Zachary Katz-Stein's Blog, page 11

Barnes and Noble CEO Steps Down as Nook Sales Plumet, Via Reuters

Hello Blog Folk,

Today’s link is a bit of epublishing news. Apparently, Barnes and Noble CEO William Lynch is resigning after Nook sales fell 34% last quarter.

From an indie author perspective, this makes perfect sense. Amazon took 4 days to upload my book onto their site, and it’s still not available on Nook (despite the fact that it was submitted to them over a month ago).

If you’d like the fully details of Lynch’s resignation and what B&N plans to do next, you can read the fully article here: .

Enjoy,

Zac

Authors Hosting Authors, Via World Literary Cafe

Hello Strangers,

After moving to Ohio and trying to find work I’ve been very inconsistent with this blog. I think that this (June 26 – July 8) is the longest I’ve gone without posting since the blog was created. I’m sorry for that. I’m going to try to post more regularly.

So, without further ado, today’s link is from the World Literary Cafe! It’s a forum for authors looking to host other authors on their blogs. From what I’ve read, there’s opportunities for those those looking to host and those who would like to be featured.

If you’re a new author (like me) this could be a great opportunity, check it out!

See you tomorrow,

Zac

Writing Under the Gun

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com

Writing Tip: Read Outside Your Genre, via Victoria Grefer

Howdy Internet Wayfarers!

Today’s link is from a fellow fantasy writer I found talking about her new article on Twitter. Victoria Grefer, author of The Hezeroth Trilogy, wrote an article about the benefits of reading outside your genre.

Obviously, her genre, and mine, is sword and sorcery fantasy literature. However, Grefer lists several things that she got from British crime novels: a breather from fantasy, new and interest story construction, and the simple pleasure of reading something different.

Those of you who know me outside of this blog know that I love Sherlock Holmes, and almost anything written by Jane Austen. So, what I’m really saying is: I get you Victoria Grefer. I get you.

Enjoy your day my friends,

Zac

Trading eBooks for Reviews

Good Afternoon Blog People,

Today’s link is to a promotion being held by The Masquerade. They’re giving away several fantasy eBooks in exchange for book reviews on Amazon or Good Reads.

This is actually a very good idea and one I’m going to have to figure out how to use for my own book!

Until tomorrow,

Zac

The Way of the Writer, via Ben Avery

Image from Ben Avery’s article: THE WAY OF THE WRITER: Comic Writers Should Be Comic Artists

While Avery’s article isn’t strictly about writing novels, it is interesting, and there was just too much awesome in his comic for me not to share.

Enjoy,

Zac

eBooks Bringing Back Serialized Fiction, via Lindsay Buroker

Good Morning Blog Friends!

After an absence of a couple weeks as I’ve gotten used to working (almost) full time, moving to a new state, and launching a book, we are back to our regularly scheduled program – Yay!

Today’s link is Called Monetizing Serialized Fiction and I have to say I’m impressed. The author, a guest poster named Zachary Bonelli, makes a compelling argument for serialized fiction – pointing out some impressive “pros” like: higher return on investment, more frequent releases, and more reader engagement.

It seems almost like new publishing squared – eBooks are the new wave of publishing and, after reading the article, I’m almost convinced that serialized fiction will be the next wave of eBooks.

While my Edge Walker Series will definitely be released as eBooks rather than serialized fiction, this might be an idea I’ll have to play with…

Until next time my friends,

Zac

Character Profile: Oresk Arcesk

Height: 5′ 11″

Weight: 155

Eyes: Silver

Hair: Black

Ego: More than intact

The scion of the once great Arcesk Clan, Oresk grew up with every comfort imaginable yet with the weight of expectation firmly on his shoulders. Gifted – that’s what they had said – magic touched. In his silver eyes the elders of his clan saw great potential, and told him so.

Oresk was gifted in other ways as well. Incredibly beautiful, Oresk soon learned that he could get away with things just by smiling at those who caught him. He was intelligent, strong, and ambitious.

Throughout his childhood had fought for control of the gang of children who were being fostered at his family estate, Asendry Manor. The boy Daren – his cousin – was easy going and so easily dominated. Lillian was a different story. After her clan had been destroyed, she and her sister Kailani had been adopted into the Arcesk Clan. Lillian and Oresk’s struggle for power were legendary (at least among the servants of the household).

