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DIY Indexing Made Easy

When I wrote What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?, I wanted to index the book . . . eventually. An index can make a paperback how-to book immeasurably more helpful. [Note: in my humble opinion, an index for an ebook makes no sense, as an ebook is fully searchable, and because an ebook is not paginated.] At the time, I looked briefly at indexing options, mostly hiring someone else to index it for me, and I decided to postpone that decision until I’d had more time to research it. Somehow weeks turned into months and the launch of another novel, and still Loser begged for its index. So, eight months after it was born, I got down to the serious business of finding an index solution for Loser.

First, know this: creating an index requires a thorough understanding of your subject matter and how people will want to access it. An index isn’t just a list of words. It is a cross-referenced list of interrelated concepts and terminology. This means the author’s involvement is critical to its final quality, even if the indexing is outsourced. In addition, a book can’t be fully indexed until it is complete, unless you mark words as you go, a laborious process that when I looked into it via Microsoft Word made me briefly contemplate gouging my eyes out. Anyway, to index like I’m going to teach you, you need the copyedited final version in hand when you start, so that your page numbers are firm.

I started searching, beginning with online articles (<– the comments in this one are all from professional indexers) that referred to serviced providers. Outsourcing options started at $350 and went up quickly. My mental cash register dinged and dinged with expenses in terms of dollars and hours of my time.

Then a friend suggested I look for free indexing software for a DIY index. This appealed to me. Maybe someday I’d outsource my index, but I’m the kind of person how likes control, and to know exactly how things work. I searched for free options and found a few (Here and Here). None of them appealed to me as creating the type of final product I envisioned. Of course, I hadn’t known what I envisioned, but as soon as I started my search, I quickly made a list. I wanted an index with margins, fonts, and a general style that looked professional and matched my existing book. I wanted easy-to-use and good customer support.

I reviewed some paid applications, and finally settled on PDF Index Generator. PDF Index Generator creates an index to your specifications by counting and referencing each instance every word in your book appears in your text. You have control to omit words or to set minimum numbers of letters. Additionally, it asks you to specify how many pages to skip before it starts indexing. This is critical. You want to skip your cover page, table of contents, and other pre-pages so that your indexing starts with what you have named page one in your book.

The results are a list of words and the pages on which they appear. You then go through the list by hand and choose the words to include in your index, and how they will appear. For instance, POD means Print on Demand, and I wanted it to be listed in its long form in the book because I thought that was the way people would be most likely to look for it, so I simply defined it that way. If I wanted, I could also list POD, See Print on Demand to refer the reader to the correct entry. You can also combine words. I wanted many different terms to be collapsed into a general heading of Promotion, and I combined them all into that entry. You can also use your index entry’s name to provide more hints to what it means. I.e., Formatting, Print Books might be an entry, instead of just Formatting. And finally, you can index words that don’t appear in your text at all just by editing your entry’s name, or by editing a name for many entries that you linked together. Maybe you think someone will search by the term Self Publishing, and instead you used indie and independent publishing. Just link indie and independent publishing and rename it to Self Publishing, and you’re in business (I didn’t do that, but I could have).

Sound laborious? Well, yes, it is. Nothing like the labor of a hand-generated index, however, and it doesn’t require technical skills, just a great understanding of the material and its usage. To my knowledge, there is no way around this. And guess what? All told, my part of this process took one afternoon, even as a first-time user. With no tears and minimal cussing. Yes, I made mistakes and had to correct them. Early on, I ditched my file and started over. But when I was done, I thought, “That wasn’t bad at all.”

Note: proofread carefully every step of the way.

PDF Index Generator started with the PDF of my print-ready interior file, although I gave it a “saved as” version and kept my original intact. When it was done, it had created an index file, and it appended it to the end of the PDF I specified.

At this point, you may choose to send your book back to your editor for copyediting of your index. If your editor makes any changes, you make then to the index file itself, then rewrite it to a NEW “saved as” PDF of your original interior file. You can’t just copy the index over itself in the PDF you sent to the editor. Sorry. But that’s not much of a complication.

When you have a final page count for your interior file with its new index, you’ll be able to finalize your full cover to match the total page count.

At this point in my process, I then had a file I could use with my printing service. I do POD with both CreateSpace (Amazon) and Lightning Source (Ingram). I uploaded my file with no problems at all to CreateSpace and had an indexed book available within 48 hours.

This is where things got interesting. I am very careful about my file uploads to Lightning Source because they charge $40 per file. Since I had a new cover and a new interior, that’s $80. Truth be told, that’s one of the reasons I had held off with my index, to avoid paying this $80. However, Lightning Source is a critical component of my personal sales strategy, so I had to do it. That drove the cost of my project up from the $59.95 that I spent on the software by an additional $80.

I cheerily uploaded my new files, and the interior file was rejected due to the fonts not being embedded right. Rather than get upset, I contacted customer support with PDF Index Generator. Hesham Gneady spent weeks dialoguing with me while we waited for Lightning Source to respond in a helpful manner, and, once they got him the information he needed, he produced FOR ME a perfect file which uploaded and was accepted. He was more responsive and helpful than my Lightning Source rep, for sure. He spent more time with me—because he understood the importance of solving this problem to his future business—than $59.95 worth. And I was able to talk Lightning Source into waiving the additional $40 for uploading the second file. Phew.

