Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 120

Suffering From Writer Envy? There’s a Map Only You Can Make

Any accomplished writer is also a reader—and usually a reader first. For the writer who is the least a bit humble, this sets up one of the most significant psychological barriers to pursuing a writing career: How could I ever produce something as wonderful as [admired writer / admired book]?

This is an area that Steven Pressfield is well known for covering (see The War of Art), and in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin, fiction writer Danielle Lazarin shares how she deals with the challenge:

I was only halfway through Stuart Dybek’s I Sailed with Magellan when I decided I should just give up on writing altogether…and I wanted to leave it to him, a far more lyric, braver writer than I would ever be.

At these humbling moments, I remember advice I received from Dan Chaon while studying fiction at Oberlin. At the end of a semester, he wrote to me: “There’s a very specific world that only you can write about, a map that only you can make…”

Read the rest of Danielle’s excellent piece.

Also in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:

My Grandmother’s Cigarette Box by Karen Brown

Pleasing Contradictions by Joshua Henkin

Case Study: Using NetGalley and Goodreads for Book Marketing and Publicity

Today I’m happy to share an exclusive with my readers: a case study on the book launch for Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe by Robert Matzen.

Sarah Miniaci at Smith Publicity and Kristina Radke at NetGalley review the marketing and publicity strategies that can help increase your book’s discoverability, word-of-mouth, and reviews. Any publicist or author can implement the tactics covered in this case study, which include (but are not limited to) how to incorporate NetGalley’s tools into wider campaigns.

Over 300 publishers and hundreds of indie authors use NetGalley to offer advance review copies of their books and generate early buzz in the book community. And Smith Publicity is a full-service book publicity firm which, since 1997, worked with thousands of authors and publishers in promoting books from every genre—from New York Times bestsellers to first-time, independent titles.

Here’s an overview of what you’ll find in the hour-long discussion, with time stamps:

4:05: Getting to know the project and determining goals
9:05: What goals were set for the book
11:15: Action item #1: Create pre-publication buzz with consumer market targets (using NetGalley and Goodreads)
25:40: Action item #2: Obtain book trade reviews to establish visibility with buyers (librarians and booksellers) for holiday 2016 season
34:30: Action item #3: Generate major media coverage around release through Christmas 2016
42:15: Results obtained from action items #1 and #2
45:45: Results obtained from action item #3
49:00: Results recap
50:30: Key takeaways

Authors: Think Twice Before Paying to Exhibit at Book Expo (BEA)

Photo credit: Clarissa Peterson / CC BY-NC-SA

In 2012, I wrote the following post as a warning to self-published authors who fall prey to scams that take advantage of the highly recognized industry trade show, BookExpo (BEA), previously known as BookExpo America. I have updated this post since so much has changed in the last five years, both in regards to this particular trade show, as well as the publishing industry.

Important: In the past, BEA has taken steps to ban companies/organizations who resell BEA marketing opportunities at exorbitant prices. Still, while BEA attempts to educate and protect authors from making expensive mistakes, be smart and do your research before you make BEA part of your strategic marketing, publicity, and PR plan.

First, a little background: What is Book Expo (BEA)?

It’s the largest industry trade show in North America focused on traditional publishing. It started off as a convention for booksellers (the American Booksellers Association), and it’s attended mostly by people inside the industry, including literary agents, booksellers, librarians, and the media. The bulk of BEA consists of an exhibit floor where publishers purchase booth space to show off their upcoming titles (and authors), sell rights, and network with colleagues. There’s also a separate rights area where literary agents often have tables.

Do authors attend BEA?

Yes, but usually at the invitation of their publisher. Every year, traditional publishers decide what specific titles they want to push heavily at BEA, and will often invite the authors to do signings or events meant to bring visibility to the work pre-publication. Remember that “visibility” in this context means visibility to the trade (the industry), not visibility to consumers. There’s a separate event—BookCon—that focuses on consumers.

In 2014, in acknowledgment of the growing indie author market, BEA opened up an exhibit area where indie authors could buy affordable tables to conduct meetings and network. It was initially known as “Author Hub” and is now called “Author Market.” This is not an opportunity to sell books—selling books is not allowed at  BEA. You can give away copies, though. Here’s the Author Hub sales sheet for 2016.

Should you exhibit at Author Market?

If you’re a professional, independent author with a significant history of sales, and already know of other professionals you could potentially meet and network with at BookExpo, then it may be a good opportunity for you. This is not a good opportunity for an author who has just published their first book, and thinks visibility at BEA might fix their marketing and promotion problems. It will not.

Whether or not you exhibit at Author Market, BEA is not a shortcut to getting up close and personal with traditional publishers or literary agents, in the hopes one of them will publish or represent your book. You’ll greatly annoy people if you go pitching on the floor, unless it has to do with subrights or licensing. If that is indeed your goal, you should have a very polished pitch, and demonstrate a successful track record. Best-case scenario: set up meetings in advance and don’t ambush people.

