Blog

So Is Google Play Worth Your Effort?

google-play-150x150If you’ve ever tried to load books for sale on Google Play, you know it ain’t easy. In fact, it’s by far the hardest venue to upload onto, and I don’t think Apple iBooks is a walk in the park. I tried it once about a year ago, and I booted. Then Molly Greene posted this very helpful blog, and, while the directions still didn’t work completely, I was able to figure out the 2-3 additional steps/need-to-knows and ended up successful. Rather than just regurgitate her instructions, I’d suggest you use her post as your general guideline for uploading. Then, when you hit a snag, which you will, come back here, and I’ll post my additional need-to-knows in a postscript to this blog post (that means scroll to the bottom, people).

Why did I go to all the trouble I did to get on Google Play? Mainly because Bookbub promotes Google Play links (I love promotions that target sites beyond Amazon, and one day soon I’ll give you a run down on all my favorites), and because I’d heard that it’s a fast-growing sales site that can quickly become a significant part of an author’s revenue. As to the latter, I had no solid proof. But there was only one way to find out for myself and my ebooks.

So I loaded all my books onto Google Play. Immediately I appreciated that they allowed me to offer free ebooks. I knew of no other way to get sales traction on a new venue than to entice readers with a few free books. One point Molly made in her post is to price your books at a minimum 25% above your retail price on Kindle. Don’t fail to do this, because Google discounts your price, and then Amazon price matches. In fact, I found I had to raise my price even further on Google Play to keep them from undercutting Amazon, so keep an eye on your actual Google retail price.

I had a few weeks before my Bookbub promotion ran, and very modest downloading of my free novel and short story occurred during that time. At that point, I was selling about 35-40 ebooks a day across all sales venues. Then Bookbub ran. Since my Bookbub day (which promoted my free novel Saving Grace), I have averaged 350 ebooks sold per day across all sales venues, and 7838 free downloads per day. And I started making sales on Google Play. Mind you, my Google Play sales are an average of three per day, or 0.4% of my sales in any one day. But over one year, three sales per day is 1095 ebooks, and for me that translates into royalties of more than $2200. (Now, I just have to sustain those sales, or something close to them, to see that kind of revenue stream!) Also, I had a high of 774 free downloads in one day and now am seeing about 35 per day.

For me, the answer is YES, Google Play is worth it.

The bigger question, I guess, is whether I would be selling at all on Google Play without my Bookbub day. And that gets back to all that I have done to position myself for that particular Bookbub day (my third one) in the first place. And as I think back on my efforts and strategy, I can’t untangle the ball of yarn and isolate any one factor as determinative of my current sales, so the best I can do is tell you that even if it were three years ago, and I was just starting out, I would load my books onto Google Play in hope of building a market through them while I started laying the groundwork that would eventually position my books for the kind of traction they now enjoy.

How about you guys–any other pointers for or thoughts on Google Play? Any success stories to share?

Pamela

p.s. Things you need to know to upload successfully to Google Play: When initially setting up a book, Molly advises you to Save when it’s in draft form. This is good advice. I encountered one problem however. In doing my 10 ebooks, each one only gave me an option of Ready to Publish when I first created them and was on their General Details page. On my first ebook, that’s what a clicked. Yikes! Thereafter, I clicked refresh on my browser, and that Ready to Publish button changed to a Save Button. Sweet!

If you accidentally upload too many files–let’s say you upload an epub with an error and then a perfect epub–Google Play works with the last uploaded file of that type. You don’t delete the previous files.

Sometimes my Kobo epubs worked, and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes my Smashwords epubs worked, sometimes they didn’t. Same for Nook. Same for even my clean “Pressbooks” epubs. You can’t argue with Google Play, however, so just keep trying files until you get one that works. Don’t know how to download your epubs from these sales sites? It’s not hard. Consult help on each site while you’re logged into your account, or just carefully peruse the screens associated with the ebook in question. I learned I could use an epub-checker software to ensure I had good files, and that saved me some heartache. Also, for whatever reason, I was able to upload files for a friend from my machine that didn’t work for her on her machine. Moral of the story: if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

When I had finished my ebook, I had to click on the Processing button to find the option to Activate it for Google Play. I sat and stared at the screen for a long time before I figured that one out.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins, President of Houston Writers Guild, is an10006025_10152294921092604_1598429323_oemployment attorney and workplace investigator by day who by night writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (perma-freeSaving Grace, Leaving Annalise, Finding Harmony) and hilarious nonfiction (How to Screw Up Your Kids, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes?, and others). She is passionate about great writing and smart authorpreneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start. Visit her website http://pamelahutchins.com, or follow her on Facebook http://facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author.

