M.L. Larson's Blog, page 20
March 5, 2015
Goodreads Giveaway
Are you on Goodreads? Do you want a signed, printed copy of Dwarf's Ransom? I'm giving away ten of them! The giveaway will last for one month, with winners announced on April 5th. Enter now for your chance to win!
March 4, 2015
BOOKS!
Well, a book. My book! The first proof copy of Sky Treader came in today. I need to make a minor change to one of the pages that didn't centre properly, but it's good. I was particularly worried about my font choice, and thought it might be too big, but it works. And now that I know it does, I'm going to go ahead with the others as well.
After reading a lot of discussions on CreateSpace's printing, I was a little worried that I wouldn't like the end product, but it actually feels really sturdy. The cover is good and thick, and the pages don't feel like they're going to tear if you look at them too hard. When I get it through and have it properly available, I'll probably order about a dozen copies and do a GoodReads giveaway to celebrate.
March 3, 2015
LibraryThing Giveaway
Even though I just held one on Tumblr, I've decided to see how much I like LibraryThing's giveaway platform. I just posted the details for it, though I can't find how to link to the actual giveaway.
These giveaways are also the reason I've decided to look into going into print. I'd love to hold a few giveaways on GoodReads, but they only allow printed books, where LibraryThing does allow ebooks. Already looking at it, I'm seeing several times more requests on print books than ebooks though.
I'm kind of excited to see how this goes. I'm only running it for a week, so I don't expect to see too many takers. Still. It seems like it might be easier than running them on Tumblr.
These giveaways are also the reason I've decided to look into going into print. I'd love to hold a few giveaways on GoodReads, but they only allow printed books, where LibraryThing does allow ebooks. Already looking at it, I'm seeing several times more requests on print books than ebooks though.
I'm kind of excited to see how this goes. I'm only running it for a week, so I don't expect to see too many takers. Still. It seems like it might be easier than running them on Tumblr.
March 2, 2015
Release day book binge
Since Dwarf's Ransom came out yesterday, I spent last night going through the top sellers for its category and effectively scoping out the competition. It's a small category, but of what I started to read last night, I wasn't able to even get past the first chapter on any of them. The last one seemed promising, but by the time I got to it, I was too tired to keep my eyes open, so the last one's waiting to be read tonight.
Most of the books I came to had similar problems in formatting that made it too difficult to read (either because something happened and there were no paragraph breaks, or the author didn't understand formatting conventions or how paragraphs work), or had just been placed in the wrong category and weren't anything I actually wanted to read. Two of them had misspellings in the title, which just made it impossible for me to get past (and I thought twenty uses of "reigns" when the author meant "reins" was grating). These are issues I find I can look past in fanfic, but if I'm paying for a story, I expect it to at least be spelled correctly.
Another really common one that came up, which just reminded me of why I hated reading as a kid, is all the pointless infodumping. And not even about anything interesting, like the setting, or a particularly turbulent political history. Those, I can usually get through. But more like the kind of infodumping every children's novel does, where they describe in detail what a person looked like, and what they're wearing, and what they thought about what they're wearing, and their opinions on what they had for breakfast two days before...
I read a lot of that last night. And it's just something I could not possibly care less about. I've always been a believer in only telling the reader the important bits, but so much of infodumping is just random garbage. It goes back to the boring bits. Often, the boring bits are boring because they're unnecessary.
I admit, this is a matter that entirely comes down to taste, but it's becoming so prevalent that I find myself reading less and less these days. And when I do read, half the time I'm just skimming over stuff and hoping to find the plot again.
Most of the books I came to had similar problems in formatting that made it too difficult to read (either because something happened and there were no paragraph breaks, or the author didn't understand formatting conventions or how paragraphs work), or had just been placed in the wrong category and weren't anything I actually wanted to read. Two of them had misspellings in the title, which just made it impossible for me to get past (and I thought twenty uses of "reigns" when the author meant "reins" was grating). These are issues I find I can look past in fanfic, but if I'm paying for a story, I expect it to at least be spelled correctly.
Another really common one that came up, which just reminded me of why I hated reading as a kid, is all the pointless infodumping. And not even about anything interesting, like the setting, or a particularly turbulent political history. Those, I can usually get through. But more like the kind of infodumping every children's novel does, where they describe in detail what a person looked like, and what they're wearing, and what they thought about what they're wearing, and their opinions on what they had for breakfast two days before...
I read a lot of that last night. And it's just something I could not possibly care less about. I've always been a believer in only telling the reader the important bits, but so much of infodumping is just random garbage. It goes back to the boring bits. Often, the boring bits are boring because they're unnecessary.
I admit, this is a matter that entirely comes down to taste, but it's becoming so prevalent that I find myself reading less and less these days. And when I do read, half the time I'm just skimming over stuff and hoping to find the plot again.