BEA is generally not interested in unaffiliated authors walking its floor, because every editor/agent hides from the author who is pitching their self-published work. You can see the unwelcome mat reflected in these 2017 registration prices (highest for authors!); authors must also be “approved” for a badge.

Avoid paying to have your book promoted for you at BEA

Aside from the Author Market, there are a handful of opportunities for authors to get visibility for their work at BEA. As far as I’m concerned—as someone who attended this show for 10 years, mainly as an editor with a traditional publishing house—it is not worth the investment. Here’s why.

The emphasis of the show is on traditional publishing, rights sales and pre-publication marketing, and does not favor indie title promotion. It is a New York industry event where traditional publishing insiders talk to other traditional publishing insiders. Yes, there are librarians and booksellers, but they’re rarely paying attention to the places where an indie book may be showcased or promoted.

Nobody is going to notice your book there. Your book is likely to be promoted with many other books, with no way of attracting attention even if someone did pause for a second within 50 feet of your book. Imagine setting a copy of your book down in the world’s largest book fair, and expecting someone to not only notice it, but be entranced by it so much they can ignore 10,000 other things happening at the same time.

If you—the author—are not present to advocate for it, your book doesn’t stand a chance. Services that offer to promote your book at BEA are rarely, if ever, hand-selling or promoting your book in a meaningful way. But they will be happy to cash your check and say that your book had a “presence” at BEA. If you want to satisfy your ego, go ahead. But it’s not going to lead to meaningful sales. (I challenge anyone in the comments to provide evidence that a self-published book gained traction at BEA because the author paid a fee to secure placement—and the author was not present.)

BEA is a quality industry event, and it is a legitimate marketing and promotion opportunity. But for the majority of indie authors, it does not make sense to invest what are likely your limited resources in BEA.

For more insight and advice

Read Orna Ross at ALLi on what book fairs (may) offer indie authors
Indie author David Gaughran has long warned against book fairs

What the Industry Is Talking About: Best Takeaways for Authors From Digital Book World

Digital Book World 2017, photo by Porter Anderson

Since 2010, Digital Book World has convened in New York City for two full days of programming focused on the concerns of traditional trade publishing. I’ve spoken at the event twice, and this year was invited to help program a third day for authors, in collaboration with journalist Porter Anderson.

My industry newsletter for authors, The Hot Sheet, released a special (and free) issue last week with our original reporting from the show. Here are the stories featured:

The State of the Industry: Nielsen’s Stats Compared to Author Earnings’
A Look inside Traditional Publishing’s Digital Marketing Efforts
At Last, an Upbeat Trend in Young Male Reading
On Mindset and Success: Insights from DBW Indie Author
Strengthen Your Marketing Know-How: A Roundup of Tools and Tips
Looking for More Recaps from Digital Book World?

Read the entire issue for free.

How Kindle Press Made My Novel a Bestseller

Today’s guest post is by novelist and reporter Rick Pullen.

After 38 agents turned down my political thriller, Naked Ambition, my friend Ron Sauder, a niche book publisher on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, urged me to try Amazon’s Kindle Scout. Kindle Scout allows Amazon customers to vote on which books they’d like to see published based on reading a few opening chapters. After a month, the books are evaluated by an Amazon editorial team, who take into consideration the number of nominations a book has received, then select some books for publication as part of Amazon’s Kindle Press program.

The logic behind Ron’s recommendation was that I was an unknown and agents give about 15 seconds of attention to query letters, so they really had no idea what I had written. After 38 rejections and only a few half-hearted responses, he asked, why not get my name out there and test the waters with readers?

I quickly learned writers must first sign a contract with Amazon, not knowing if their book will be selected. If it is, Kindle Press immediately owns both your ebook rights and your audio rights and you can’t back out of the deal. You keep only your print rights since Kindle Press doesn’t publish or distribute print books. While Kindle Press has sold a lot of ebooks, it has yet to publish its first audio book even though Amazon owns the largest audiobook company, Audible.

I’m no social media maven, but I took to Facebook and email—the extent of my social media knowledge—to urge friends and family to vote for my novel. I also had a friend re-launch my web page, which had been dormant for years, but I don’t think that helped at all with the launch.

A lot of friends and business colleagues shared my request and I ended up with 1,200 votes after the 30-day process. Kindle Press quickly picked up my novel, which meant everyone who nominated it would get a free early copy of the ebook—part of the incentive to nominate a Kindle Scout book.

I handed over my manuscript and a Kindle Press editor from Kirkus made minimal grammatical changes throughout the copy, almost all of which I accepted. It was obvious from some of her edits there was a wide generational gap between my knowledge and hers.

I was required to submit my own cover, which I had already been working on with the help of my creative director at my magazine. (I work in magazine publishing.) Creating a cover was quite a story in itself (read about it at my website). It started out looking like a romance novel, then soft porn, and—finally—after consulting with designers and marketers at a couple of publishing conferences, a real thriller novel cover. I realized I still had a lot to learn.

I also had to coordinate the publication of the CreateSpace print-on-demand version with the publication of the Kindle Press ebook.