 

Just for Fun: TV Mysteries With Ties To Books

justified-the-complete-fourth-season-dvd_300

9. Spenser for Hire: The novels were better, but aren’t they always? Robert B. Parker is the bomb. Robert Ulrich did him proud. (And so does Tom Selleck in the Jesse Stone movies)

8. Hart to Hart: A married crime-fighting team. They made it work, without illicit sex. Hats off to them. Novelist Sidney Sheldon wrote the original script upon which the series was based.

7. Remington Steele: All hail the Irish! The series in which we learned to love female detectives and Pierce Brosnan, pre-Bond. OK, this is a stretch, but the Bond books were written by Ian Fleming. Yeah, I didn’t promise the ties would be direct, y’all.

6. Moonlighting: Yeah, yeah, you youngsters don’t remember it. But I dream of demanding someone shooting my life in soft focus now that I’m in my forties. Cybil Shepherd is my hero(ine). The show was inspired by The Taming of the Shrew, written by a fellow called William Shakespeare.

5. Magnum, PI: Makes you want to time travel back to Hawaii with Tom Selleck, circa 1980. Or anytime. Magnum lived in the Robin’s Nest, the home of fictional writer of lurid novels, Robin Masters.

4. The Rockford Files: His car. His wit. His rugged good looks. James Garner. And then there was The Notebook. Sigh. And Nicholas Sparks wrote the Notebook. (This is turning into Six Degrees of Separation With Kevin Bacon, but it’s working for me. How’s it working for you??)

3. Bones: Because what author wouldn’t love a series about their real life? Especially one with crispy corpses and crumbling cadavers. Way to go Kathy Reichs, author of the “Bones” series!

2. Castle: Because what author wouldn’t love to be that big goofball Castle? Love the cameos. Love that the series spawned books by an author whose real identity is not Rick Castle, but is a mystery: http://jeannieruesch.com/wordpress/?p=3213.

1. Justified: Timothy Olyphant, black humor and gore, and did I mention Timothy Olyphant? I’m a sucker for larger-than-life setting and characters. You had me at hello, Elmore Leonard.

I’m looking forward to seeing the Katie & Annalise series next 🙂

Which of your favorite mystery series on TV with literary ties did I leave out?

 

Pamela Fagan Hutchins, President of Houston Writers Guild, is an10006025_10152294921092604_1598429323_oemployment attorney and workplace investigator by day who by night writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (perma-free Saving Grace, Leaving Annalise, Finding Harmony) and hilarious nonfiction (How to Screw Up Your Kids, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes?, and others). She is passionate about great writing and smart authorpreneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start. Visit her website http://pamelahutchins.com, or follow her on Facebook http://facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author.

How Bookbub and Permafree Changed My Life Last Week

IMG_3508
So if you follow this blog, you know a) I’m a huge proponent of Bookbub and b) I’ve been lucky enough to have them feature my books three times, the third being Friday June 27. I wrote about the first two times HERE and HERE. They were great. This third time literally is a game changer for me, and I want to tell you why, and, more importantly, how. But first, it’s important to understand who Bookbub is and what they do.

Bookbub runs a free subscription book recommendation service featuring quality free and discounted ebooks. The emails are sent to people based on their expressed genre and ereader preferences (Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords). Their email list is ungodly huge, and people follow their advice, more than any other recommendation/promotion service of its type, in my opinion.

While their emails are free, Bookbub makes its money by charging to promote the books it features. And they charge a lot. For my category, mystery/thriller, it costs $700 to promote a discounted book for one day and $310 to promote a free book for the same time period.

