E-publishing Perk: The Ability to Make Changes

One of the downsides of e-publishing and being an independent author is that you have to figure everything out for yourself: where to find an editor, how to get cover art done, how to format your work, how to promote it when it's out, etc. etc. etc. There's nobody you can hand the book off to and say, "Okay, I wrote it; you guys take care of the rest."

That can be daunting, but the other side of the coin is that e-publishing on your own gives you a lot of freedom too. You get to choose your editor, your artist, how you promote, etc. And if something isn't working, you can change it. That's a pretty big perk.

Right now, I'm tinkering with my novel Encrypted. Oh, not the story itself, but the packaging, if you will.

Back in January, when I first published it, I wasn't quite sure how to categorize it or what kind of cover art would work for the story. It was a little high fantasy, a little mystery/thriller, a little science fiction, and a little romance. Not a clothes-being-ripped-off-and-nekkid-bodies-contorting-in-wild-ways kind of romance, but there was definitely a love story. I wanted to try and get all the main ideas into the blurb, so I ended up writing one that was longer than necessary (and, as a couple of readers mentioned, revealed a secret that it probably shouldn't have).

Yesterday, I went in and shaved a couple of sentences off of the blurb. It's still on the long side compared to my other ones, but I've cut out that secret and taken some of the emphasis away from the love story (more than one male reader has said, "Hey, I liked this book, but could you please not call it a romance, because I don't read romances?").

I considered that for a while and decided it was much less of a romance than most that get tagged with that label (as I mentioned, no nekkid contorting bodies). And, as another lady mentioned, the body count is quite high for a pure love story. (Like I'd write a book where there were more kisses than monster attacks? As if… ) So, I'm trying to emphasize the mystery/thriller aspect more in the new blurb and in the cover art as well.

Yup, I'm changing that too.

I've had a few folks mention that they weren't crazy about the cover art, so, with Glendon's help, I'm trying a different look. (Pictures of old and new below.)

I don't know if the changes will affect sales at all, but right now a lot of the folks who buy Encrypted seem to do so because they read my Emperor's Edge books (which I've put more effort into promoting). That's great, of course, but I'll be curious of maybe I can snag more readers out of the random Amazon ether. Since Encrypted stands alone, there's no need to read my other stories before giving it a try.

My reason for sharing these ramblings is just to show one author's path and point out that it's nice (and useful!) that you can tinker when it comes to ebooks. You probably noticed that a lot of changes I'm making are based on reader feedback. People who publish under the traditional model don't have the option to change up the packaging, and try different things, so e-publishing is one area where indies have an advantage.

Nothing is set in stone. You can revise the text, fix typos or formatting problems that slip through, re-do the cover art, the blurb, etc. And, of course, you can play around with price to see what works best too.

For the curious, here's the old art and the new art:

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