Finally, on May 3, Kindle Press launched Naked Ambition and I quickly became what my friend Ron describes as “one of the ninety-nine percenters.” My novel hit No. 1 on three Amazon thriller lists by May 20. I was floored. I was a complete unknown in the thriller genre and my book was suddenly—if briefly—hanging out with some of the greats who live much of their lives on that other bestseller list owned by the The New York Times.

I was immediately invited to become a member of a private Kindle Press Authors Facebook page and that’s when I began to get another education in publishing, or at least a Kindle Press publishing education.

Naked Ambition was published in Kindle Press’s second year of operation. In 2015, it published about 90 novels. By the end of 2016, Kindle Press had published a total of 218 books. Megan Muldur, the managing editor and defacto publisher, acknowledged to me that her staff was stretched thin by the middle of 2016. She was gradually adding more staff but that still didn’t keep authors’ emails from going unanswered for long periods of time. Some of mine went for months and I still have some outstanding. But being a magazine editor with a small staff of my own and working with a lot of freelance writers, I know exactly what Megan is facing. She is struggling with the same growing pains faced by any suddenly very successful business enterprise.

I have talked with her by phone and we have emailed back and forth and she has been very supportive of my book, even when I didn’t know it. One time when my sales suddenly surged, I wrote to ask why and found, after the fact, that Kindle Press had been promoting my novel. No complaints there, although it would have been nice to know ahead of time (although, frankly, I don’t know what I would have done with the information). It’s just nice not to fly blind, which is what I feel I have done ever since I decided to write a novel.

Some 185 Kindle Press authors had joined the private Facebook page by the end of 2016. I learned that many had a lot fewer nominations than I did, but were still chosen for publication. And many spoke of knowing writers who had thousands of more nominations who were turned down. It became clear that Kindle Press may use nominations as an indicator of interest, but it is like every other publisher and looks for story and quality of writing before making a decision to publish.

That of course begs the question: Why bother with the Kindle Scout nominating system at all? Is it a gimmick? It took me a while before I figured that out. But if you understand Amazon, the answer becomes obvious. Those who nominate books create a pool of initial reviewers to help promote Kindle Press ebooks when they are first published. Voters, after all, not only get a free book if they voted for a winner, they are the first to receive it. And everyone knows early reviews help sell books. So each Kindle Press “winner” has a volunteer marketing force in place from day one of publication.

But the Kindle Press business model just also happens to create new data for Amazon—the ultimate data-driven company. And this is data on some of its more engaged customers. It can use this information to track their buying habits and then market other books and products to them. It also urges them to do more reviews and thus promote more books and sales on Amazon. It’s a never-ending marketing loop and Amazon wins every time. And of course, a few writers like me get a wonderful free ride on the breaking crest of sales.

Kindle Press not only marketed my book well, but also pays well. Its royalty on domestic ebooks is 50%. Also, Kindle Press pays its authors a full royalty on all books sold through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription service. (Self-published authors are paid a variable rate based on pages read.)

Finally, by November, sales had dropped precipitously. So after seven months, I received an email from Kindle Press telling me my book would be promoted for 99 cents for the month of December. Other writers told me this usually happens after a book has been on the market for about 90 days. But at that time, my book was still selling well, so I’m sure the algorithm on my sales told Megan and her colleagues to wait on a price reduction promotion.

So in December sales again shot up. I sold more in a day than I had the entire month of November, but at 99 cents (that’s a 49-cent royalty), I wasn’t going to get rich. But at the dawn of my fiction-writing career, I’m more interested in readers finding me than making a boatload of money. The yacht can wait.

Then in mid-December, Megan offered me a fat one-time royalty to place my book in Amazon’s new Prime Readers program for the first three months of 2017. This is a new program that offers Amazon Prime customers a choice of 10 free books at a time from a list of 1,000, of which a third are turned over every month. And yet Kindle Press still pays me a royalty. It was an offer I couldn’t turn down, because thrillers were only a fraction of the books in the program. I was asked to keep the offer quiet, which I did. But I still scanned the Kindle Press authors Facebook page in search of answers about the program and learned a lesson in marketing.

Other Kindle Press authors who took part explained that the free giveaways would be counted in my novel’s Amazon sales rankings. That’s extremely important because it keeps my book visible to those who are not Amazon Prime members and are still paying for it. On Amazon, where there are more than five million ebooks, mine was again breaking into the top 1,000 in sales. But more importantly, my book was ranked in the top 15 on Amazon’s thriller novel lists right next to many New York Times best sellers.

It’s all about a book’s visibility and mine suddenly had it again. The advantage for me is not only would I get the lump sum royalty from the Prime Readers program, but I would also continue to receive royalties every month from those who were still buying my novel for $3.49. This doesn’t hurt sales of my $14.99 CreateSpace print novel either!

My friend Ron was right about making a name for myself. Last July I signed a contract with an agent who had actually read my novel and did not rely on one of his readers to send me a rejection. He had previously turned me down—not because he didn’t like my book, he said, but because he feared it would not become a breakout novel. When he found it was selling well, we got together for brunch in New York.

