R. Lawson Gamble's Blog: R Lawson Gamble Books, page 12

What I Learned

Last Saturday the Sisters and Misters of Central Coast Sisters in Crime launched their inaugural one day conference for writers and would-be writers, Writers In Action. It was a great success. And I’m gonna tell you a few things I learned.

But first let me say “Thank you” to those who purchased CANAAN’S SECRET on Pre-Order so far. I know you’ll enjoy it, it’s a fast paced, engaging and entertaining read. You have already lifted it in the Amazon rankings. That helps me, you, and Amazon (no losers here).  If you forgot to buy yours, you can get it here now.

Now back to business. As we have said repeatedly in this column, book publishing today is undergoing tremendous change. To begin, we now need to ask ourselves what kind of book we want to publish? Because the processes and timing are quite different. To my mind, of the three essential elements for creating a book– writing, publishing, and marketing – only one (writing) is consistent to both e-book and paperback. During publishing and marketing the processes diverge. This divergence grows wider with every change in digital processes.

Much of what is new, as I learned at the Writers In Action Conference, supports this growing divergence. For instance, CreateSpace in various and subtle ways seems to be distancing itself from the Amazon Kindle process. Some helpful functions no longer exist. Ingram Spark, I understand, expects fully professional folders for acceptance. Ingram is the way to chain bookstore shelves for your paperbacks, CreateSpace less so. If you want best exposure for your paperback, you’ll want to utilize both.

Meanwhile, the e-book platform remains solidly with Amazon Kindle, with iBook and other pretenders lagging far behind. The old way to go (meaning what, 2 years ago?) was publish your paperback first, with all the formatting and interior design done, then turn to crafting your e-book, a much simpler process, generally.

I see less value now to that approach. It takes longer and longer to publish your paperback, even as an Indie publisher. Not the years a traditional publisher may require, but certainly months. Why? Because competition for you book is exceedingly strong and growing more so daily. Therefore, you want to give your book its best chance. It goes without saying it must look great, inside and out, on the correct paper, with the correct font, and so on.

But before printing, you want reviews, you want beta reading of the book in print, and final checks. The best way to do that is create ARCs (Advance Reader Copies). These are similar to the finished product but have marketing information on the back cover rather than the usual material. They do not have ISBNs.  You send these to bookstores or readers who will review it and so create your market avenues for the arrival of the actual book. But before you launch the book, you should consider the best calendar day to do so. Have your press release ready to go for that holiday, be it Mother’s Day or Readers Day, thus assisting your local reporter who may otherwise have nothing new to say about Mothers or Readers.

Marketing your paperback requires an entirely different approach as well. You can’t sit on your butt in front of your computer for this one; you must get out among your readers and sell. Social media is the avenue to sales for ebooks, but not so much for paperbacks. You will need to organize launches, signings, talks and the myriad of inventive ways there are to put yourself in front of potential buyers.

I foresee a future where authors specialize in either ebooks or paperbacks as publishing methods change and grow and marketing avenues and processes diverge more and more.

 

Free For Followers

Free as a sales technique is losing its edge. That’s the current thinking, anyway. The reasoning is there are now so many ebooks offered for free at any one time, the market is saturated. More, some hypothesize, readers have learned to wait for books to be offered free, stockpile them, and thus save themselves the purchase price. Entire virtual libraries may now be built of free ebooks.

Meanwhile, authors with strong platforms continue to sell with confidence, keeping their sale prices high. Visibility is not a problem for those who already have it. Authors who don’t must work to gain it. The reader has an interesting choice: to collect free ebooks and hope to find a great undiscovered read among them, or pay the higher price for an established one (or do both).

The word FREE has a connotation unlike any other, particularly in a culture such as ours.  It is very powerful. It grabs the attention. Ebooks selling on Amazon for $ .99 do not command near the same attention. Statistically, according to recent research, the “sweet spot” for sales of ebooks on Amazon (beyond free) begins at $2.99, not $ .99 or $1.99. It seems to be a question of assumed quality; a book priced at less than $2.99 has no self respect, hence is probably not worth reading. A book priced at $8.99 has a lot of confidence and belief in itself, but in the end the read must justify the expense. Ebooks selling for anything between $2.99 and $8.99 are quietly confident and deserving. Free, however, is FREE.

