Rani Divine's Blog, page 25

mAd Money

All right, so now we know that we need to be writing a lot, we need to be releasing an appropriate number of books in a year, and we need to be as social as we can be… but what else can we do, to be seen in a world of people trying to be seen? How can we, as new authors, get our books read by the largest audience possible?
Well, today I’m talking about something I’ve only just started doing, if I’m being honest. It’s something I’m still working on, but it’s something that’s already seen a huge return—so I highly recommend paying attention here. ;-)
How many ads do you place?
If you’re trying to get seen by other people, in other states and other countries, you need to be placing some ads. After all, this is the primary way that anyone will find out about you, what you write, and who you are. Place ads for yourself as a writer, for your books, and for your social media pages. Get people to follow you, gain their interest, and then make sure you do enough stuff online to keep them interested and keep Facebook from nixing your follows. I don’t like that they can do that now.
I’ve digressed.
From what I’ve noticed, Amazon and Facebook can be inexpensive for ad placement, and can generate a decent amount of revenue, even if you don’t primarily sell on these sites. Remember, I don’t like to sell through Amazon. Though my eBooks are available there, I tell people to go to the RAD site if they want to buy my books—all because I’d rather give business to my publisher than to the beast that is Amazon.
But in any case, Amazon can be a great place to have ads in place. At the very least, it’ll get people to see your book, maybe get a look at what it is and follow you online even if they don’t buy the book right now.
In the same vein, Facebook ads can be very successful as well. Do a Google search to get more information on how to do them well. I’d tell you, but really, I’m still learning it too. I have, however, generated revenue from them—so I’ve made back the money I spent from placing them in the first place.
And if you want to be a little less mainstream, look for magazines and the like where you can place ads for your books. Some magazines, like Mavguard, allow authors to place ads at a reduced rate—it never hurts to ask! Find the option that works best for you, that best suits your budget and allows you to reach the greatest number of people, and use it.
The point is, get yourself seen.
Here’s the thing with ads though, no matter where you place them:
Remember to have links everywhere that point to the place where you’ll get the most return for your ad. I send people to the RAD site, because not only will you have to spend less to get your copy, but I’ll actually get a larger royalty from it. I don’t generally tell people that last part, but I’ll tell them the rest. When they hear they can get it for less off a different site, a lot of the time they’re more than willing to buy it there.
Do your research. Find out where your target audience is spending their time, and place ads where they’ll be able to see them.
Are you marketing toward people who don’t spend their time online? Then go for magazines. Are you looking for people who shop on Amazon? Then do Amazon ads. It all depends on who you’re trying to reach, and there a ton of great resources online for finding ways to reach those people.
Be as specific as you can. That’s the biggest piece of advice I can give you. Don’t be vague, don’t be uncertain. Just specify who you are and who you’re trying to reach—and it’ll make it a whole lot easier for you to reach them.
Trust me.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

How public are you?

Thank you all so much for your amazing support at the Albuquerque Museum Author Fair! I had so much fun meeting you, and I can’t wait to do it again. It was a blast! If you’re in the Albuquerque area and you need to get some RAD books for the holidays, be sure to stop by God’s House Church on Small Business Saturday (November 25), and see me!
That, I think, is the perfect lead-in for today’s topic.
This month, we’re talking about all the ways you can get yourself better known, better seen, and read by more people—and today’s point is one that we introverts have a hard time swallowing.
How many public events do you go to?
The answer needs to be a lot. I try to do at least ten local events every summer, and a few more scattered through the rest of the year. Generally, my goal is to do at least fifteen events in any given calendar year, though understandably, that doesn’t always happen.
Here’s the thing though:
The more you go to, the more your local community will know who you are—and at least in the US, people in every state love people from their state. We can use that to generate a larger statewide audience that we can spread to our region, then to the country.
Unfortunately, events can also be one of the most tedious parts of marketing. There’s not always an immediate result, some events are slower than we hope, and others end up being cancelled at the last minute, after we’ve already done a mass of prep work and gotten everything ready to go. I don’t like when that happens.
The thing with events is that they’re a great way to connect with an audience you might not be as easily able to reach online without an extensive use of ads. See, not everyone is online all the time. I know, it really seems like it is, but there’s a wave of people who would rather go to a bookstore or a local shop than do their shopping online—and that’s a group of people who are great to have in our back pocket. They’re the people who are avid followers, the people who hunt around for any books by their favorite authors, because they read more than they internet. And those are the people you’ll find at public events.
What do I mean by a public event, you ask?
Author fairs, craft shows, book fairs, anything that has a large variety of people selling their stuff, and that is open to the public. Remember, events that people have to pay to go to don’t always generate as much revenue. A lot of people would rather go to a free event and spend more money, than pay for entry and not have enough cash to spend on the stuff they’d like to buy.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Make sure you’re visible. That’s the biggest thing. You should be social online, yes, but you should also be social in person. Be a person of your city, your state. Let people in your city know who you are and what you’re about. Go to enough events that people start to recognize you. You can be the next big name in your city, and it’s not hard to springboard that into something much bigger—but it all starts with doing events, with getting yourself seen and heard, and being someone that the people like to see.
It’s a little like politics, isn’t it?
If you’re not telling everyone you know about what you do, then you’re missing out. People want to support people they like—especially their friends. So talk about it. Go to events. Keep a box of books in your car. Don’t shut up about writing, just like a politician never shuts up about what he stands for.
[love]
{Rani D.}