And it ain’t easy to get picked. I’ve submitted my books approximately 20 times. Obviously, I got a lot of no’s. Bookbub recently shared how they select their featured books HERE. On any given day, their emails feature NYT bestselling authors at the same time as indies on-the-rise. They’re selective, but egalitarian.

It’s important to understand that it may take an author years to build the type of credentials that leads to selection. Years of writing great books, promoting their books through other less exclusive promotion services, selling solid numbers of books, and building up a sizeable review count, as well as awards and other recognition. I haven’t seen a discounted book promoted on Bookbub with less than 60 reviews in months; free books sometimes have less reviews, but, if they do, they make up for it with the credentials of the author and her previous books.

My first BookBub was a 99 cent discount run of Saving Grace, #1 in the Katie & Annalise series. Thanks to Bookbub, I made thousands of dollars, moved up to #134 on the author list on Amazon, and Saving Grace reached #7 overall on Nook and #34 on Kindle. It was amazing. And somewhat temporary. The sales fell pretty fast after a couple of weeks. Yet I think it would be fair to say it was a permanent small boost.

For my second Bookub, I discounted Leaving Annalise, #2 in the Katie & Annalise series, to 99 cents. Unfortunately, Bookbub and I crossed signals. I favor wide distribution for my books rather than Kindle exclusives. I had submitted the book that way, but when it came time for me to check that they were running it as such, I failed to do so, and they ran it only for Kindle. The promotion was thus far less successful than my first one. Still, I more than made my money back, and Leaving Annalise became a Kindle bestseller.

At the same time as my second Bookbub, I released Finding Harmony, #3 in the Katie & Annalise series. Around that time, I took notice of the tremendous success that some authors were having by making the first book in their series free, permanently. This strategy is called perma-free. It terrified me. Take the book that sold best for me and give it away, forever? Yet it made sense, too. SkipJack Publishing doesn’t have the money to promote my books like I’m janet Evanovich. I have to become visible to readers some other way. If I can hook them on my novels with a first-in-series-free ebook, might they buy the others? And I now had two more in the series to sell, priced attractively at $2.99 and $3.99, plus I had a new novel for pre-order (everywhere but Kindle, because I’m not important enough for them to allow my pre-orders), Going for Kona, at $4.99. I could hope for generation of reviews, too.

I decided to go for it. Only one problem. Amazon doesn’t allow you to set a price of zero, permanently, for an ebook. It does allow those in KDP Select to have up to five free days a month, but I wasn’t going back to KDP Select, and I didn’t want five days. I wanted forever. However, Kobo not only allows free books, it runs its own “first in series free” promotions, and doesn’t charge a cent for them. (Thanks Kobo!!) Smashwords allows free books, and iBooks and Nook allow them through Smashwords aggregation. I set Saving Grace up free in all those spots, then I let people know that they could have it free anywhere but Kindle, and if they wanted it free on Kindle, they needed to “Report a Lower Price Elsewhere,” and then we’d cross our fingers that Amazon would price math.

They did, after only 24 hours. (Yet I’ve had a short story free for four months, and they have still not price-match on it.)

I immediately applied for a free day promotion on Bookbub for Saving Grace, and got in. Meanwhile, I ran promotions with some of my favorite “smaller” promo sites, like Bargain ebook Hunter, Pixel of Ink, eReader News Today, and a slew of other free promotions that I found through my beloved Author Marketing Club.

Free downloads started immediately on all of the sites. By my free Bookbub day, I had 25,000 in downloads across my sales sites. My paid sales, however, had dropped precipitously in the few months prior. They had starting creeping back up after the perma-free strategy was implemented, but not much, yet. Thus, Leaving Annalise had a Kindle ranking of about 15,000 and Finding Harmony 25,000. I was selling about 200 ebooks a week across all sites, between those two books and my six nonfiction books, for total revenue of about $400 a week for ebooks. I also sell print and audiobooks, at that time about 30 per week.

My husband and I got in the Bookmobile—our book touring RV—and left on the 27th for our Redneck Writer Road Trip tour, right when the Bookbub emails went out.