The word “Free” in the title of this little homily was intended to grab attention; the categorization “For Followers” was meant to indicate a special group (you!). Only you can say how well it worked. In fact, if you have read this far I will venture to guess it has worked. And so, you deserve your reward.

This Sunday, May 20, my Zack Tolliver, FBI ebook #4, CAT will be free on Amazon.com. If you already have it (and I hope you do) mention this to your best friend. But when you do, be sure to say it is free, gratis, no strings attached. Amazon will give it up to them graciously. It is the power of FREE.

 

Why Buy the New Zack Tolliver, FBI, Novel “Canaan’s Secret” on pre-order?

[image error] A new Zack Tolliver, FBI novel is now available at Amazon as an eBook. It is offered as a Pre-Order item. It will be offered in paperback later this summer. A paperback box set of the complete Zack Tolliver, FBI series (6 books) will be available at a special price later this summer as well (check in at RLawsonGamble.com for news).

Why Pre-Order? How does that benefit the author? The consumer/reader? Amazon? It is an interesting marketing concept; I offer my understanding of the answers to those questions below.

But first, what is Pre-Order? Here’s how it works: Pay with a credit card, and your purchase of “Canaan’s Secret” will not be charged to your account until it enters the shipping process. So, Pre-Order, and pay when the book arrives.

So why not wait to purchase until it is ready to ship? The best reason is given by Amazon: “Whenever you pre-order digital content, the price we charge you will be the lowest price offered by Amazon.com between the time you placed your order and the time the content is released.” In the specific case of “Canaan’s Secret”, the Pre-Order price is $2.99, the lowest permitted by Amazon for digital books in the category that includes full world-wide distribution. After the day of sale, the price will go up to $3.99. How else does Pre-Order benefit the consumer? To a forgetful person such as me, it offers the opportunity to purchase now and forget about it, only to be pleasantly surprised when it arrives on May 29.

Pre-Order sales benefit the author in several ways. The sustained exposure on Pre-Order builds curiosity and suspenseful anticipation. Another, perhaps lesser known advantage is the author need not submit the fully edited and complete manuscript until four days before publication. This allows us to make those changes that so often come to mind after a deadline has passed, even as the book is on the “shelf”. The sales that occur on Pre-Order are recorded on a day by day basis and go toward the book and author ranking on the day of sale. (One might say benefits to the author sustaining him as a writer ultimately benefit the reader!).

The benefit to Amazon from Pre-Orders is simple: anything that helps the author sell books helps Amazon. They will always promote the best sales tactics and best selling authors for that reason. So if you intend to buy Zack Tolliver, FBI, book number 6 “Canaan’s Secret” as an eBook, why not buy it now?

Publishing Patience

Market[image error]ing your book is like driving with your foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. One must have patience while waiting to see and understand results from Social Media advertising, waiting for readers to write reviews (or not), waiting for reviewers to read the book, waiting as the sales algorithms at Amazon change yet again.

I am currently in such a condition, rushing to make my promised publication date this month for the newest Zack Tolliver, FBI mystery, Canaan’s Secret, with much editing and formatting, preparatory to offering the book for pre-sale on Amazon. After that, watch, wonder, and wait.

At present, my sales come mostly with ebooks, more specifically with KDP. It is a good sales platform. But it is difficult to get a sense of how to sell there. Traditional publishing houses and known authors with big platforms have recently discovered this outlet and have jumped aboard, and certain categories are getting overcrowded. How to compete with big advertising budgets?

In my particular category of Native American crime mystery, one or two Indie writers have managed to hold their own. To my mind, the leveling effect of placing everyone in the same pool, sinking or swimming according to virtue and quality rather than massive promotion still does work in a general way, but the playing field is far from even, and the time between initial offering to realization of results is much longer. The advantage of name familiarity is large. Readers searching for a book are drawn to known quantities and will hover longer over the book of an author they recognize. The key to successful sales on Amazon is visibility. Large scale promotion, whether at Amazon or elsewhere, does provide that.

For the less known writer to sell well, your book must reside in the top 100 in your category. Amazon makes the titles in that group visible. But you will not be in the top 100 unless you sell well. How do you get there? Keep writing, keep up with the latest marketing tactics, and have patience.

Book marketing gurus always come back to the same idea––unless you have an amazing platform, the key to success is 1. Write a great book 2. Have a great cover 3. Do it again. But to succeed in this, the books must be visible. And that requires marketing.