Years past and Oresk grew more mature (at least a little). He was told of his betrothal to Adaira – who didn’t meet until he was almost thirteen. A new boy, Prince Zephryndel, came to be fostered at Asendry Manor and Oresk was forced to admit Zephyr – as the last of the old ruling clan, the Verlox – had a better right to rule than he.

Yet, as his ambition cooled, he became happier. He developed a close relationship with his mentor, Aderyn, and together they went on many important missions for Arundel, leader of the Arcesk clan.

Now, Oresk and Aderyn have a new mission: find the boy that reports say is about to develop magical powers associated with the Arcesk Clan. The assignment should be routine, yet Aderyn looks unexpectedly grave. Find out what happens to Aderyn and Oresk in The Grey Heir!

Writing a Bestselling Haiku

I don’t know where she found this, but I found it on J.A. Bennett’s Writer Blog.

Book Tango Week 1 Review: 3.5/5

It’s a great idea. Needs polish and a little more transparency.

For those of you who don’t know, almost exactly a week ago today my first book, The Grey Heir, went live and I couldn’t be more excited! (though I suppose you wouldn’t know it from my lack of blog activity – that very inactivity was due in part to other promotional pushes).

I chose to publish with a site called Book Tango. Regular readers might remember I did a review of the site – or at least the idea for the site – earlier in an “author’s resources” post.

Basically, Book Tango offers four features (at least for free): they have an eBook creation tool that can help you take your book from a Word doc to a formatted eBook, they publish your book to ALL the major eBook retail stores, and they help you track your sales.

In theory this sounds like a great service. In practice it has a few rough edges.

The Services:

Let’s go through what Book Tango really offers (including the things I didn’t find out about until after publishing with them).

The Creation Tool: At first I found the creation tool extremely frustrating. It didn’t have the font I had used for my book originally (Georgia), and it wouldn’t let me keep my drop caps.

However, I think most of my annoyance came from the fact that my internet is fairly slow in my current home and it was late at night. When I revisited the project the next day I found out that I had made a lot more progress than I thought and I appreciated the fact that it had made the table of contents automatically.Overall, I would rate the creation tool a 4/5. It was relatively intuitive but I’m still bitter about my missing drop caps.
Publishing to all distributors: Right now my book is only available through Amazon and the Book Tango store. This isn’t actually Book Tango’s fault. They sent it to Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Sony, and all the others, Amazon is just MUCH faster than they are.

When I published, they said it would take one day to four weeks for my book to appear in all the outlets. Again, not their fault, but that doesn’t stop it from being irritating. I reserve my star judgement on this one until the four weeks are up.

 

Sales Tracking: One of the features I was most excited about was the ability to track sales in real time. After I signed up I found out that it actually had a 72 hour delay. I sighed and waited for three days for my sales to start appearing. Then I waited four days. Then 6 days.

Finally, today I live-chatted with one of their service reps (genuine cudos for having that) and they got me to read the part above the sales report page that said it was a 72 hour delay for sales made in the Book Tango store. Sales made outside the Book Tango store would be recorded after each month. Face palm. Although technically this service will still be useful, I don’t remember them mentioning that kind of lag. 3/5 for the time lapse on a useful service.

 

Payday: This is one of their primary selling points: 100% royalties. What that actually means is that they don’t take any more on top of what Amazon or Nook or Apple take. I already knew that. In fact it’s one of the reasons I chose Book Tango over services like Smashwords, who offer similar distribution services but take 10% for their trouble.

What I didn’t know was that they only pay once a quarter. That hurts, especially when compared to something like KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), which pays once a month. Again, I don’t remember anything about this in their promotional video. It’s in their FAQs, but a little buried and certainly not given any more light than absolutely necessary. 2/5 for both the slightly sub-par service and the nasty surprise.

 

In a Nutshell…

Here’s the thing: I want to like Book Tango. I really do. It was easy to set up an account, once I got used to the creation tool it was intuitive and useful, they don’t charge anything for their amazing distribution abilities, and they genuinely seem to want to be offering a good service.

I think they’ll get there. It just makes me sad that I’ve gone through so many unpleasant surprises with them.

I think this problem could be solved with just a little more transparency. I know it’s not the best marketing strategy to advertise paying authors once a quarter, or the lag in sales data, but I think saving authors the surprise would be worth it in customer satisfaction.

Or they could, you know, fix the problems – pay us once a month and update sales data more frequently.

Just sayin’.