March 1, 2015
Dwarf's Ransom Release! Also, contest winners!
Dwarf's Ransom is now availale on Amazon for $2.99. You can order it to read on any wireless device with the Kindle app, and read for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription (only for the next 90 days. After that, it will no longer be avalable on KU, since I won't be keeping it in Select after the first enrollment period).
And if you still haven't grabbed it, Sky Treader is free for the next five days, as well as being available in Kindle Unlimited as well (also only until its enrollment period expires).
Why are they coming out of Kindle Unlimited? I've decided to give Select (the publishing method which allows books to be enrolled in KU) a try this month, to see how I like it. Enrolling in Select gives me higher royalties in terroritories outside the US (70%, as opposed to 35%), but at the expense of not being able to offer my books anywhere outside of Amazon. Since this limitation does not expand to print, I've decided to release all new books in print as well. In future, I'm going to aim to have them release on the same day as the ebook version, but that wasn't possible with Dwarf's Ransom, since I only made this decision within in the last few days. It and Sky Treader will be made availble this month, as time and scheduling allow. If the stars manage to align and I can get everything formatted in time, I would like very, very much for Nidhöggr to come out in print and digital together next month.
But what's this? A contest? That's right. Three lucky winners have won the giveaway for a digital copy of Dwarf's Ransom.
moustashleigh, freedom-taker, and elethyra were the lucky winners this round. I will be contacting you later today, when it's not the middle of the night.
Winners were chosen via random number generator at random.org.
And if you still haven't grabbed it, Sky Treader is free for the next five days, as well as being available in Kindle Unlimited as well (also only until its enrollment period expires).
Why are they coming out of Kindle Unlimited? I've decided to give Select (the publishing method which allows books to be enrolled in KU) a try this month, to see how I like it. Enrolling in Select gives me higher royalties in terroritories outside the US (70%, as opposed to 35%), but at the expense of not being able to offer my books anywhere outside of Amazon. Since this limitation does not expand to print, I've decided to release all new books in print as well. In future, I'm going to aim to have them release on the same day as the ebook version, but that wasn't possible with Dwarf's Ransom, since I only made this decision within in the last few days. It and Sky Treader will be made availble this month, as time and scheduling allow. If the stars manage to align and I can get everything formatted in time, I would like very, very much for Nidhöggr to come out in print and digital together next month.
But what's this? A contest? That's right. Three lucky winners have won the giveaway for a digital copy of Dwarf's Ransom.
moustashleigh, freedom-taker, and elethyra were the lucky winners this round. I will be contacting you later today, when it's not the middle of the night.
Winners were chosen via random number generator at random.org.
February 27, 2015
Sky Treader in Print?
Yep! Well, not quite yet. I've only just submitted it, and have to wait for it to go through approval before I can order the proofs. It's small — like, children's book small — which is part of the reason I chose Sky Treader for my test book. Depending on how easily the process goes from here, and how well I like the proofs, I plan on staggering print releases with Kindle releases. I could, in theory, release both the Kindle and the print versions at the same time, but that would mean I'd always have to have a second book in buffer, since I'm placing the first 1000 or so words of the next book at the end of each one.
I'd been told that the covers tend to be tricky to set up, but I actually found that the easiest part of the process. Since I have .psd files of all my covers, it was just a matter of expanding it from just a front cover to a full cover, and my designs are simple enough that it took about 20 minutes. The hardest part was figuring out that I had to flatten the image before exporting it as a .pdf, as required by the printer. In fact, the hardest part of the whole process was figuring out why Word thought I wanted all of my text to be vertically centred. I only ever have problems like that when I use someone else's template, but I've tweaked it enough that I'll be able to use it for all future titles without that problem.
I'd been told that the covers tend to be tricky to set up, but I actually found that the easiest part of the process. Since I have .psd files of all my covers, it was just a matter of expanding it from just a front cover to a full cover, and my designs are simple enough that it took about 20 minutes. The hardest part was figuring out that I had to flatten the image before exporting it as a .pdf, as required by the printer. In fact, the hardest part of the whole process was figuring out why Word thought I wanted all of my text to be vertically centred. I only ever have problems like that when I use someone else's template, but I've tweaked it enough that I'll be able to use it for all future titles without that problem.
February 25, 2015
Amazon Ads, part 3
The message from my last post is gone, and even better, my stats are now steadily rising, instead of bouncing all over the place. It actually got fixed a few hours after my last post, but I wanted to hold off and see if it stayed fix. Which it seems to have done.
With it being fixed, I've been able to work on my targeting a bit more. Now that I have somewhat accurate data (it still only seems to update once every 12 hours), I've been able to fiddle with my targeting a bit more. I spent about 20 minutes yesterday adding more products to my list, and have already seen results. This time yesterday, it showed just over 400 impressions. Since going through and changing my targets, I've got just under 1200 impressions, and one click (still no sales, but I wouldn't expect a sale off of the first click).