Those writers who do well in my particular fiction category do this. They write a series, the longer the better. I was once present during an informal chat with John Sanford, successful author of the Prey and Virgil Flowers novels. At that time, he had published 25 books in one series and 10 in another and had no intention of slowing down. Yes, he is a big name in publishing now, but at one time he had written just one book.

The top Indie writer in my category on Amazon has published 9 books, the next 10. Both have been among the top 15 or 20 in the category, competing with the Hillermans and Craig Johnson, among others. They have good books, good covers, but more than that, the patience to write many books. It takes time to write all those books!

Which is another reason you should enjoy what you write. Writing all those books would become mighty tedious if you didn’t!

 

Visit rlawsongamble.com

Tolliver Tales April 2, 2018

Enjoy this volume of Tolliver Tales, including a reveal of the newest Zack Tolliver, FBI novel cover!Tolliver Tales April 2018

The Land of the Paperback

 

[image error]

One hears a multitude of statistics year to year regarding the health of book sales in every format, and much is said, including the now famous remark by the CEO of Hachette Books, Arnaud Noury, that e-books are a “stupid product”. There are indications of some movement away from the digital format by a few traditional publishers.

 

Such intent may not be surprising, considering the hold Amazon has on the digital book market, not to speak of iBooks (with current rumors of expansion in the market), Nook, and Smashwords. Some retailers, Barnes & Noble in particular, have shown themselves to be flexible enough to market the full potential of both digital and paperback. What I hear in Noury’s comment is frustration.

While sales statistics undulate from year to year, as reasons to favor one over the other may appear and then vanish, can anyone doubt by now there is a place for paperback, e-book, and audio book, and that all three will continue to grow. As we have said in previous columns, the world of book retail is divided in terms of the needs of the reader: an e-book for a fast read on the train or in the airport, an audio book “listen” while on a long drive, a snug and cozy bedtime read with a paperback, which can also be used to smack that bothersome mosquito.

I have watched sales fluctuate dramatically according to the seasons, where my digital e-books sell well in late Spring and Summer and trail off toward midwinter and the holidays as paperback sales take over. In my experience, to sell paperbacks requires either a strong platform (written by someone famous or controversial), a very strong marketing push, or (what the rest of us do) sales at fairs, signings, and events that draw people. Paperback books sell best when they are seen up close, hefted and handled, when their colorful covers can draw the reader into their fantasy or their proposal.

This author will be signing and selling his books at a local author event (unabashed promotion here) at the Avila Room at the Monarch Club in N. Nipomo, 1645 Trilogy Parkway on Sunday March 18 at 11 am. Of late I have been more selective about my participation in fairs and various similar events. Poorly marketed, poorly planned venues can require a great deal of time and effort with little result in sales. I look for events that demonstrate strong organization, timely and thorough marketing aimed toward readers, and a history of good attendance. Granted, there are not many of these unless one is willing to shoulder the expenses of travel. The other type of event I favor is one I can control; a book launch, a store signing for my books alone, a reading or workshop or lecture I lead.

Large publishing houses can and do spend good money to have their books shelved in visible locations in the store, advertised widely, and arrange for their books to be discussed in articles or on talk shows. Needless to say, most Indie writers lack these resources and must try every trick (in the book?) to keep our work visible to as many readers as possible. Inevitably, marketing steals time from writing.

The best answer for the Indie writer is to write many books of quality sufficient to keep them near the top of their particular genre stack. E-books answer this need best, hence a glut in e-books. The paperback book lives in the land of shiny retail shelves, in airport stands, drugstores, warehouse stores. They are the glamorous first cousins. The e-book lives in the shadowy world of impulse reading, bargains and free books, book hoarding, and travel. But each has its place, and likely always will.

Special Notice For My Readers

Special Promotion: ZACA e-book will be Free on Friday at Amazon.com

Special Promotion for Followers

Special CAT Promotion

A Novel Cycle

While involved in random research I followed a thread to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces and his A Hero’s Journey, wherein he outlines a path the lead character will take in hero myths and stories from around the world, demonstrating the commonality of these specific stages for all heroes.