I now face a dilemma with my second novel, a sequel to my first and possibly one of four or more in a series. My new agent told me traditional publishers don’t want to pick up a series once it has begun. He asked two imprints right after he signed me and neither was interested despite my strong sales numbers. While he said my sales are impressive for a first-time novelist (approaching 20,000), a traditional publisher still wants to own it all—print and ebook rights to everything.

There are a lot of other authors out there just like me. We’ve done fairly well with non-traditional publishing, but we want to explore our potential. But with the publishing world changing so rapidly, is that really a smart idea? Would I be locking myself into a long-term contract with a dinosaur?

Jane Friedman noted recently that 70% of fiction is sold in ebook format and about 50% of all domestic book sales are through Amazon. How does an author ignore Amazon? Frankly, as my friend Ron has reminded me again and again, Amazon is a marketing machine. My book sales are about 97% ebook and 3% print. From an author’s view, that is the only weakness of Kindle Press. Print books are not part of their business plan and frankly I can’t blame them.

Despite my Kindle Press’s impressive record, my agent assures me he can navigate the roiling waters and changing currents of traditional publishing today, taking full advantage of all of its digital dynamics and minimizing its negative troglodyte characteristics. He’s told me while traditional publishers may have a reputation as living in another geological age, they are pretty savvy at digital sales and print marketing.

We’ll see what happens. What would you do?

Q&A with Pronoun: An Increasingly Competitive Ebook Distributor

Do you remember the digital publishing startups Vook? Booklr? Byliner?

All of these services/companies have been folded into an ebook distribution service known as Pronoun, which was launched in fall 2015 and later acquired by Big Five publisher Macmillan.

Pronoun works with independent authors to distribute and sell ebooks to the five major online retailers: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play. Pronoun charges authors nothing upfront, and doesn’t take a cut of ebook sales either.

Let’s restate that, since it’s so remarkable: Authors are paid 100 percent net on ebook sales (after the retailer takes their cut), and authors pay no fees to Pronoun.

Today, Pronoun is announcing some significant changes to their terms, including:

70% royalty on ebooks sold through Amazon when the price is below $2.99 (standard is 35% if you sell direct to Amazon via KDP)
65% royalty on ebooks sold through Amazon when the price is beyond $9.99 (again, the standard is 35% if you sell direct to Amazon via KDP)
The ability to make ebooks free at any time through Amazon without being exclusive (not possible via KDP)
No requirement to be “all in” with Pronoun; you can use them to distribute to just one retailer, several, or all. It’s up to you.

Recently, I asked Justin Renard, Pronoun’s head of marketing, a few questions about Pronoun’s services for authors.

As far as I know, Pronoun is the only distributor open to indie authors that can promise a 70% cut on Amazon sales on prices below $2.99 or 65% at price points beyond $9.99. Do you welcome authors who are already selling their ebooks through Amazon KDP to move their books over to Pronoun to take advantage? How long does it take you to get a book available for sale on Amazon once someone sets up their account and uploads their files?

Justin Renard: Our door is open to all authors who are excited by what Pronoun has to offer, and with our new terms, we offer the flexibility for authors to decide what publishing strategy makes the most sense for their books. 70% sales on books priced below $2.99 will be very appealing to authors who rely on ebook price promotion tools to market their books.

We’ve tried to create a frustration-free publishing experience—from uploading and producing a cover, to preparing a book for success on retail sites. Once you press publish it usually takes between 2 hours and 48 hours for your book to appear on all the retailers we serve.

Right now, Amazon KDP offers authors immediate sales data about their ebooks, as well as total control over all the book information and metadata. Does Pronoun match all that functionality in its dashboard for authors?

We do offer total control over all the book information and metadata pushed out to retailers, the difference being is that on Pronoun, you can push the updates out to all retailers at once. Our sales reporting updates daily from all retailers.

Copies sold, total sales, and estimated earnings are some of the sales information we report from all retailers. We also automatically record major events like go-live dates and metadata changes so authors can see the impact of their work on their sales. Authors can also add their own milestones for promotional activities or any offline marketing.

I know many authors have trouble figuring out the right keywords and categories for their books at Amazon. Could you explain the tools Pronoun offers to help authors get this right?

Pronoun has been tracking data of over six million books for over five years, recording important information like sales ranks, ratings, prices, keywords and categories, so we’re able to provide authors with enough information to help make decisions.

Amazon, for example, has over 4,000 distinct ebook categories, and any book might be relevant to several or even dozens. When publishing on Pronoun, we’ve made it easy to find relevant categories by searching for a topic or genre, even if it’s a niche topic or doesn’t perfectly match an Amazon category name. And we rank these options based on the size and competitiveness of the category, so you can choose the ones that have the most opportunity.

Another great example is our keyword recommendations. Keywords are most valuable when they actually help surface an author’s books in more reader search results. If an author chooses broad and popular keywords—like “romance” or “science fiction”—it won’t help unless the book is already selling extremely well. So when authors choose keywords, Pronoun suggests real search phrases that are still popular but have less competitively ranked books in the results.