What's in a release?

Today’s topic is one that I’ve talked about a little bit in the past, but I wanted to look at it from a slightly different angle. It’s also one that greatly related to Tuesday’s topic, so it seemed fitting for this week.
How many releases do you have, in a year?
I ask this question because there’s a rumor going around, that authors have to be putting out multiple releases in any given year, or no one will want to read them. Let me tell you right here and right now that it isn’t true.
At least, it’s not true for every genre.
If you’re a romance/erotica writer, then yes, by all means, get as much content out as you can. But if you’re in basically any other genre, please don’t do that. Your focus shouldn’t be on the amount of content you have on the shelves, but the quality of that content. Readers of romance and erotica aren’t looking for deep reads or fascinating plots (you know what they’re looking for, so I won’t go into detail). But by the same token, readers of sci-fi aren’t looking for shallow plots and easy-to-predict situations. Which isn’t easy to release multiples of, in a year.
If you’ll remember from our series on Amazon versus everyone else, more quantity generally means lower quality, when it comes to books (and lots of other things, if I’m being honest).
So my question to you is, how many releases are you putting out in a year? Are you putting out a number of releases that is suitable to your genre, or are you following the trend of I-must-release-as-much-as-possible? Remember, not every reader is looking for an easy read.
Like we talked about on Tuesday, if you’re writing so many books in a year that you can release more than two or three things, you’re probably not growing in your writing style—and if you’re not growing in your writing style, then it’s hard for real readers to actually attach themselves to you. You might make some sales, yes, but it will be more difficult to attain avid readers who follow everything you release.
Now, this next part isn’t fully tested at all, but this is what I’m doing as of this year.
I release one full-length novel per year. Even though I have fifteen books complete, I don’t have the time to release more than that in year, nor do I have the will to do so. If you’ll remember, The Druid Novels are all rather long. I can’t expect readers to get through that in a couple months and be ready for the next one. In fact, I expect them to take about a year to read it.
So, in the meantime, I’ve been releasing shorts. Chapbooks. Letters From Hell was just released a few weeks ago, and it’s already doing very well. And I have another coming out in the coming weeks, which I’m sure will do just as well.
This is a way for me to cheat the system. I’m still releasing works. This will mean that I’ve released three works this year—but only one of them was a novel.
This way, I’m still following the Amazon rule of “release as many things as you can in a year” while sticking to the rule of thumb for my genre, releasing only one book in a year.
You’ll have to do a little bit of research to figure out exactly what you should be doing in this vein, but it’s definitely something for all of us to consider. Find out what your readers are looking for, and determine whether or not mini releases would be a good idea. Personally, I’ve found it very helpful.
Oh yeah, and being published in a magazine counts as a published work, so don’t forget to try to get your work published elsewhere as well—like, for instance, Mavguard. ;-)
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Insanity?