[image error]

 

I’m not one who enjoys outlining a work of fiction. It feels too calculated to me, like an exercise out of grammar school. Worse, it spoils the surprise for me as the creator (after all, writers want the excitement of a mystery too!). Even if I have a rough course of events in mind as I begin, my characters generally trash those tidy assumptions even before the first chapter has ended.

 

A Hero’s Journey, however, amalgamates into a cyclic formulaic scheme all the eagerly anticipated and expected checkpoints in those favored stories from hazy childhood. While renderings may differ, the essential cycle goes as follows:

A Call to Adventure
Refusal of the Call/Acceptance of the call (first step to becoming a real hero)
Supernatural aid
Crossing the Threshold (point of no return)
Entering the Belly of the Whale (into the danger zone)
Road of Trials (Brother Battle – with familiar foe, or Dragon Battle – against terrible alien)
Meeting with the Goddess (a powerful female figure)
Woman as Temptress (a test)
Atonement with the Father (father figure hero persuades, beats, or wins approval)
Apotheosis (higher level of understanding to prepare hero to transcend)
The Ultimate Boon (achievement of the goal)
Refusal of the Return
Magic Flight (hurry home with the treasure)
Rescue from Without (unexpected last rescue)
Crossing the Return Threshold (may not be as simple as thought)
Master of the Two Worlds (Mastery of both home and alien worlds)
Freedom to Live (as he chooses)

While the elements above have seen a number of revisions, the essential concept remains solid. The cycle can be extrapolated from stories such as Hermann Melville’s Moby Dick and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. It even served as a template for George Lucas’ Star Wars (by his own admission).

 It is fascinating to note the monomyth cycle serves not just the stories and myths of English speaking nations, but cultures and languages around the world.

My world is the Central Coast of California, a land at one time teeming with bandits. Their lives are compelling, and often follow paths similar to one another. It occurred to me to construct a cycle similar to Campbell’s creation to outline outlaws––a template for the lives of banditos. It might look something like this:

A good/honest/normal life (even an idyllic life)
The Fall (It all goes wrong)
The Cause (person, event, incident causing the Fall)
The Curse (vow to do harm to the Cause)
Crossing the Threshold (performing first illegal act – point of no return)
Acclimatization (becoming inured to wrongdoing/enjoying the adrenalin rush)
Blame misdirect (it wasn’t my fault – he, she, it forced my hand)
Hero myth (accept and promulgate myth of own greatness)
Rise of Chief Adversary Force (Detective, sheriff, vigilantes determined to bring bandit to justice)
Trials (near escapes, wounds, suffering)
Temptress (woman as lover, seducer who creates a vulnerability)
Final episode (death or capture)

This template won’t fit every bandit or outlaw, but most of the points are found in the lives of many. When setting out to write a biography of, say, Jesse James or Butch Cassidy, there are enough matching stations present to ease the organizational task of the writer.

Still doodling with the Hero’s Journey, I decided to apply it to my Mid/YA story Payu’s Journey for fit, remembering I was not familiar with the cycle at the time I wrote it. Is there a natural tendency to follow the Hero’s Journey in story telling, I wondered?

 

*The Call to Adventure certainly fit, although Payu had little choice.

*Likewise there was no Accepting the Call; the Call was unavoidable

*There was no Supernatural Aid beyond the anthropomorphic aspects

* Payu certainly Crossed the Threshold when she decided to keep the human child

* She entered the Belly of the Whale at that moment

* She certainly faced a Road of Trials

* The Meeting of the Goddess might be meeting Ritta the Roo

* And the Woman as Temptress might be Mika, the beautiful fox

* The Atonement with the Father could only be her relationship with Ngur

* Payu faced Apotheosis when deciding to remain in the Land in the Sky despite the fact some of her friends could not enter

* The Ultimate Boon was obviously her acceptance by the Council to live in the Land in the Sky along with her human baby

* A Refusal to Return is mute, as she could not return in any case

* Magic Flight, Rescue From Without, and Crossing the Return Threshold are mute for the same reason

* Mastery of Two Worlds must grow in volume 2 of the trilogy, but is certainly feasible and

* Freedom To Live fits without a doubt

 

So, call it ten out of seventeen stations of Campbell’s Cycle that fit Payu’s Journey. But is it really a surprise when one considers we were all nurtured with stories manifesting this structure and therefore must be influenced as we write our own. Food for thought.

Filming Zorro (Tolliver Tales for February 2018)

Tolliver Tales February 2018