Let me make a long and incredible story short. Saving Grace went to #2 in free books on Kindle and stayed in the top 20 for a week. Across all sites, we had 110,000 downloads during that time. Awesome, right?

It gets much, much better.

Sales picked up by the end of the 27th for Leaving Annalise. By the end of the first week, its rank was up to 846 on Kindle. Finding Harmony rose to 1562. My author rank soared to 1120. I’ll take those numbers any day of the week. But what it meant in terms of sales and reviews is the real story.

In the first week after Bookbub, I sold 2492 ebooks and generated royalties of over $4500 dollars, on a $310 promotion. Well, a $310 promotion, years of writing, and 2.5 years of promotion and base building :-), things you can learn about, if you want, in my book What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?. And those sales are on books I didn’t promote!  Sales ran as follows For every 1 book I sold on Google Play, I sold 2 on Kobo, 13 on iBooks, over 25 on Nook, and over 70 on Kindle (and 0 on Smashwords). As I write this on day eight, sales continue to rise. So do reviews. I have received 70 new reviews in one week. Most of them are on Saving Grace, but that’s what I wanted. I want people to have no reason not to download my free series lead and get to know my work. I’m counting on a solid fraction of those downloads to continue to result in purchase of my other novels.

IMG_3509

And the free downloads continue, too. While I wait for the 135,000 that have already downloaded Saving Grace since June 1 to get around to reading it and deciding whether to keep going with me, more people download it. Sweet!

One big surprise: the sale generated a large number of audiobook purchases, mainly because Amazon allows a $1.99 add-on of audio to an ebook download, even if the ebook is free. So 175 people have downloaded audio this week too. The only category of sales not yet impacted is print books, but I didn’t expect it to be.

The great unknown? How many buyers in the last week ordered my upcoming novel. I guess I’ll know October 1st, and of course I’ll share it here.

My takeaway from this experience is that the perma-free strategy is a sound one for multi-title novelists trying to generate visibility, reviews, and sales of their other books, and that a BookBub promo of that perma-free book can be a game changer.

Like it was for me.

I will keep you posted on ongoing sales, as the long-term impact of the promotion is not yet tested. However, I’m pretty hopeful for a longer range impact given the number of copies of Saving Grace sitting on people’s ereaders, ready for them when they have the time to open it. And if sales start to falter, I can guarantee you it is free downloads of Saving Grace that I will promote, as those efforts are exponentially effective–not my other books. In fact, I can’t wait to release my next series, and hope that this strategy remains viable, because my big regret is that I didn’t have more novels to sell the people that wanted to keep going.

So tell me: have you tried a perma-free strategy? How did it work for you? How did you sustain your sales with it?

Pamela Fagan Hutchins, President of Houston Writers Guild, is an10006025_10152294921092604_1598429323_o employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who by night writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (Saving Grace, Leaving Annalise, Finding Harmony) and hilarious nonfiction (How to Screw Up Your Kids, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes?, and others). She is passionate about great writing and smart authorpreneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start. Visit her website http://pamelahutchins.com, or follow her on Facebook http://facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author.

 

 

Launch Your Book Right

Six Month Launch Promotion Timeline for Print and eBook[1]

Traditional Pub: You’ve got from launch through six months for your book to take off, otherwise your books will be pulped and you’re done. You can do most of the items in this timeline, but the ones that require price changes you will have to do with your publisher.

New Pub: READ Hugh Howey’s “Author Earnings Report” (http://authorearnings.com/the-report/) for stats on online sales especially non-traditional. Sales are driven by the 5Rs: reviews, ratings, recommendations, rankings, and readers. Not sales and dollars. Result: you have all the time in the world. You can launch and re-launch. But, whenever you do it and however many times, make it count. Consider launching series in quick succession. Consider making first-in-series free, very quickly, to help the launch and ongoing sales of the later books.

L-3M (item and cost):

Ongoing: create opt-in email list: your time

Ongoing: promote others

Set goals; pick promotion activities to reach goal: your time.

