certainly do, indie publishing is perhaps the toughest marketplace any entrepreneur could get into. How do you see it?

From my perspective, the biggest drawback to being an indie author is that we don’t have the professional publicity and marketing machine that major publishers use to push their main authors. You can only take your book so far without spending a significant amount of money, just like the publishers do. It’s the way business works.
 ...

To read the full article and find out more about why Marsha is doing this, go to Impakter, click here.

Marsha, thanks for taking the time to speak to me, and I urge everyone who’s read this to contribute. As little as $5 will go a long way! Click here  to go to Marsha’s Indiegogo campaign and help a writer with an undisputed and remarkable talent so she can get her book known to a broader public. There are tons of people out there who need to read this book and don’t know that they need to!

Available here

Elizabeth Jennings, Romantic Suspense Author and Founder of the Women's Fiction Festival - Interview

Another article of mine on Impakter magazine, an interview of best-selling author Elizabeth Jennings who also founded the Women's Fiction Festival in Matera eleven years ago. I attended this year's Festival and had a chance to interview her - she is married to an Italian and lives in Matera (see photo below, she is presiding one of the discussion panels, surrounded by writers, from left, self-pubbed American authors Debra Holland, Tina Folsom and Bella André).
 Elizabeth Jennings (in red) on the Festival's podium presiding a panel



Creator of a Unique Writers’Conference in ItalyClaude Forthomme on 10 November, 2014 at 08:56
Elizabeth Jennings has many namesakes. If you search for her on Google, you’ll find a deceased English poet, an African-American activist and more, but there is only one Elizabeth Jennings, the bestselling romantic suspense writer who lives in Italy and created the most successful writers’ conference on the European continent, the Women’s Fiction Festival held every year in Matera, Italy, since 2004.

How come such a difficult-to-reach, small town like Matera hosts such a well-known cultural event?

Matera, with a baroque center like so many in Southern Italy, became known in 1993 when it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its “Sassi” district, one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on earth, a spectacular series of dwellings hewn in the rock forty thousand years ago.


But the Sassi are not the answer, though they no doubt make the stay in Matera something to remember. And neither is the fact that Matera has just been nominated “Cultural Capital of Europe for 2019”, beating Lecce, Siena, Ravenna, Cagliari and Perugia to the honor. Indeed, one of the elements that moved the European Commission to choose Matera over its rivals was the Women’s Fiction Festival itself and its enduring success.

So the explanation for the Fiction Festival is to be found elsewhere – in Elizabeth Jennings herself, her dynamism and extraordinary entrepreneurship.

Read the interview here.

Free Book Promotions Are Not What They Used to Be - Lessons Learned and Tips for Success

A lot of people won't go free with their books, they think it's degrading. They've worked hard, sometimes for years (I know I have) and it just breaks you inside to give away the result of your sweat and tears for nothing.

Plus we all know that anything not paid for is not taken into consideration. It hurts to give your baby away and it's not even appreciated. A double whammy!

So why do it at all? Three reasons:

1. On Amazon, it helps to populate  that screen "Other Customers Also Bought" with books similar to yours - and therefore, your own book is also on someone else's book page and gets additional exposure. And for indies, Amazon matters, it's the place where they sell most of their books.

2. If successful - but you need to have 10,000 downloads and over - it helps to draw attention to your book and earns you bragging points that you can use with an eventual publisher or a literary agent if you happen to be looking for one.

3. There may be possible ties between Book Promotions (0.99 cents and free) and reviews, jumpstarting a wave of reviews on your book.  That can work into a huge breakthrough. More about that later.

As those who follow me here know, I did my own free book campaign last week, for Gateway to Forever, from 4 to 8 November and I wanted to share with you how it went. Compared to 2 years ago, the campaign was a dismal failure: the number of downloads was 75% lower ! I'm not kidding, the number was one fourth of what is used to be.

Conclusion? The market is obviously saturated, people have their e-readers bursting with books - so many that it is likely they will never get around to reading them.

Or will they?

There is a silver lining: since fewer free books are downloaded now than in the past, it means that the people who add them in their e-readers actually mean to read them!