This month, we’re talking all about getting yourself out there as an author, creating a following, and getting people to read your books. And don’t you worry; I know full well that I’m not the best at it. We’re all still learning here, and that’s part of what I really enjoy about Too Many Books to Count. I learn things all the time when I’m researching what I’m going to write about in any given month—and this month promises to be a lot of fun.
First thing’s first, when it comes to getting yourself out there…
How much do you write, in a month?
It’s also a pretty good month to be discussing things like this. After all, November is one of two National Novel Writing Months (the other is April, which I recommend more than November, for holiday reasons).
So, how much do you write in any given month? I ask this, because the more you write, the better you’ll be at it. That’s a general rule when it comes to writing, in case you didn’t know. But, the better you are at it, the easier it'll be to get people to read your books from start to finish.
One of the biggest things about being a writer is making sure that you expand your craft, that you’re always growing as a writer and learning new ways to use words to your benefit. So, if you find that you’re really not writing a whole lot in any given month, maybe you should look into expanding it.
Especially with indie authors, I’ve personally found that the devoted readers who stay with you from the beginning really like to watch as your craft progresses from okay to amazing. I still get a lot of remarks from people comparing Telekinetic to The Druid Novels, and I love that my readers see how much more effort I’ve put into my traditionally published books.
I didn’t get there overnight.
Telekinetic, as you know, is part of a series. There are three other completed books in that series, which I wrote before I ever started or even conceptualized The Druid Novels. The rest of the Advanced series is written in exactly the same vein as Telekinetic—the writing is more amateur than the level at which I write now. The difference is obvious.
That’s what I want to remind you of.
I know a lot of indie authors, and I know a lot of them are like me: they write nonstop, a lot of them popping out several books in a year.
But here’s the thing:
If your writing hasn’t changed in the last few months, then you’re doing something wrong.
Yes, you read me right.
If your style hasn’t changed, then you’re just running around writing the same thing over and over again, expecting people to read them as different and unique works—do you realize how close that is to the definition of insanity?
My point is, be sure you write a lot, but be sure you also grow in the way you write. Make sure you’re not stuck in a rut of writing the same thing over and over again, because the way you’ll be noticed is by having one unique style and several unique stories—not by having a unique style and one story that’s told over and over again through several different points of view.
[love]
{Rani D.}

Traditions are Great

It’s November. It’s only a few weeks from Christmas. I think Thanksgiving falls in there somewhere. And today is the last day in our series on publishing houses. I’ve really only barely scratched the surface on the pros of both traditional publishing and self-publishing, if I’m being honest, but I don’t want to overwhelm or confuse you by going into things that really only come into play a few times per published book. The things I’ve talked about are the big-picture things, the things that will make the most difference when it comes to choosing a publisher, by only looking at the pros.
So, today…
Traditional Publishing is Great
It really is. I have been, and always will be, an avid fan of traditional publishing. I don’t want my books involved in this whole "moving books" scheme, I don’t want them on the big screen just yet, I don’t want their covers designed by a newbie sitting behind a computer. I want them professionally designed and formatted, words on a page and nothing more. That’s what I like, that’s what I read, that’s what I do.
It’s traditional, and that’s what makes it awesome.
Traditional publishing is where it all began. It’s the company that backs the author, the professional editors, designers, and marketers who make sure this book reaches as many people as possible. It’s the team of people working with the author and through the author to produce a high quality book—which might be something you lose, in self-publishing, depending on how you go about it.
The thing that I really appreciate with traditional publishing is that if I have any questions about anything to do with publishing, I have someone I can ask. I’m in contact with my editor, I’m working with actual people who know the business and know how to answer my questions. I’m not just one person sitting at my computer hoping I’m doing the right thing. I’ve been that person. I didn’t enjoy it. And I wasn’t doing the right thing.
If you want to see the biggest pro to traditional publishing though, all you have to do is pick up a book that was traditionally published, and set it next to one that wasn’t. Read a few pages, maybe. You’ll be able to tell the difference; trust me.
Take Telekinetic, for example, and set it next to Coetir.
Which one looks more professional? Which one reads better? Which one has a smoother flow and actually draws readers in? Which one has characters that could actually come off the page?
That’s the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing. For some reason, probably for that team of people we talked about a second ago, the books released from traditional publishers are almost always a cut above what you’ll get from a self-published author.
And that’s what makes traditional publishing so great.
It’s a cut above.
It’s held to a higher standard.
It’s expected to be great reading, and there’s a reason for it: it usually is.
Traditional publishing is done by a team of experts in their field, not by an author sitting behind their computer and doing what they can.
I’m not trying to pick on self-published authors by saying this, mind you. I’m just telling you my experience. Traditional publishing is great—but only if you’re willing to give up on a little bit of that control, and let that team of people help you out.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Self-Stuff is Awesome