What I find interesting is this campaign started the same day I began promoting listings on Etsy, and the impressions on both sites seem to be fairly close to one another. It's just a strange coincidence that has nothing to do with anything, but it gives me a bit of a benchmark. Amazon is a much bigger search engine than Etsy, but I'm also bidding a little higher for a few of my Etsy listings. I'm kind of wondering how long they'll stay at similar ranges, and when one of them will finally overtake the other. In a strange way, I almost expect Etsy to out-perform Amazon, but we'll see.
With it being fixed, I've been able to work on my targeting a bit more. Now that I have somewhat accurate data (it still only seems to update once every 12 hours), I've been able to fiddle with my targeting a bit more. I spent about 20 minutes yesterday adding more products to my list, and have already seen results. This time yesterday, it showed just over 400 impressions. Since going through and changing my targets, I've got just under 1200 impressions, and one click (still no sales, but I wouldn't expect a sale off of the first click).
What I find interesting is this campaign started the same day I began promoting listings on Etsy, and the impressions on both sites seem to be fairly close to one another. It's just a strange coincidence that has nothing to do with anything, but it gives me a bit of a benchmark. Amazon is a much bigger search engine than Etsy, but I'm also bidding a little higher for a few of my Etsy listings. I'm kind of wondering how long they'll stay at similar ranges, and when one of them will finally overtake the other. In a strange way, I almost expect Etsy to out-perform Amazon, but we'll see.
February 23, 2015
Amazon Ads, part 2
First, I'm going to start with this:
Which is still absurdly low. But I went around checking out what books are being promoted where, and I'm finding the most ridiculous targeting I've ever seen. Since I'm targeting Sky Treader to a bunch of Thor comics, figuring people who like Thor will probably be into fiction about Norse deities, I went clicking around the titles I'm targeting. And I'm finding everything from Gothic romance to bizarre plays about hair... or something. I'm wondering if these people are targeting by category, and then selecting every single available category. Because while I'm sure there is some overlap between Thor and Gothic romance, people probably aren't going to go looking for Thor and then suddenly change their minds about what they want.
I've been seeing this everywhere too. Even on the books within my genre, I'm seeing the most random things being promoted.
Right now, the low impression rate isn't bothering me, because it's nothing out of pocket. But I'm looking forward to see where it winds up later this summer.
Data InaccurateMetrics data is currently reporting inaccurately. Data for your campaigns will be available in full when this issue is resolved.This is what's appearing at the top of my campaign page right now, and other people are saying the same. We're wondering if this might have something to do with the magically resetting stats which make it impossible to track your clickthrough rate. I'm hoping this is the case, because I need to know at least somewhat how effective my targets are. But I've seen my impressions bounce from 10, to mid-60s, to low-20s, and now back up to the 80s.
Which is still absurdly low. But I went around checking out what books are being promoted where, and I'm finding the most ridiculous targeting I've ever seen. Since I'm targeting Sky Treader to a bunch of Thor comics, figuring people who like Thor will probably be into fiction about Norse deities, I went clicking around the titles I'm targeting. And I'm finding everything from Gothic romance to bizarre plays about hair... or something. I'm wondering if these people are targeting by category, and then selecting every single available category. Because while I'm sure there is some overlap between Thor and Gothic romance, people probably aren't going to go looking for Thor and then suddenly change their minds about what they want.
I've been seeing this everywhere too. Even on the books within my genre, I'm seeing the most random things being promoted.
Right now, the low impression rate isn't bothering me, because it's nothing out of pocket. But I'm looking forward to see where it winds up later this summer.
February 22, 2015
Amazon Ads
There's been some talk about these things on several message boards lately, so I've decided to start a campaign and see how well it goes. Something I put off for a very long time, because well. Let's be real here, Amazon's whole KDP system is really opaque and difficult to wrap your head around sometimes. The minimum amount you can spend on advertising with them is $100, which put me right off. I had assumed this was an up-front fee for ads in targeted emails. Which I would definitely pay for, if I had that kind of money to just spend all at once.
But it's more like Baby's First AdWords. In which I mean it really doesn't give you any anaylitics, which is also kind of a deterrent. There's no way to know how your targeting is working, and which of your targets aren't performing. For which I suppose the solution is to just have all the targets you can possibly have. More on this later, because despite this, I've decided to try it with Sky Treader. It's on a pay per click model, which means I only pay if people click my ad. I've set my bid at 5¢ per click, so I just have to have one sale per 40 clicks to break even. Which are just about the only analytics Amazon gives you.
They tell you how much you've spent, how much of your budget is remaining, your number of impressions, your number of clicks, and your number of sales. Which apparently all like to reset at random, or so I've heard, so I'll have to keep a close eye on it. Either way, I will still be able to see my sales on the main dashboard, so it's not like I'll be going at this completely blind.
