Michael Selden's Blog, page 16

The Economics of Publishing a Book

What does it cost to write and publish a book?  There’s no single answer to this question, because it depends on how much trouble you go through on the book.

First, it’s going to take an inordinate amount of your time—thousands of hours. Get over it. This will be spread between writing, revisions, revisions (and did I say revisions?), then more time reviewing developmental and copy editor’s comments—usually more than one iteration, and it may be many.

For The Boy Who Ran—after it was written— I began with developmental editing. Some people give opinions for free but if you want a professional look you need to engage a professional Next, you’ll take the input, or inputs you’ve received and probably do some revision to the plot. Every plot has holes and they need to be fixed if you’ve got any sense of pride in doing a good job. Once you think the book is in decent shape, you need to engage a professional copy editor—don’t be cheap here, you want someone who works in the industry and has a record of editing many books like yours.

Editing costs for The Boy Who Ran (total) were around $2500 —and that was really a single shot, since I’d done so many revisions that the copy going in was in exceptional shape, and the book only had about 37,500 words (The Balance actually peaked at 150,000 words)

Design and artwork costs: Count on paying a quality professional for the interior design, say another 500 to 1000 dollars. You’ll need artwork for the front. I was lucky in that a close friend volunteered to draw the cover art for free, but then the cover needed a design, too, which was another $750 (not including artwork)—these are competitive prices, but through a proven quality house.

Next, the e-versions of the book will need to be scrubbed—say another $300 to make sure they’re in good shape—e-pub in particular usually requires that your book pass a test to be included in many catalogs, and it’s not even in high school.

There are also setup fees from the printer, and then (if you want copies) printing and shipping costs.

Next comes Marketing—the most expensive part of all. I hired a publicist to help me set up my web site and to get me started. His fee was around 3000, including some advertising. Most books get a budget in the thousands / month for ads. In my case, I’ve spent around $300 to $500 per month for a while.

 

Totals for The Boy Who Ran: Editing 2500  Book Cover Art: Free (unusual) Design: 1500 Marketing: 9000 Book Setup and Printing for copies: 2500

Around 15,500 + Trip to IPPY Awards Dinner  and driving around to various bookstores

All told, the project has run me close to $20K

 

What do I get when a book’s sold? Less than $2, whether it’s a paperback or an e-book, sometimes less. Fewer than 7% of books sell even 1000 copies. Do the math. This isn’t a reliable way to make money, so if you’re in it for the money—don’t be. Of course the other down side is that your book will probably be pirated anyway, since some people seem to feel entitled to your efforts. They think it should be, somehow, free.

 

 

 

 

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The Boy Who Ran, Now Available on Google Play

The Boy Who Ran went live tonight on Google Play.

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Marketing Strategies Part 1—Ads

I've been experimenting with web ads over the year, trying this and that web site and different approaches.

What I've tried:

Facebook
Twitter
GoodReads
Google Adwords
Digital Magazines

I've learned that I can get a lot of traffic to my web site using Google Adwords Display ads—the ones with pictures. The problem is that people have a tendency to click on interesting looking images with no real intent to look for a book. This was true with facebook and —especially— with twitter.

On facebook, people will click "like" a lot, but only a small subset will go to your web site. If they go to the web site they do spend a little time—sometimes.

On Twitter, they'll click to see your profile, but not to the web site, and if they do they leave immediately. I've decided that (for me) Twitter was a total waste of time and money.

Google ad words generates the most web visits, about 10-times as much as facebook on a dollar for dollar basis. But the image ads usually (90 to 95%) wind up bouncing right out, with little interaction and virtually zero sales. The text ads are more successful. People who are actually searching for a book. They visit and read a little. There are additional targeting strategies for ad words that I'm still experimenting with, plus I've been learning something about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This remains a work in progress.

I'm also engaging with bloggers now, and find it likely to be more effective in targeting people interested in books in general.

On GoodReads, the jury is still out. I have been less systematic, to date.

The Balance—Chapter 8 added to sample chapters August 31, 2014

I added chapter 8, entitled “The Sister’s Eyes”, to the sample text today (Aug 31). In this chapter, we meet a few of the renegade members of the Order.

 

The link to the page is:

http://michaelselden.com/the-balance

 

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Rational Speculative Fiction

What is “rational speculation”?  Well I look at it as a way of applying the rules that govern the universe to new things that I’m speculating could exist. This means that when I apply this rational speculation approach to a particular book, whatever is new will be governed by the same rules  that govern things like gravity, or electromagnetic waves. The new thing can be supernatural (beyond what we think of as natural), but it will follow these rules. Things like conservation of energy and force at a distance relationships, or does the geology really work this way?