Pronoun includes support for free ebooks and pre-orders at Amazon. Just to confirm: Does that mean authors can make their books free at any time on Amazon if they distribute through Pronoun (since that’s currently not allowed if you use KDP)? How far out can a pre-order be scheduled, and what materials are required to make a pre-order available?

That is exactly right. Authors are now able to make their books free at any time and across all of our retailers, including Amazon. This is a feature that authors have been asking for a long time now, especially those with a series.

Pre-orders can be scheduled as far as one year in advance. Authors will need to upload a book file, cover image and include all the book information, but this can be temporary placeholder files and information that can be updated before the release date.

Pronoun used to require that authors be “all in” with Pronoun, meaning they couldn’t cherry pick which retailers they wanted to use Pronoun for. That’s now changed. I imagine—since Pronoun can reach Google Play—many authors may sign up with you for that alone. I assume you welcome that? I’m also curious, if you’re able to share, what percentage of overall sales you see happen through Google Play?

We welcome authors who want to publish to only one or a few retailers, though we think over time more and more authors will want to use Pronoun as a one-stop solution. And while I can’t share the exact Google Play market share, I can tell you that for some of our best-performing authors, sales on Google Play are at par or greater than their sales on Kobo.

I know Pronoun is making a significant effort to be clear, transparent, and honest with authors about how your company works. To that end, there’s a question as to how Pronoun survives if it doesn’t take a cut of book sales, and it doesn’t charge fees. Can you offer insight into your current or future business model?

Pronoun works not only with individually self-published authors, but we also work with a number of paid enterprise publishers and count our own digital nonfiction imprint Byliner in our business mix. Through these income-driving activities and the strategic backing of our parent company, Macmillan, we are in a unique position to continue building a truly author-centric and free publishing experience. Our core pursuit as a business is to help authors succeed at publishing. As we grow along with our authors, new business opportunities will emerge that add value to what authors need.

Pronoun had a former life that some authors may remember—Vook—and there were at least a couple pivots for Vook as a business before it became Pronoun. Right now, many authors in the indie community are worried about ebook retailer and distributor longevity, since All Romance Ebooks recently went out of business. I know you can’t make promises about what your corporate parent Macmillan will or won’t do in the future, but what would you like to say to authors who may be understandably wary?

This is such an important question and valid concern for authors. At Pronoun, we want to ensure a publishing experience that empowers authors with not only intelligent insights but also the flexibility to make choices for their books and careers. Plus being a part of Macmillan, which as you know has a 174-year history, means we are a part of a special community of award-winning publishers and a company with a commitment to self-publishing as a critical part of the overall publishing mix.

Thank you, Justin.

Is Amazon Exclusivity Right for You?

Photo credit: 401(K) 2013 via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-SA

Today’s guest post is by author Robert Kroese (@robkroese). Read his previous post on how authors can best use Amazon KDP ads.

As most self-publishing authors know, Amazon offers marketing incentives to authors who sell their ebooks exclusively through Kindle, through a program called KDP Select. KDP Select requires that authors sell their ebook (but not print book) exclusively through Amazon for at least 90 days. The agreement automatically renews unless you decline to enroll again; however, you can always go back and re-enroll at any time.

It might seem like common sense to distribute the digital edition of your book as widely as possible, to as many retailers as possible, rather than being exclusive to Amazon. However, there are some advantages to enrolling in KDP Select.

Going Wide Can Hurt Discoverability

Yes, you’ll lose out on some potential sales by not having your ebook available at all retailers, but probably not as many as you think. While the sales of a well-known author like Sue Grafton or George R. R. Martin will likely be spread widely across several retailers, if you’re a relatively unknown author, you are very dependent on how “discoverable” you are on each site.

Although it’s not easy to rise to the top of the Amazon bestseller lists, at this point Amazon’s algorithms still provide the best hope for a new author to be discovered. Unless you spend a lot of time researching the idiosyncrasies of each online marketplace and expending time and money marketing in those venues, your book will probably languish unseen among hundreds of thousands of others.

Additionally, there is the possibility of sales on other sites cannibalizing your sales on Amazon. A sale is a sale, of course, but the more you concentrate your sales on a particular venue, the higher your book will rank there and the more visible it will be to potential readers. It’s better to be highly visible on one site than buried on five of them.

Generally speaking, then, Amazon exclusivity makes more sense for authors who are just starting out or who are relatively unknown. More established authors can leverage their popularity by selling more widely.

Enrollment in KOLL and Kindle Unlimited

Enrolling your ebook in KDP Select is the only way to make it available in both the Kindle Online Lending Library (KOLL) and Kindle Unlimited (KU).

KOLL, as the name indicates, is Amazon’s online ebook-lending service; anyone with a Kindle device can borrow up to one ebook per calendar month at no charge. KU is Amazon’s ebook subscription service, which allows readers to pay a flat monthly rate to read as many ebooks as they like.

Indie authors do get paid for these borrows—based on pages read—but the system is somewhat arcane. Basically it works like this:

Every month Amazon establishes a fund used to pay authors for KOLL/KU page reads.
Amazon determines how many pages of each book were read during the month, using its Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) algorithm, which is a fancy way of saying that you can’t get away with that trick you used in college of making the margins smaller and using 14-point font to make your paper seem longer.
Amazon divides the fund amount by the total number of pages read and pays you your share.