Work with editor on book blurb/description: @2.5 cents per word

Identify book bloggers and advance reviewers: your time, consultant/publicist, or secure a blog tour like Pump Up Your Book (http://pumpupyourbook.com)

Identify major reviewers: your time

Finalize cover(s): cost of digital artist

Order ARCs: 25-100 books ($3-6/book w/shipping)

Research and enter appropriate contests: your time

Secure templates/samples for review requests, bookstore proposals, etc.: your time

If not already in place:

Design and create website: @$150 for webhosting service plus your time or hourly designer fee

Establish Facebook and Goodreads accounts (consider Twitter and LinkedIn, too): your time or hourly publicist or social media consultant fee

L-2M:

Mail “major” review requests: your time and supplies (include ARC and letter)

Send queries (Author Marketing Club (http://authormarkeingclub.com $105 for premier membership), book blogger sites following their instructions): same

Mail distribution proposals to chains (only if your book is available and fully returnable through Ingram/Lightning Source) and indies (consignment, usually): same

Obtain review quotes from betas/advance readers for book copy/marketing materials, if desired: your time

Start a Mailchimp (http://mailchimp.com) account, create a newsletter template, and collect and load contacts into Mailchimp: your time or hourly fee

Select site for launch party and begin planning: your time

Create bookmarks and other promotion pieces if desired: your time or digital artist

[Cadillac version: Consider/schedule AuthorBuzz/Shelf Awareness (http://authorbuzz.com), @$1550]

L-6W[2]:

Try to coordinate book bloggers in first month of your release: you time

Mail smaller publication (local) review requests: your time and supplies (include ARC and letter)

Set-up Goodreads giveaway: your time (runs for 30 days)

Order of bookmarks and any other desired early promotion materials: http://printrunner.com or http://vistaprint.com @10-15 cents apiece

[Coordinate with AuthorBuzz: your time]

L-4W:

Ongoing: Make corrections to your books: your time

Answer requests (always says yes to giveaways) of book bloggers (cover reveals, reviews, spotlights, guest posts, interviews, character interviews, ANYTHNG is good): your time

Schedule online promotions, like World Literary Cafe New Release (for a list, see Loser or The Kindle Book Review): $25-200 apiece, most are @$40

Launch party? Send “save the dates” Evite: your time

Schedule additional local events if desired (three to five weeks lead time), think outside the box: your time

L-2W:

Send announcements to alumnae and organizations of affiliation: your time and supplies (include ARC and letter)

Set up “events” for virtual launch (Facebook, Goodreads): your time

Set up “event” for real launch party: your time

Mail books to Goodreads winners with review requests: your time plus postage and supplies and one book

Prepare/Build robust Amazon author and book pages (may not be able to go “live” with Author page until book is “live): your time

L-1W:

Test enewsletter: your time

Go “live” with CreateSpace version: your time

Request posting of reviews from beta and advance review readers as soon as book page goes up: your time

If a member of Author Marketing Club, notify of new release: your time

L: Launch

eNewsletter to all your contacts concurrent with launch: your time

Press release concurrent with launch: your time or publicist

Media requests concurrent with launch (and ongoing for events): your time or publicist

Local event (bookstores, libraries, book clubs, writer groups) requests concurrent with launch (and ongoing): your time or publicist

Ongoing: Consider strategically placing “pay it forward” copies when you visit coffee shops, lobbies, or when you travel on airlines: your time and cost of book: your time

Ongoing: Promote contest wins, reviews, blogs posts, interviews, character interviews on social media and your blog: your time (and promote others; never say buy my book): your time

L+1M:

Ongoing: Research and contact book clubs sites/groups: your time

Ongoing: Never stop looking for reviewers; never say no to free copies for them: your time

Ongoing: Promote others: your time

Ongoing: Build superfans

[Cadillac: Mailout of gift copy to indie stores (can target by multiple criterion): cost of list, $10/package, your time]

L +2M:

KDP Select Free Days with promotion through BookBub, eReader News Today, Bargain ebook Hunter, Pixel of Ink and several others: $25-600 apiece, most are @$40; BookBub is the best (use KindleCountdown)[3]

Use social media to promote this and any success, too: your time

L+3M and ongoing:

[Cadillac: Consider AuthorBuzz ads (expensive, but effective) if book is showing signs of being successful: $1500]

[Cadillac: Mailout to libraries (can target geographically, tax deductible): cost of list, $10/package, your time]

[Cadillac: Mailout as waiting room copies at local doctor’s offices (requires research): $10/package, your time]

Nonfiction Considerations:

Harder to find book bloggers. Start earlier.