Noteworthy is veteran, best-selling author Elizabeth Spann Craig 's opinion in this regard. This is what she recently wrote on her blog:

The only thing I’ve done with my self-pubbed books to garner reviews is to run sales.  I didn’t advertise the sales in any way…not on my blog, newsletter, Twitter, Facebook…nothing.  I just ran them.  The free promos tend to garner more reviews than the $.99 promos.
Pros with this approach are that your book finds its way into the hands of new readers.  Many of these readers tend to write reviews (expect them usually a month or so following the sale).  It’s free, unless you’re counting the cost of the lost sales (I like to think of that loss as a form of unofficial advertising). I put books out for free by making them free on Smashwords and then Amazon price matches.
The only con with this is that you sometimes hook readers who don’t read your genre and, perhaps, don’t even like your genre. They will sometimes write reviews too.   I think that most readers are savvy enough to realize that these types of reviewers simply don’t care for those types of books.

I got in touch with her and asked her whether she could illustrate this experience with some specific examples and here is what she said:

Hi Claude–Free absolutely worked better a couple of years ago than it does now…no doubt about it. It usually takes about a month, I’ve noticed, although some speedy readers will leave them sooner. As with everything in this business (heaving a big sigh here) there is not enough data on what works so my analyses on what works have been purely observational.

Here’s the evidence I’m working with (and I’ll use a recent example, since it’s freshest in my mind). The book that has been free most frequently is Dyeing Shame and it’s at 617 reviews right now. I’d “gone off” free mentally for a while last year (read a bunch of anti-free blog posts that influenced me) and I never put a 2013 release, “Death at a Drop-in,” out as free…it had only 54 reviews (which is pretty staggeringly low for that series).

Realizing I needed to do something (it was selling poorly), I decided in mid-October to run a free promo on it.

Now it has 27 more reviews (already…although I’m expecting more for later in November, since it does usually take about that long for folks to read and review).

And…I’m realizing it’s still free. :( And I even put a reminder on my calendar…will have to go in now and change it. But getting it to 81 reviews is worth it.

Please note something amazing here: She didn't advertise her promotions in any way, either on Twitter, Facebook or on her (well-read) blog and I find this both extraordinary and...very wise!

Lessons learned?

1. Advertising does.not.work. Don't tweet, don't buy ads, most of them don't work. Yet, I've got fellow writers happy with their ads, and it seems that certain advertisers are very good to help you reach out to new readers: for the US market, Bookbub and Kindle Books and Tips, and outside the US, Ebooks Bargains UK. One friend, using Kindle Books and Tips recently got 4,000 downloads, good for him!

But there's a catch with the better advertisers: for example, on both Bookbub and Kindle Books and Tips, you need to have 8 customer reviews and at least four 5-star reviews in order for them to accept your ad. I had four 5-star reviews but I didn't have a total of 8 reviews, so they didn't allow me to use them, sigh...

I did try to advertise on Facebook. I boosted a post written under my alter ego on Facebook (I'm that blue guy called Boomer Lit - the logo of my Goodreads group that I set up two years ago to discuss Boomer Lit and that has now over 500 members). It had 18 "organic likes" before I boosted it (at a cost of $40) and a day later, on the fourth day of my free book campaign, it had over 4,400 "likes", see the screenshot I took showing the result:


So I rushed to my Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard to check out whether the FB boost had had an effect on the number of downloads. I'm sorry to have to report, the impact was...Zilch! Nothing, zip, nada. If anything the number of downloads was way down that day, half of what it had been the day before.

 2. "Soft" advertising works better. I believe that Goodreads works (marginally) better than Facebook. They allow you to set up an "event" to tell your "friends" on Goodreads that you have a promotion (see here). Of the over 900 friends I've got, 13 (!) answered yes. That's not much of a response, but it's better than nothing. Presumably a lot of people click on the Amazon link to the book without telling you that they did.

As every marketing guru in the publishing business will tell you, what works best is the personal newsletter you send to all those who've signed up for it, and my experience seems to confirm it. Both the percentage opened and number of clicks was about double the industry average (around 40% opened the letter and 4% clicked through). And I'm sure a lot of my fellow writers do even better - please share your experience with us in the comments!

3. Free book promotions work better than Countdown Deals 
I've run two countdown deals for Gateway to Forever, one in the US and the other in the UK - alas, Amazon has not set it up for any other market - and I've noticed the results were (1) identical in te US and UK and (2) much lower on average than a free promotion, about half the number of downloads.


4. Free promotions work better than 99 cents. That is Elizabeth Spann Craig's experience and it tends to be confirmed by my own experience with Countdown Deals (they are never free, they are simply daily discounts, starting from 99 cents and working your way up back to the original price).


5. The Best Days to go free are Monday and Tuesday. In fact, week-ends should be avoided, people tend to stay away from Internet, they go hiking, they do to discos or whetever. But on Saturday already my downloads were way down, about 20% of what they had been on the first day (which was a Tuesday).