For example, the fund total in a recent month was $16.3 million. The total number of pages read that month was around 3 billion.

$16.3 million / 3 billion pages = $0.0054 per page read

A couple of technical notes on this:

Amazon doesn’t publicly release the “total pages read” number, but you can estimate it yourself using the information provided on your KDP royalty statement. Just look for any line where the Transaction Type is “Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) Read.” Divide the Royalty value by the Net Units Sold or KENP Read value. This tells you how much you are being paid per page read. To estimate the total number of pages read across the program, divide the KDP Select Global Fund amount by this amount.
A “page,” according to the KENP algorithm, seems to be somewhat shorter than a normal paperback page: my novel City of Sand is 255 pages long in paperback, using a 6 x 9 trim with standard margins and font size. But according to Amazon, it’s a whopping 402 pages using the KENP algorithm. So if someone downloads City of Sand and reads the book in its entirety, I would make about $2.17 per copy read (402 pages x $.0054). That’s nearly what I make on a sale (70% of $3.99 = $2.79).

In the early days of KOLL and Kindle Unlimited, some authors made a killing by manipulating loopholes in the program. When Amazon changed the rules to prevent this sort of manipulation, there was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, most of it unjustified. That said, Amazon continues to tweak its algorithms and KOLL/KU have steadily become less lucrative for most authors. Two years ago, I was making almost as much on page reads as I was on sales. These days, KOLL/KU income makes up about a quarter of my income. This is due to a confluence of factors, including:

A decrease in the number of pages of my books being read (probably due to the increased competition as more books are added to KOLL/KU)
A slight decrease in the amount Amazon pays per page read (due to the KDP Global Fund not keeping pace with the total number of pages read)
A change in the KENP algorithm that reduced the number of pages in my books. For example, KENP 1.0 considered my novel City of Sand to be 455 pages; KENP 2.0 says the same book is now only 402 pages.

Gaining Access to Special Promotional Tools

KDP Select also allows you to access to advertising and promotion options you wouldn’t otherwise have. These include Kindle Countdown Deals and free book promotions. The advantage of both of these types of promotions is visibility.

Countdown Deals have a dedicated page on Amazon, and offering your book for free makes it possible to get into the top 100 free books in your category.
Out of the 90 days you commit to being exclusive with Amazon, you get up to five days where you can make your ebook available for free.

These are valuable promotional tools, but there is so much competition for low-priced and free ebooks right now that neither of these promotion types is likely to be the deciding factor in determining whether you go exclusive to Amazon. If you’re able to coordinate these promotions with other tactics (e.g. a BookBub listing or an effective Facebook ad campaign), you might be able to get enough visibility to move a significant number of books. But don’t expect a huge spike in sale just from a temporary price promotion.

The Value of Simplicity

One frequently overlooked advantage of selling ebooks exclusively through Amazon is simplicity: if you only sell in one venue, you only have one file format to deal with, and only one version of your book to maintain. If a reader points out that you’ve left the “l” out of the word “public” in chapter seventeen, you can fix the mistake in one place, upload the new version, and be done. If you want to lower the price of your book, you can do it in thirty seconds, without having to refer to a spreadsheet of passwords for five other ebook management interfaces. This may not sound like a big deal, but that time adds up—especially once you’ve got seven or eight books to manage.

There Isn’t One Right Answer for Everyone

Whether you enroll your books in KDP Select is going to depend on the above factors and also on whether you want to give Amazon that much control over your livelihood. Obviously Amazon controls the amount of money in the global fund for KOLL/KU page reads, as well as other advantages of KDP Select, and they can change the terms of the deal anytime they like. A self-published author has to keep a continual eye on whether the pros outweigh the cons. However, my suggestion for new authors would be to experiment with KDP Select for 90 days and see what kind of results you get.

This post, from an author who recently decided KDP Select is not for them, is worth reading. Randall’s experience is summarized in this paragraph:

My initial upward spike quickly turned into a long slide down. I’ll spare you the details and just say that by the time the ninety-day commitment was over I was pulling down the same numbers as I had been when I was wide. And that was with my first book Closure being offered FREE. (I’d been forced to put a price of $2.99 on it to justify going onto KU.)

Author Lindsay Buroker details her own experiences with KDP Select here, and gives a good breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of exclusivity.

I know authors who do well selling exclusively through Amazon and authors who do well selling more widely. Bestselling indie author Hugh Howey enrolls all his books in KDP Select. Other authors, such as my friend Denise Grover Swank, prefer to diversify, making their ebooks available through Apple iBooks and other marketplaces. For me, it makes sense to enroll my books in KDP Select because a lot of my books are published by 47North, an Amazon imprint, so they are exclusive to Kindle anyway. Putting some of my books on other marketplaces wouldn’t make me enough money to make up for the lost KOLL/KU income, and it would probably frustrate people who can’t find the rest of my books. So for me, enrolling my books in KDP Select makes sense. Whether it does for you is going to depend on where you are in your career, where your audience is, what your goals are, and how you feel about being highly dependent on Amazon for your income. Again, it bears repeating: Even if your experimentation indicates that KDP Select is a good deal now, don’t assume it will always be.