I've also set my campaign to run for the maximum allowed time: six months, and selected the option for my budget to be spread out evenly over that time. I'm looking at a maximum spend of about $16 a month, which is far more reasonable. That would be a minimum of 320 clicks, from which I should be able to make eight sales in order to break even. In reality, with my low, low bid, I probably won't wind up spending even half that amount per month.
The reason I've set my campaign up to span six months is with the speculation that my impressions, clicks, and sales should gradually increase over time. This system is brand new, and lots of people are using it. People who are promoting to every single category on Amazon with little regard to target demographics. And because they're competing with everybody else, I'm seeing average bids of upwards of $1.00 on several message boards. By taking the low-risk approach of a low bid and marathon campaign, rather than a sprint, I may only wind up spending a dollar or so for the first few months. As everyone else depletes their budget and their campaigns end, I'll still be there with my 5¢ bid, still making $2 for every sale instead of 50¢. If it looks like it's working for Sky Treader, I'm going to set up a campaign for several other books, using the same model. If it seems like it is going to somehow cost me more money than I'm making back, I can always end the campaign without being charged my full budget. But if I can't make a single sale off 40 clicks, there's something wrong with what I'm selling, and not with the ad I'm running.
But it's more like Baby's First AdWords. In which I mean it really doesn't give you any anaylitics, which is also kind of a deterrent. There's no way to know how your targeting is working, and which of your targets aren't performing. For which I suppose the solution is to just have all the targets you can possibly have. More on this later, because despite this, I've decided to try it with Sky Treader. It's on a pay per click model, which means I only pay if people click my ad. I've set my bid at 5¢ per click, so I just have to have one sale per 40 clicks to break even. Which are just about the only analytics Amazon gives you.
They tell you how much you've spent, how much of your budget is remaining, your number of impressions, your number of clicks, and your number of sales. Which apparently all like to reset at random, or so I've heard, so I'll have to keep a close eye on it. Either way, I will still be able to see my sales on the main dashboard, so it's not like I'll be going at this completely blind.
I've also set my campaign to run for the maximum allowed time: six months, and selected the option for my budget to be spread out evenly over that time. I'm looking at a maximum spend of about $16 a month, which is far more reasonable. That would be a minimum of 320 clicks, from which I should be able to make eight sales in order to break even. In reality, with my low, low bid, I probably won't wind up spending even half that amount per month.
The reason I've set my campaign up to span six months is with the speculation that my impressions, clicks, and sales should gradually increase over time. This system is brand new, and lots of people are using it. People who are promoting to every single category on Amazon with little regard to target demographics. And because they're competing with everybody else, I'm seeing average bids of upwards of $1.00 on several message boards. By taking the low-risk approach of a low bid and marathon campaign, rather than a sprint, I may only wind up spending a dollar or so for the first few months. As everyone else depletes their budget and their campaigns end, I'll still be there with my 5¢ bid, still making $2 for every sale instead of 50¢. If it looks like it's working for Sky Treader, I'm going to set up a campaign for several other books, using the same model. If it seems like it is going to somehow cost me more money than I'm making back, I can always end the campaign without being charged my full budget. But if I can't make a single sale off 40 clicks, there's something wrong with what I'm selling, and not with the ad I'm running.
February 21, 2015
Dwarf's Ransom, and what's next
Just a reminder that there's one week left before Dwarf's Ransom releases. You can pre-order it here.
You can also pick up Sky Treader for free for five days, staring March 1st. Both will also continue to be available on Kindle Unlimited.
Now that I've finished with Dwarf's Ransom, I've been fiddling with the next one a bit. I'm not entirely sure where it's going to go, but it will involve Fenrir and Jörmungandr, and possibly a trip to Muspelsheimr. I have a few other ideas, and plans to introduce someone I've been wanting to bring in since this series' original inception as a web serial.
I also have something else in the works with Sigrid, a character we meet in Dwarf's Ransom. I don't know when her story will come out, since it's the sort of story that seems like it's only interesting to me, at least for the moment. Maybe her story will become interesting later in the year.
You can also pick up Sky Treader for free for five days, staring March 1st. Both will also continue to be available on Kindle Unlimited.
Now that I've finished with Dwarf's Ransom, I've been fiddling with the next one a bit. I'm not entirely sure where it's going to go, but it will involve Fenrir and Jörmungandr, and possibly a trip to Muspelsheimr. I have a few other ideas, and plans to introduce someone I've been wanting to bring in since this series' original inception as a web serial.
I also have something else in the works with Sigrid, a character we meet in Dwarf's Ransom. I don't know when her story will come out, since it's the sort of story that seems like it's only interesting to me, at least for the moment. Maybe her story will become interesting later in the year.
M.L. Larson's Blog
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