I’m freaking out a little bit, that tomorrow it’ll be November. I honestly feel like the year only just started, and now we’re nearly saying goodbye to 2017… It was a good year, I think. And this month has been a really fun one, and an interesting time for me. You know me, I usually sing the praises of traditional publishing while warning everyone of the dangers of self-publishing. This month, I haven’t done that. And this week, the trend continues as we finish our series.
Self-Publishing is Great
Surprised? I nearly am. But really, self-publishing is really cool. It’s created a way for everyone to get published, for people who aren’t what publishers consider marketable to get their books on the market and hopefully make some money off their work. Yeah, it saturated the market. Yeah, it made things a little more difficult for everyone involved, but you know what? That’s how the game goes. It’s not supposed to be easy, it’s not supposed to be something you can do without putting time and effort into it. Self-publishing kept the system from going into a downward spiral of only-certain-people-can-be-published.
Self-publishing is the option that allows authors to maintain control of their craft. It’s the option that allows authors to work for ourselves instead of working for a company. (and as we all know, small business is what keeps the US running strong). It’s the type of publication that shows traditional publishers that people aren’t going to stand for their picky decision making, and the version of publication that puts the author in the driver’s seat.
For some of us, that’s just what we needed.
For others, it’s a wakeup call.
For still others, it’s a challenge we couldn’t rise to.
But you know what? That doesn’t mean it’s a bad way to go.
Every author is different, every book is different, and every marketing scheme is going to be different. Some books won’t do well on the general market, so it might be difficult for a traditional publisher to do well with them—but self-publishing allows us an alternative route for getting this book into the hands of the people who want to read it.
Self-publishing filled a void, really. It showed the world how many authors are really out there, and made readers realize that there are authors out there who aren’t the big names but write books just as good.
And really, that’s exactly what the system needed.
We needed competition.
We got it.
[love]
{Rani Divine}
P.S. I realize I’ve been doing traditional publishing topics on Tuesdays and self-publishing on Thursdays, but the self-publishing topic came easier to me this time. ;-)

Self-made royalty

Tuesday, we talked about the complicated side of sales and royalties. Traditional publishing is like that, sometimes, though I tend to find it the simpler of the two in most regards. Today though, we’re going to focus on self-publishing.
How do sales and royalties work, for self-published authors?
Well, that’s pretty simple. You make a sale, you get a cut of the sale price. Ta-dah! But it’s never quite that easy, is it?
All right, so let’s start at the beginning.
Unlike traditional publishing, when you sign (or agree to work with) a self-publishing company, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll pay them a sum of money to do much of the heavy lifting (generally mild editing, interior formatting, cover design, printing, formatting for eBook, etc.), or you’ll do all that yourself and primarily publish digitally (i.e. through Amazon’s KDP or Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press). So, you’ll either start out spending nothing or start out spending a lot.
Now, once your book hits shelves (whether they be literal or proverbial ones), you’ll start getting paid. And it’ll depend on what company you published with, as to how much you’ll be paid.
I’ve worked with two self-publishing companies in my day: Xlibris and Amazon.
With Xlibris, I can get royalties every three months. It works very similarly to how it does with traditional publishers. I get a cut off the net royalty (that’s the amount of profit the book makes when it’s sold, so sale price minus any production costs). So, if I haven’t made $25 in any given quarter, it rolls over to the final quarter (which usually means I only get money from them in January, since Telekinetic has been out for so long and they no longer really market it).
With Amazon, I get a percentage off the sale price of the kindle eBooks. I’m on the 70% royalty program, which is actually a fairly decent percentage of the sale price. But they do make it difficult to report for my taxes, on how much I sold when and how much I earned from those sales. Oy.
But basically, with self-publishing, you’re on easy street. You make a sale, the company pays you your cut. Depending on who you’re working with, you might not have to wait more than a couple months to start seeing money come in (Amazon sends you money two months after your sales, so any sales you made in July, you’ll be paid for in September).
Pretty easy, right?
The only thing you’re missing is the advance, which is sometimes the difference between our ability to keep writing all the time or not. Again, not lying here. Just trying to stay on the positive side.
The nice thing with getting paid in self-publishing, is that you’ll start seeing funds come in from sales fairly quickly. The amount you’ll be paid will vary, depending on the amount of marketing you do and your ability to sell the book, but you’ll be making something in royalties, right away.
It’s a decent system, certainly.
[love]
{Rani D.}