Note from Jane: If you found this post useful, I highly recommend taking a look at the upcoming book from Rob on how to self-publish.

When a Story Ending Doesn’t Satisfy

Photo credit: Hitchster via Visualhunt / CC BY

Years ago, when the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, I was so compelled by the storytelling that I decided I would read the trilogy in advance of the other movies releasing. This wasn’t exactly a mistake—the movies are hardly disappointing, quite the contrary—but I was angry at how the movie neatly tied a bow around the ending of the trilogy. It was too eager to satisfy. Critics even joked that the movie had three or four different endings, since it very methodically showed us the conclusion of each major character’s narrative arc.

The original ending by Tolkien was incredibly bittersweet—the good guys “win,” but this doesn’t automatically lead to a happy or tidy ending.

Over at Glimmer Train, writer Toby Wallis discusses endings that don’t necessarily satisfy—particularly those that refuse to answer the questions that are posed at the beginning of the story. He writes:

… sometimes endings are designed to satisfy, answering the questions posed along the way with a denouement that leaves no string unattached. Endings that allow you to leave as easily as you came in. But what if the ending isn’t designed to satisfy? What if it is trying to do something else? What if the story doesn’t want to let you leave quietly? What if the whole point is to pull the rug out from under you?

Read his full essay.

Also this month from Glimmer Train:

Coyote by Karen Malley

Oh, The Mistakes I’ve Made and The Wonders to Howl About by Stefanie Freele

My Must-Have (Digital) Productivity Tools

This post is one that I regularly update with my absolute must-have digital tools that enhance my productivity, creativity, and digital-life sanity.

1. Zoom

Zoom is my go-to online meeting service. I use it for client meetings, personal chats, online courses, and even to pipe in guest speakers for in-person events. I’ve found it nearly foolproof since participants can join on any device—including a phone—using video + audio, or audio only. Find out more about Zoom. You’ll find both free and paid plans.

2. Evernote

I resisted using Evernote for years, but over the last two years, it’s become integral to my workflow. I use it for what I call my “primary to-do list,” which is broken down by day of the week, as well as for first drafts of blog posts, research notes, interviews, and conference talk outlines. I also use for “composting” ideas. If you’re the kind of person who has a million stickies on your desktop, or multiple documents where you’re dumping notes, then take a serious look at Evernote.

3. CrashPlan

This is my continuous back-up system for my computers. It runs faithfully in the background, 24/7, and I don’t have to think about backing up, ever. The annual fee is worth it—check it out.

4. Scrivener

I finally took the leap and started using Scrivener when I began assembling my book, Publishing 101. I will never write a book in Word again. Of course, the big drawback is that Scrivener is not at all intuitive, so you’ll have to carefully go through their free tutorial; you can also find online courses available to turn you into an expert user. I recommend you download and use the free trial version for 30 days as you decide if you’re OK with the learning curve.

5. Canva

Even though I’m an expert user of InDesign and intermediate user of Photoshop, I love Canva to brainstorm ideas and put together quick visuals for social media. (See image at the top of this post!) This free service smartly recognizes that more and more of us need easy tools to design things that look halfway decent, and don’t have the time or resource to hire a professional. While Canva has serious limitations, for lightweight work, it’s perfect.

6. Dropbox

I couldn’t function on a daily basis without Dropbox, which is cloud-based storage of my work files, especially since I change machines so often. It syncs across my desktop, laptop, mobile devices, and I can also access it through any computer if I have login credentials with me.

7. Google Drive

I use Google Drive in addition to Dropbox as a cloud storage system, but specifically for those documents that I collaborate on (where multiple people might need access)—or when I want to share public links.

8. Paprika

Paprika is an app where I store all my recipes. It helps me meal plan during the week, generate shopping lists that get sent to email, and categorize recipes according to my own criteria.

9. LastPass

LastPass is a password manager that helps ensure you never forget a password again—or use bad password hygiene (making you vulnerable to attack). It generates strong passwords and stores your login credentials, securely and locally; whenever you go to a site that requires those credentials, it autofills them for you on a browser. You can get started for free.

10. Acuity Scheduling

This is a full-featured appointment/scheduling software that allows clients to book free or paid appointments with you. No more back-and-forth emailing to set up appointment times—it syncs with your Google calendar (among others). Acuity can be embedded into your site or shared as a link. Free to start, $10/month for most features you want.

11. Zippy Courses

Zippy is my preferred tool for creating and selling online courses. If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, you can buy the Zippy Courses plugin. Or, if that’s too technically complicated, they offer a fully hosted solution for an annual subscription fee. I see at as the most sensible and easy solution for anyone accustomed to WordPress sites.

12. Wave

Wave is a free and robust online accounting service for tracking income and expenses related to your business. It also generates invoices that clients can pay online by credit card.

