Indie authors
The daily prompts weren't very inspiring, so I found some food for thought on the Smashwords website.
July 30, 2011 – Prequel backfires. I was browsing over at Amazon this morning and was surprised to run across a hoard of scathing reviews for Jason Pinter's The Hunter. Pinter's a well-respected indie author, yet readers were merciless on him. Reviewers there were incensed that his book is labeled a novella only to discover after downloading it that it's an incomplete teaser "prequel" for another book. Even though it's a free download, they're angry. Sample reviews: 1. "This is a sample passed as the full thing. I will never buy from this shady author." 2. "Misrepresentation of a real book. If I want a sample, I can do that with any kindle book. I don't want a sneak sample. If the real version of this book becomes a NY Times best seller, I will still NEVER BUY IT. This practice really irks me." We hear the same thing from customers at Smashwords. They value their time more than their money, and when they download an ebook they expect it to be complete with a beginning, middle and end. If they see an author trying to divide a novel in multiple serialized $.99 chunks, they feel as if the author's trying to take advantage. Do ebook buyers prefer full length books? The two highest-earning authors this quarter at Smashwords are Amanda Hocking, who writes paranormal romance, and Brian S. Pratt, who writes epic fantasy. Both of them write full-length books. Amanda's titles average 80,000 words or more. The seven titles in Brian's epic Morcyth Saga series average 145,000 each. Each. You might call Brian's books double full-length. It's paying off for him. If you missed my interview with Brian last December, check it out here. In that interview, I predicted he was on track to earn over $100,000 in 2011 at Smashwords. I was wrong. It'll be a lot more. He prices his series starter at FREE and the other six titles go for $5.95. Financial success isn't the only measure of success, yet it is a good measure for reader satisfaction and reader excitement. As I peruse the list of highest grossing authors this quarter, a strong trend emerges: Ebook buyers prefer full-length. In the months ahead, I plan to crunch the numbers and share more granular sales data broken down by book length and price. The exception to this potential long-book rule: Erotica.
I would have never thought of putting out as novella a beginning or prequel of a novel, but I'm obviously not very smart… 
This so reminds me of Dan Simmons's Hyperion with it's cliffhanger ending that made me swear never to read anything from him ever again! 
OK, that's why I don't like serials either, so I understand why those readers were pissed off with the author. I mean, even the first book of the Dragonlance saga was finished, just in case it didn't have success. And it was waaaay before e-books. And David Eddings explained in the Rivan Codex why his series are sort of serials, but after reading The Belgariad I knew that if I wanted to read something else from him, I better wait until the series was done… but again, that was waaaay before e-books.
I know that someone has their first book of a series real cheap (99cents), but I don't consider mine a series – although it might be considered the world's series, as instead of having recurring characters I have a recurring world. And even if I go down many generations and centuries, I guess there is some form of serialization… BUT BoI Air is quite unconventional, so giving it away for free wouldn't really give a taste of Silvery Earth… hence I'm only giving away for free a novelette, Jessamine (the Queendom of Maadre is also quite unconventional, but not as much as the Southern Kingdoms! ) – which is complete anyway.
I'm still not sure giving away free reads brings in new readers (nor reviews for that matter…). I mean I have almost 800 download on FeedBooks (which are all free), but I don't think it lead to any sale anywhere else… And of the over 1000 downloads at Smashwords, SOLD are 29 and with actual earning (not downloaded for free during promotions) 4 on Smashwords, 1 on Apple and 1 on Kobo (yeah for the last 2!). So I'm really thinking that people who go for freebies are not going to pay anyway. That's another reason to stop giving freebies next year!
Last words from Mark Coker on reviews…
July 19, 2011 – Carpet bombing. We've seen a few instances over the last couple days where authors' book pages have been carpet bombed by swarms of one-star reviews obviously intended to damage the book's overall ratings. We have deleted the offender's accounts. See the Terms of Service for review guidelines. Some of the victims have been concerned that these reviews are sponsored by fellow authors who are trying to get a leg up in the highest-rated reviews listings. It's also possible these reviews were perpetrated by over-zealous fans who are trying to harm one author for the benefit of another. If we discover that an author or associates of an author are creating strawman accounts for the sole purpose of harming fellow authors' rankings with malicious reviews, we'll delete their books and accounts. No tolerance for such shenanigans. Folks, we're all in this together. Be nice, stay ethical.
That's why I'm not going under 3 stars in my reviews. If I didn't like it, I won't review it and you won't know I read it (like my1800 readers who didn't bother to leave a review anywhere on those freebies… hope it's not because they hated it! )