Harder to secure effective online promotions.

Author platform is key, which is your expertise and acclaim in your field. Measured by enewsletter subscribers, website traffic, speaking, publications, etc.

Build as much public speaking, conference appearances, and article writing into your plan as you can. Do it free. (Sell books at seminars and workshops).

Cultivate an “expert” relationship with media.

Provide review copies to professionals in the field you’ve written on.

[1] If you are concurrently doing an audiobook, you’ll want to select a narrator (probably through http://acx.com) six months before, leaving three months for recording, one month for proofing and corrections, and one month for ACX processing. They send you coupon codes for giveaways to help you promote/get reviews.

[2] For later releases in your career, consider releasing pre-orders at some point one to three months before launch, using Smashwords for Kobo, Apple, Google Play and Barnes and Noble and moving promotion activities up one month. The advantage of pre-orders is they all “drop” on launch day, which has a positive effect on your initial sales rank. Or not :-).

[3] I’ve assumed debut books, which I think do best exclusive to Kindle, but for later books, I choose wide distribution and thus would not do KDP Select Free Days but instead would, as soon as I had 30+ 4.0-star rated reviews or better, try for BookBub, which is currently the best place to promote online sales, bar none, and the only place I’ve found that drives Nook and iBook sales, too.

 

10006025_10152294921092604_1598429323_oPamela Fagan Hutchins, President of Houston Writers Guild, is an employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who by night writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (Saving Grace, Leaving Annalise, Finding Harmony) and hilarious nonfiction (How to Screw Up Your Kids, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes?, and others). She is passionate about great writing and smart authorpreneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start. Visit her website http://pamelahutchins.com, or follow her on Facebook http://facebook.com/pamela.fagan.hutchins.author.

 

 

What’s Smashing About Smashwords, And What’s Not

It’s no secret I’m not the world’s biggest fan of aggregation. I totally get that some people aren’t gifted with large quantities of time or tech know-how, but I don’t like sharing my royalties (Smashwords takes 15%). I figure the benefit of indie-dom is sole claim to that percentage, and I’m not giving it up without damn good reason.

Well, there are some. Damn good reasons, I mean. I’ll just talk about Smashwords, because I like them best, but I am told you should check out BookBaby and Draft2Digital as well. They both take royalties cuts as well. BookBaby 15%, Draft2Digitial 10%.

1. Library access: Smashwords distributes to libraries through three channels, one of them brand new big news: Overdrive. I copied the following in straight from Smash so you could see their words:

  • “Library Direct is for large bulk opening purchases by individual public libraries who operate their own library ebook checkout systems (the act of a library operating their own ebook checkout systems is typically referred to as the Douglas County Model, which named after the large library network in Colorado that pioneered this model. Click here to view our Library Direct announcement.
  • Baker and Taylor’s Axis360 operates hosted library ebook checkout systems.  Libraries purchase the ebook from Axis360 and Axis 360 hosts the book for the library, and manages the ebook checkouts.
  • OverDrive (New!!!) – Smashwords announced distribution to OverDrive on May 20, 2014.  OverDrive operates the ebook checkout and procurement systems for more than 20,000 public libraries around the world.  OverDrive accepts all Smashwords Premium Catalog titles except erotica.”

I haven’t seen anything come of it with my books since I’ve had them on Smash from Library Direct or Axis360, and unfortunately if you read the fine print, you only make the potential cut for Overdrive (the big player in library ebook lends) if you’re part of the Smashwords-curated “most popular” titles. So, while you’re “available” for distribution, you don’t actually get distributed unless you are a big seller on Smash. Which you won’t be if you opt out of the major channels like Nook, Kindle, Kobo, and iBooks.

So, theoretically Overdrive sounds great. And I’ll opt in and hope for the best. In actuality, I don’t expect for my bestselling, award winning books to make the cut. Not that I’m bitter about it or anything, LOL.