We like royalty

This week, we’re talking about something a little bit closer to home. All month, we’ve been talking about the publishing industry, focusing on the good stuff between traditional publishing and self-publishing, and by now, it’s time that we took a week to talk about the nittiest and grittiest of topics.
How do sales and royalties work, with traditional publishers?
This is where a ton of authors get really confused, which is why I wanted to talk about it this week. Thursday, we’ll look at the same thing from the point of view of self-published authors, but for today, let’s look at the confusion that can be getting paid through traditional publishing.
See, when you sign a contract with a traditional publisher, they will never ask you to pay them anything. Ever. If a so-called traditional publishing house is asking you to pay them a retainer, that’s not a traditional publishing house. That’s vanity press. Get out. Get out now. 
I’ve digressed.
When you sign a contract with a traditional publisher, most of the time they’ll pay you what’s called an advance. And most of the time, that advance cuts into the amount you’ll earn once your book hits shelves.
Let’s do a little example, on the super simple side of things.
Say you signed a contract with Traditional Publishers, LLC (that’s not a real company, if you couldn’t tell ;-)), and that in the contract, you have a $100 advance (that's fairly low, but this is just an example). Okay, so they’ll pay you part of that advance upon signing, and the other part upon publication (or they’ll pay you all at once at one of those two times—it just depends). The contract will also specify the amount you’ll make off every book they sell. Let’s say it’s 5% of the sale price on every copy (hardcover, paperback, and digital—though you’ll usually end up with different royalty rates for each).
Okay, so, now you’ve signed your contract, your book is on the shelves, and you’ve received your advance. But you haven’t been paid anything by the publisher, except for that advance.
Well, that’s sort of the point. The advance is (usually) an advance sum of what you will make off every sold copy of your book. So, the publisher won’t pay you royalties until your advance has been exceeded (i.e. they won’t pay you until you’ve sold enough to have earned at least $101 in your agreed 5% royalty rate).
The publisher will, of course, be the one who handles most of the sales. They’ll figure out stores in which to stock your book, determine where to send copies at a wholesale rate, and generally sell copies from their own stores as well. They’ll keep an account of how many copies they sell, to whom they were sold, and how much they were sold for, and they’ll send you a report of these sales.
Most of the time, publishers aren’t required to pay you until the amount you’ve earned reaches $20+, by the terms of the contract. So, if you don’t sell much in one quarter, the amount you did earn will rollover into the next quarter, and so on and so forth, until you eventually get paid.
Sounds a bit grim? Maybe still confusing?
Well, remember, your advance is usually going to be a lot better than $100. If you sign with a big enough company, you might even end up with thousands or millions in your advance, and if your publisher is smart in selling the book, you’ll be making money off your work for years to come. It might not look like much in royalty rates, but it adds up quickly. You’ll usually be making money within the first few years, at the very least. And many publishers may actually want to sign you for more than one book at a time. If that’s the case, you’ll get an even bigger advance.
The key is this: if you’re getting confused about how royalties work with any given traditional publishing house, it never hurts to ask. Most companies are more than happy to talk their authors through it, and explain exactly how everything works. After all, once you sign that contract, you’re basically married to them for the rest of your life. Divorce isn’t a common thing, between publishers and authors. In fact, it’s harder than you might think, if you decide that you want out of your contract.
But that’s not a bad thing, either. It’s designed to make sure that if you start freaking out for no apparent reason (it happens to all of us, at one point or another), the publisher won’t have to worry about you trying to pull your book from the shelves. And trust me, you want your book on as many shelves as possible.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Marketing for the self-made