13. MailChimp

MailChimp is the email newsletter service I use, which is free until you reach 2,000 names. If you’re serious about online marketing, but are still at the beginning stages of building your business, you’re better off using this and not TinyLetter.

14. VisualHunt

VisualHunt is my favorite tool for finding Creative Commons and public domain images to use in my online courses, blog, newsletter, and elsewhere.

What tools are part of your daily creative life or business? Let me know in the comments.

Also: Every two weeks, I send out a newsletter about new digital media tools and resources I’ve discovered. Subscribe.

Should You Submit Your Work to Agents or Editors?

Photo credit: aftab. via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC

Regardless of whether you’re writing a novel, nonfiction book, children’s book (or something else entirely), once you’re ready to submit your work in the hopes of landing a publisher, you’ll have to decide:

Should I approach agents or editors?

The easy answer is: Most writers should pitch agents first, especially since it’s hard to go wrong with that approach. But a variety of factors play into this decision.

Is your book appropriate for a New York publisher?

If you hope to see your book published by the likes of Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, or Hachette, then you need to start an agent search. That’s because virtually no New York publisher accepts materials directly from authors; it has to be agented. If you try to submit without an agent, your work is most likely to go straight into the trash can (either literally or digitally).

But this question can be a little more complicated than it first looks:

There are occasionally opportunities to pitch New York editors at writing conferences, or you might meet one at a workshop or social function. They might express interest in your work and even invite you to get in touch. If you do have such a personal invitation, don’t hesitate to follow up on it, but understand that editors will rarely be able to move forward with the project if they want to make an offer. At that point, they’ll tell you to get an agent, and of course—if you have an editor’s interest—the process of finding one should be easier than if you don’t.
Not all projects are (by a long shot) appropriate for New York publishers. By “appropriate,” I mean something that has enough commercial potential that a publisher would seriously consider making an offer on it. Or, a book needs to have the potential to sell tens of thousands of copies and merit bookstore shelf space across the country. Unfortunately, writers can have a hard time telling what projects are destined for commercial success—too much personal bias!

Is your work best suited to a small, independent publisher or academic press? (Do you know the right publishers already for your work?)

Some books are niche by design: the audience may be very specific, and there are only a handful of publishers that focus on that particular audience or category. Take graphic design, for example: You could probably count the number of active publishers in that category on one hand, and if you’re a graphic designer, you probably know what they are even without researching. Or, if you’re a scholar, you may already know the specific university presses that regularly produce work in your field.

In cases such as these—where you may know the publishing landscape better than an agent because you are a specialist—then there’s little need to have an agent represent you. You already know the market, and the publishers are likely open to receiving materials directly from authors.

With any kind of general fiction, however, the lines can get blurrier. There’s a very wide range of small and independent publishers out there, and they’re not created equal. (I comment more on small presses here.) Some, like Graywolf, don’t accept unagented material; their size and prestige matches that of a New York house. With others, you may benefit from having an agent assist you with contract negotiations, while small, mom-and-pop publishers may balk if you bring an agent to the table.

For any type of commercial or genre fiction, the best strategy is to look for an agent first, and if you can’t find one to represent you, then you can research and submit to publishers that happily accept material directly from authors.

Avoid submitting to agents and editors at the same time

Some writers (usually the impatient ones!) decide that they’ll query agents at the same time as the editors. But I strongly advise against this. An agent wants a clean slate to work from, and if you’ve been sending your work out—even just to small presses—that makes her job more difficult. If you desire an agent or have hopes for a Big Five deal, then there’s no question: approach agents first, publishers second.

When working through an agent isn’t necessarily the best thing

When you’re a specialist and you know the right publishers for your work (as described above), then having an agent may or may not be of use to you. Sometimes publishers that work in niche areas offer very small advances and less flexibility in their contracts. While you may want an agent to help negotiate the deal, giving them a 15% commission on everything you earn—if that’s all they do for you—can make little sense, especially if you didn’t need them to secure the deal in the first place.

But that’s still what some authors end up doing, because they feel better about having an agent in case something goes wrong, and to feel like someone is “taking care of business” for them. Whether your agent will do this successfully and devotedly will depend on the agent. Never forget that if your advance is small (less than $10,000) and your sales aren’t much to look at, they may not have a strong incentive to do a lot of hand-holding or nurturing, unless they’re truly invested in a long-term relationship, with profitable book deals ahead.

There are such things as literary lawyers who can negotiate a contract for you based on a flat fee or hourly rate. Sometimes this is a preferable course of action, especially if you’re not pursuing a career focused on traditional authorship.

Also be very careful of signing with agents who have a track record of sales to hybrid publishers, publishing services, and other small outfits that almost no one has heard of. Such agents may have financial incentives to deliver you into the hands of a company that will end up charging you money. Publishers Marketplace is a good place to check on the track record of deals an agent has made ($25/month); also run a Google search on the name of the agent (and/or publisher), then add the word “scam,” to learn about the writing community’s perception of that agent or publisher.

To learn more

How to Find a Literary Agent for Your Book
How to Find Publishers