Hope this information helps you.  And do share your experience, I'm eager to hear from fellow writers!

And if you've downloaded my Gateway to Forever, I hope that you are enjoying your read and if you do, please share your opinion with your friends, both on the Net and in the real world. If you missed out on the free campaign, you're still in time to grab your copy at a highly discounted price ($2.99 - click here). Hey, I don't plan to leave it that low for long, I really believe that it deserves to be sold at a higher price...

Alice, (one of three protags in Gateway to Forever) really expresses the way I feel about free promotions (chuckle!)






 

The Indie Author Power Pack Aims to Hit the NYT Best Selling List

Get on the road to a successful self-publishing career! THE INDIE AUTHOR POWER PACK is the ultimate starter guide for anyone considering self-publishing.Three major guides from publishing experts now AVAILABLE ONLY FOR A LIMITED TIME at 99 cents. That's $17 worth of top-rated self-publishing guides, and the price of the box won’t stay at 99c forever. It could rise as early as next week. So hurry and grab your copy, click here .

I got a copy of course, and I think that this is an experiment that deserves the support of every self-published author and aspiring writer: the aim is to hit the New York Times Best Selling List . Tell your friends! And to see how the campaign is going, read this important update by one of the authors, David Gaughran (click here to read).
Ok, it's a very ambitious project but don't think it's just another clever marketing ploy. It's much more than that: if the book set makes it into the NYT list, then it's a major recognition of sorts of the validity/value of self-publishing. 
And this is hugely important because contrary to what a lot of people (especially indie authors think), there are still remnants of the old stigma attached to "vanity" publishing that are clinging to self-publishing. This is unfair. Self-publishing has nothing to do with vanity publishing and it requires guts to do it. You have to be a full-time entrepreneur and ready to do everything - it's not just a matter of writing a book but overseeing and doing a whole series of tasks: from editing and proof-reading to book cover design and marketing, a tall order! Something authors who resorted to vanity presses never did.

If you support the campaign and get your copy, you'll have a lot of useful information at your finger tips: the set of 3 books has over 1000 pages of solid tactics, proven strategies, and actionable advice you can use during each step of the publishing process, from content creation to production and distribution to marketing.
Tap into: * expert methods for building story worlds, characters, and plots * a psychology-driven model to shape stories into must-have "products" * best practices for editing * practical approaches to cover design, formatting and pricing * optimized tips for selling fiction vs non-fiction * short-term vs long-term marketing plans * updated tactics for building platform and launching new books * collaborative techniques for selling * strategies for optimizing profit beyond the written word
These are THE SAME recently updated editions of popular titles you've heard of by industry names I trust and can vouch for. In fact, the authors have collaborated to provide additional exclusive BONUS content you can access FREE!
THE INDIE AUTHOR POWER PACK includes the full versions of:
* WRITE. PUBLISH. REPEAT.: The No-Luck-Required Guide to Self-Publishing Success - Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant
In 2013, Johnny B. Truant and Sean Platt published 1.5 million words and made their full-time livings as indie authors. Here they tell you exactly how they did it: how they created over 15 independent franchises across 50+ published works, how they turned their art into a logical, sustainable business, and how any independent author can do the same to build a sustainable, profitable, future-proof career with their writing. 
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* LET'S GET DIGITAL: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should - David Gaughran
The internet has revolutionized every business it has come into contact with, and publishing is no different. These changes are handing power back to the writer. It's up to YOU if you want to profit from them. With practical, hands-on publishing advice; best practices on editing, cover design, formatting, and pricing; and effective marketing strategies that won't eat into your writing time or budget. And that's just for starters... 
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* HOW TO MARKET A BOOK - Joanna Penn
Get to grips with marketing! Learn the values and marketing principles that will help your long-term career as a writer and encourage you to think more like an entrepreneur, while using short-term tactics to kick up immediate sales. Includes recommendations for branding, content marketing, social networking and working with the media. With methods to take you beyond the book into professional speaking, making money from other products and creating new opportunities.

About The Authors
Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant are the team behind Write. Publish. Repeat. as well as a number of genre-defying serials including Unicorn Western, The Beam, Everyone Gets Divorced, Namaste, and Robot Proletariat. David Gaughran is the author of Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible, and the historical adventures Mercenaryand A Storm Hits Valparaiso. Joanna Penn is the author of How To Market A Book and Business for Authors, writes thrillers under the name of JF Penn, and has hit the New York Times and USA Todaybestseller lists.