Hey-O! You’ve almost made it through the whole week. I’m proud of you. Really. I know some of you had incredibly rough weeks, and I’m glad that you made it through in one piece. Even if you don’t feel like you did. You’re alive. You’re here, reading this post. And I’m glad you’re here.
Tuesday, we talked about marketing for traditional publishers. Today then…
How Self-Published Authors Market Books
I’m not going to lie to you. I promised that I was going to be positive this month and tell you all the good things about either side of publishing, but I’m also not going to lie about how hard it is to do some of these things.
Marketing is harder, for self-published authors. It just is. Mostly because you’re working by yourself to market your book, sometimes without as much knowledge of how to market or where to market.
But you know what? When you’re marketing your own book, you get to decide who you market to.
That’s something you don’t always get to do, when you go the traditional route. And being able to set your own target market means that you get to go out and reach those people yourself—which can be a lot of fun. You get to be the one to set up events, to run ads and hit the streets, and you get to decide what your campaigns are going to be like. You won’t have anyone dictating to you about what you need to do or where you need to do it.
The nice thing about this, is that if you’re going through a rough patch in life or your day job is just taking up too much time right now, there’s not going to be someone hounding you to do the events and ads you need to do.
The bad thing about this… is the same thing.
It is more difficult to get noticed by as many people, if you’re not signed with a well-known traditional publisher. But it’s also a really good learning experience. It’s a way to get yourself out there, to make yourself be more adventurous and outgoing—which is what a lot of us need to do. 
It's also a great way to get your platform started, which will make your work more appealing to traditional publishers (if that's the route you're hoping to eventually go). 
For me, marketing Telekineticmeant going to as many events as I could and hounding as many friends and family members as possible, but that wasn’t enough. See, I’m not lying. I could’ve done a lot better with Telekinetic, if I’d put my time into it. Which is what you have to do, if you’re going the self-published route. You have to put the time in, or you’re never going to get seen.
But when you put that time in, when you get to where you’ve got it down and you know what you’re doing when it comes to marketing, you’ll be able to use that same platform to springboard your next book—all without someone telling you what to do.
I’d say that’s pretty nice, in the long run.
[love]
{Rani Divine}

Marketing, for the pros

Hey guys! Happy Tuesday. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but maybe it should be. Be happy, have a happy day. No matter what day it is.
Last week, we talked about the reality behind traditional publishing and self-publishing, while focusing only on the good parts of the deal. So, traditional is great if you’re looking for someone to back you, someone to really point you in the right direction. And if you’re not that great of a business person, then definitely traditional publishing is the way you want to go.
But what does marketing look like, in publishing houses?
That’s what we’re going to look at today.
How Traditional Publishers Market Books
Like we talked about last Tuesday, traditional houses usually have a lot more money to put toward marketing a book. They also usually have a whole team of people devoted to getting your book on as many shelves as possible. That’s a lot of what they’ll do for you, if you publish through them.
They take a lot of the hard work out of your hands.
They’ll run ads for your books, for you as an author, and even for future releases. They’ll contact bookstores and set up events wherever they can. They’ll get you into events that you wouldn’t regularly be able to get into on your own. And they’ll do all of this without batting an eye, because that’s what they do.
What I like with traditional publishers, is that if I have an idea for marketing my book, I can take it to them. They have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, so they know whether my idea is pure genius or sheer idiocy (let’s face it, we all have our moments). If I have a certain event that I want to get into, I can ask my publisher to get me into it. Sure, I’ll have to give them a good reason why they should stick their neck out for me, but their presence holds a lot more weight than mine does. When my editor contacts an event to book me, people pay attention. When I’ve tried to do it on my own, people just wonder who I am.
See what I mean?
Publishers carry a lot more weight, simply by being a business. They know what they’re doing, they’ve been in it for a while, and they don’t shy away from asking big events for a seat for one of their authors.
If a first time author tried to reach out to a big event for their first book, without a publisher to back them… sometimes it’s just not as appealing to the event coordinators.
That’s what’s great about traditional publishers. They do all the legwork, while I sit back and do what they tell me to do. I go to events, I sign books, and I write more books—which is what I really want to be doing, to begin with.
[love]
{Rani Divine}