2. Perma-free: One darn good way to stimulate sales of your indie series books is to offer the first book in the series free, permanently, also known as perma-free. Kobo, who I adore, let’s you do this directly. And they promote first-in-series-free books, too, which is very forward-thinking of them. As a result, when my book Saving Grace of the Katie & Annalise series went free on Kobo, my sales increased by 1000% there. And no, that isn’t a typo.

Smash also lets you offer your books free, permanently. However, they don’t promote them for you. They do however aggregate them free to Nook and iBooks, who won’t let you price your directly uploaded indie books at $0.00. So to get Saving Grace free everywhere, I put it on Smash and opted in to iBooks and Nook (and everywhere else except Amazon), and I put it up directly on Kobo.

I’ll post next month on HOW to go permanently free on Amazon, and on how perma-free “month one” went for me everywhere (preview: fan-fucking-tabulous).

3. All-you-can-eat retailers, maybe: Oyster, Scribd, and a few others are offering all-you-can-eat ebooks for a monthly subscription price. I’d love to get me in on some of that action. So I opted in to both on Smash. After six months, even though I had AMAZON REVIEWS telling the world the readers read my books on Oyster, Oyster reported I had zero reads each month and thus paid me zero dollars through Smash.

I had family members decide to test the system and pay for one month subscriptions and download and flip all the way through my books (Oyster purports to pay full royalties after a small percentage of the book is viewed). Oyster reported I had zero reads and paid me zero dollars. This began to feel like piracy to me. I already had the willies, so I pulled all my books off of the Netflix-type vendors, except my perma-free books. You can’t pirate what I’m giving away, so have at it, Oyster.

4. Pre-order: Both iBooks and Nook will allow pre-orders of your ebook if you aggregate to them via Smash, even though they won’t allow you to do it directly with your indie book. Yeah, you know Kobo lets you do it directly, because they rock. (Kobo, I love you, and I’m posting all about it next month.) Amazon won’t let dirty, nasty indies pre-sell at all.

My last novel, Finding Harmony, had hundreds of pre-orders via iBooks and Nook thanks to Smash. While that isn’t huge, I learned from it and plan to add a zero to the end of that number with the pre-order release of my next novel, Going for Kona.

So, my strategy these days for Smashwords is that for my pay-per-unit books I aggregate only to the library services, and to those pay-per-unit services that I don’t want to monkey with elsewhere because they aren’t worth my time. Kobo, iBooks, Nook, and Amazon get my direct uploads so I can keep all my royalties, except when when I’m offering my ebooks for sale in the pre-order phase–then I use Smash for iBooks and Nook. For my perma-free books, I aggregate them everywhere but Amazon and Kobo via Smash. It works for me, y’all.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes award-winning and bestselling romantic10006025_10152294921092604_1598429323_o mysteries (Saving Grace) and hilarious nonfiction (What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?) and was named one of Houston’s Top 10 Authors by the Houston Press. You can pre-order/back her next novel, Going for Kona, HERE. She is passionate about great writing and smart authorpreneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start.

p.s. Smash doesn’t aggregate to Google Play, so I upload direct there as well. And I’ll post on how to do it someday soon because it is so very NOT simple, and I am already seeing sales traction there after only a week.

Pre-Order Going for Kona

Well, it’s official. Like we told you we would in our crowdfunding post last Spring, SkipJack is launching the Kickstarter campaign for Pamela Fagan Hutchin’s fourth novel, Going for Kona. But we don’t want anyone giving us money unless they get more than their money’s worth back from the project. That’s why the awards at each level of backing have a higher dollar value than the funds pledged.

Yep. We want you to get more out of this than we do.

So, if you want to

  • be part of the launch of Pamela’s fourth novel,
  • support the independent arts, 
  • find an inexpensive way to scoop up a library of her books (& more),
  • or help keep Pamela available to donate half her professional time to the nonprofit support of other writers in the indie community,

then this is the Kickstarter project for you.

We’d sure appreciate it if you’d check it out, even if just to emulate for your own project someday. And more than anything, we’d love it if you share it: this blog, this link, this project. Via email, social media, or Pony Express.