The story of The Balance takes place in a fictional place called, The Land. While this place doesn’t really exist, the features and other characteristics were drawn from a number of different places—the Land is very much like a real place. For example: I situated it in a spot on the Earth to be near different ocean currents, but lifted its geology from another place. Within the story I try to be consistent with the laws of physics to the maximum extent possible, while creating new abilities for some of the characters. Phoebe, for example, is a Sensitive, created to have the ability to connect with other people’s mind. We don’t create Sensitives today, but I can imagine that elements of certain brains might develop, or be caused to develop, a structure and signal that make it possible to do so. In the world of The Balance, the Order would have zeroed in on these characteristics to enhance and amplify this ability. Phoebe is the product of over 200 years of this kind of development. The story uses this and the fact that the Order was banished to underscore that Phoebe isn’t aware of why she feels so strange, she just thinks of herself as a freak and wishes it would all go away.

Still, if we are to accept that this characteristic could exist, then we ned to apply the rules of physics to understand how it might work. Her ability isn’t magic, its speculative science. That means that there are rules that will govern how a Senstive’s mind and powers will work. I surmised that they would work like any other transmitted force, using the 1/r2 (one divided by the range squared) loss of signal strength. That means that if you double the distance from her mind, the signal strength would decrease as the square of the distance, so at double the range the signal would be one fourth as strong, at ten times the range it would be one one hundreth as strong. The Order might well have designed ways to enhance this range, much like using an antenna. An antenna focuses the energy of a transmitter to provide amplification (or gain) and can extend the range, but antenna are also governed by rules, like the limit of the focused beam being proportional to the wavelength of the energy divided by the diameter of the antenna.  When I wrote the book, I factored these kinds of things into how I designed the Sensitives and how I would have seen the potency of the sensitives increase over time, or range.

This is just one example of rational speculation. I don’t always constrain myself this way. For example: the book “Disobedience” is a supernatural thriller. It’s slated for 2016. I still rationalize about why things happen, but in that story I use powers that I speculate would require some deity-like being or demon to be involved who is not constrained by the rules. But for the book The Balance and for I Am, I try to stick to rational speculation.

Another example: for the book I Am, I projected the orbit of a comet and placed in in time so that I can tell where each important object in the solar system is on every day of the story. This was more than just for fun. I wanted the main co-character, an astrophysics student, to be able to track the orbit as the story progressed, and I wanted to be able to time other events of the story such that the comet’s arrival and its passing of certain events would coincide.

Does this make me crazy?  Maybe, but I think obsessive is probably a better term. I want to create good fiction, in the plot, the characters, the writing, and the rationale. The world should make sense.

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The Boy Who Ran and the mid-archaic period

It’s 4000BC. Horses have been extinct in North America for about 6000 years, the bow won’t be used for another 2 or 3 thousand years. Instead, people use the Atlatl. This is a throwing lever, used to hurl long darts—longer than arrows—tipped with stone or bone points for hunting.

The people of the time were hunter / gatherers and followed the game over the plains during the hunting seasons, drying and storing meat and grains for winter. The sometimes had permanent winter dwellings, partially dug into the ground.

Recently found cave art shows something of their beliefs, where people and animals transform, a change of spirit.

The Boy Who Ran is set in the Mid-Archaic Period, 4000BC. This ran from about 8000BC. People migrated to the continent between 12000 and 15000 years ago—the first immigrants, the first to become Native Americans.

The novel follows a boy, the sole survivor of a massacre, who was taken in but never fully adopted by another village, his struggle to overcome his past and his desire to become one of the People.

 

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The Boy Who Ran E-pub Version included in Smashwords premium catalog

Smashwords included The Boy Who Ran e-pub version in their premium catalog. That means is, or soon will be, available at in following new places:

Sony

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple

Diesel

Page Foundry

Baker & Taylor Blio

txtr

Library Direct (Libraries can buy it this way)

Baker-Taylor Axis360

OverDrive

Flipkart

Oyster

Scribd

It’s already available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats and can be order in any bookstore in the world that receives distribution from Ingram books as a POD book

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Interview on the web site BeachBoundBooks

This week I was interviewed for the web site BeachBoundBooks, by Stacie Theis. I’ve provided a link, below, to that interview.

 

BeachBoundBooks Interview

 

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The Balance Chapter 7 Added to the sample chapters file

I added a draft version (rev 3) of Chapter 7 to the sample chapters PDF file.  The chapter is entitled,  The Promise.

 

This far,  a rev 2 version of the Introduction is pasted into the web page and the sample file contains the prologue and seven chapters now.

The chapter titles are:

Prologue

1 Is This Real?

2 Burnt Toast

3 The Steel Tower

4 Classes

5 Lunch with Sarah

6 Al Sutton

7 The Promise

There are 50 sections total for the book. Intro, Prologue, 47 numbered chapters , and an epilogue.  The book should be published in it totality by Christmas.

 

Please feel free to comment or criticize (constructively) the web site or any of the works posted.

 

Of course all ideas, stories, and characters are copyrighted

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I’ll be posting Chapter 7 of The Balance, on or about August 1

Chapter 7, entitled “The Promise” will be posted at the beginning of August.

 

Chapter 8, called “The Sister’s Eyes” will appear on the web site in early September.

 

By October 1, I plan to have bound galleys out to potential reviewers. The book should be out for purchase by the end of Fall.

 

 

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