Many thanks!

Eric

 

 

Tides of Impossibility Fantasy Anthology Now Accepting Submissions

The Tides of Impossibility Anthology is now accepting submissions. It is being produced by the Houston Writers Guild in cooperation with Skipjack Publishing. It will be available both as an ebook and a print book, and is expected to be shipped in late 2014. It will be an independent publication, and its mission statement is to provide independent and unpublished writers an encouraging and meaningful step forward in an industry (and a genre in particular) reputed for being difficult to break in to.

This anthology has already been funded via a Kickstarter campaign.

Submission Guidelines

The deadline is August 1, 2014.

We are looking for fantasy submissions of no more than 8,000 words. We are not interested in science fiction, though we will entertain sci-fantasy. The fantasy element may be slight, but must be rpesent and intergral to the plot. Our definiton of ‘Fantasy’ is pretty open; if you can ask yourself “Is this a work of fantasy?” then I would probably answer that, yes, it is.

I am very interest in printing 2-3 stories by the same author, so please do send more than one submission. Do not send fifty stories and expect us to publish twenty of them, but do send three or four and hope that we choose to publish two or three. This is especially true for flash fiction (works of less than one thousand words) and poetry. I have a special interest in publishing flash fic and poems, but am unlikely to choose a solitary piece of flash fic by an author with no other contributions to the anthology. I would much rather publish flash fics and poems in threes.

Again, please send multiple stories. If you are sending flash fiction and poetry, please send at least three of them. We are hoping for original stories, but we will accept reprints exclusively from members of the HWG, SFWA, or HWA, and from writers who I specifically told otherwise either face-to-face or in an email.

Payment fort short stories and flash fiction is half a cent per word. Payment for poems is three dollars per poem. All contributors will receive three free copies of the anthology. What we are getting in exchange for this are the rights to publish your story in print and online, in English, for the purposes of our anthology. If your story is original and unpublished, what we are purchasing is called First English Anthology Rights. If it has been published in any way whatsoever (even on your own blog or a message board somewhere), then we are taking non-exclusive World Anthology Rights. The only exclusivity we request is in the case of original stories, that the remain unpublished at least until the day that the anthology is released. As soon as the anthology goes on sale and people are buying and reading it, publication rights revert to you and you are free to do as you want with it.

You can view our boilerplate contract at this link.

Please submit your manuscript in the proper format, as an attachment, to editor Kyle Russell at [email protected] a simple cover letter in which you state your name, pen name if applicable, title and word count of your story or stories, assure us that it is original and tell us whether or not it has ever been published in the past. Try to avoid submitting stories that are found on Strange Horizon’s list of stories they see too often. When you send you submissions we will acknowledge that it has been received within a few days. Acceptances and rejections will be sent by the end of September. Please query only if we do not confirm that we’ve received it, or if it’s mid-October and we have not accepted/rejected your story yet.

Happy writing!

Here are some tips to maximize your chances of being published!

  • My preference is obviously for excellent prose, but furthermore, I’m looking for something that adds to the genre. If you send me a story that’s been written before, your version of that story is going to need to be legendary in order to have a shot at publication. Being genre-savvy helps.
  • If you are a member of a writers guild, there is a place on your manuscript to note that. It’s not cheating to let me know that you’re in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers or Houston Writers Guild or SFWA. Good writers are usually in writing guilds, and this is why guilds exist.
  • If you’re a serious writer and you’re not in a local guild, join you local guild and start using it. This doesn’t specifically apply to this anthology, but it is the best thing you can do for your career.
  • I cannot emphasize formatting enough. Here, let me link the formatting guide again. Learn this format and follow it as closely as possible. It’s there for a reason, and many publishers won’t even read your submission if you don’t send it in the correct format.
  • If you send a reprint and do not say that it is a reprint, the publisher will not be deceived, and your story will be rejected.
  • Read the full submission guidelines before you send in your story. Self-edit. Take your story to a critique group. Pay attention to details and send your best work.
  • Get my name right. Get the name of the publication right. At least two authors of my last anthology messed this up and got published anyway, but come on.