The result, for me, was a functional and attractive index for Loser at a reasonable price, with no greater investment of my time than I had expected, with fantastic customer support. The paperback of Loser is now a better value to its buyers, too. I don’t anticipate doing a lot of books that need indexes, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this PDF Index Generator, for the use of authors, editors, publishers, and book formatters.

What about you guys? Have you found an indexing solution that works for you?

Pamela

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is an employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (Saving Grace) and hilarious nonfiction (What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?) by night. 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.

Does the early bird get the worm with indie book pre-orders?

A nifty way to generate rankings for your books at its launch is by offering pre-orders. As an indie, you can do this for both ebooks (easy) and paperbacks on Amazon (complex).  Pre-orders allow people to place orders as soon as they decide they want your book, when you begin pre-launch promotion. Without pre-orders, people may forget to buy it when it becomes available. Face it, something else new and shiny will come along and grab their attention, and they might never even hear of your book again, or blow their entertainment budget on a trip to Bali. Make it easy for them to spend their pennies on your books.

Let’s tackle the easy ebook solution first. iBooks (Apple), Kobo, Nook Press (through Smashwords, and sold via BarnesandNoble.com), and Smashwords all offer this option for your ebook. While Kindle Direct Publishing (“KDP,” sold through Amazon) offers it for their own Amazon-published ebooks and the ebooks of traditional publishers, they do not offer it for indies, unfortunately.

Quick strategy point: If this is your first book, there is still a small advantage to going exclusive on ebook sales through KDP Select for the first 90 days of your books life, so if you choose that route, you will be completely out of luck on pre-orders. But if you’re not doing KDP Select, for whatever reason, you’ve got a lot of options for offering pre-orders. I sold hundreds of pre-orders on my last novel, Finding Harmony. It didn’t suck.

All you need to set up your pre-order is a compelling sales pitch for the ebook’s online pages, one that has been edited by the same editor that is or will copyedit your book—and for God’s sake, don’t publish without having your entire manuscript thoroughly copyedited—the front/ebook cover jpeg file, BISAC code/categorization selections, an ISBN, and a price. You set up your sales page on each of the sites you’ll sell through about two to three months before your launch date. Good news: you don’t need to have your ebook file completed and submitted. You decide the date the actual ebook will launch, and you get your file uploaded before that date. Pre-order sales up until that date will accrue but will not show up in your sales until the actual date you set for availability. That is also the date on which customers will be charged and their ebooks will “ship,” virtually. The result is that you get the full benefit of all those pre-order sales on Day One of your ebook’s life, which gives you the best possible impact on rankings.

Paperbacks are harder.  Most indies sell paperbacks online through CreateSpace on Amazon, and Amazon does not directly provide for paperback pre-orders for indies. Again, they do for their own authors and for traditionally published books. But if you set up an account with Amazon Advantage as an online seller, and as one (or maybe the only) of your products you offer the sale of your paperback as a pre-order, you can get around this exclusion. It is a pain in the tush to set up an Amazon Advantage account, and should be unnecessary if Amazon were to play with a level field with us here. (They don’t really play levelly with ebook pre-orders either, because the Janet Evanovichs of the world get to be bestsellers for ebook pre-orders, whereas I don’t get to offer pre-orders, and, technically, her sales are all just supposed to accrue on her launch day, but, hey, the negotiation power of Random House can’t be taken out of this equation.)

You need the same elements ready for your paperback pre-order as you did for ebook pre-order. Once you have you book set up (and guess what? It’s not as easy as on CreateSpace; sorry) with its description, BISAC codes/categories, cover, and ISBN, then you set the date when it will become available/ready to ship and the price, it goes on sale. If orders come in for the book, follow this advice HERE (and through the related threads) to administer through your AA account. The gist? You tell Amazon to order the books from you for fulfillment to their customers a few day before its launch. But the fulfillment through you will never really have to happen. Read on. Once you set up your CreateSpace version of the same book, hold off on approving your proof until it is nearly time for your book launch. [Books go live on Amazon when you approve their proof in CreateSpace!!] Then, when you do approve your proof, hop back over to AA, notify Customer Service that CreateSpace will fulfill the accrued pre-orders, and and that you want to remove your book from AA. Heck, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway. For me, CreateSpace took over fulfillment automatically before I even got back into AA, and then I just removed the book from AA myself. Note that fulfillment will occur immediately, though, as soon as that book goes live through CreateSpace. The only way to stop that train is to hold off approving your proof.

A big negative on the AA account-offered pre-order of your book is that any reviews left by customers on the AA-generated Amazon book page disappear and do not transfer to the CreateSpace-generated Amazon book page once it goes live. That’s a big bummer. Technically, though, no one will have read it except those people you provided free copies to offline, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Just let those reader-reviewers know not to leave reviews on Amazon until you tell them it’s time to do it, and then only at the link you give them.

Once upon a time, Lightning Source (Ingram’s Print on Demand unit) explained how to make my books available for bookstores to order prior to my book launch, but it made no sense, and it didn’t really matter to me, because it didn’t impact my online sales. If this issue is important to you, leave me a comment and I’ll dig up that old email and let you see what they had to say about it. Suffice it to say there was no such thing as pre-order. Once your book proof is approved on Lightning Source, it is shipped to web sellers, and is available for order to bookstores, at whatever time they deem appropriate (if ever).

So that’s the scoop for offering your books for pre-orders. It’s a really nice enhancement to your pre-launch ability to turn promotion into sales, especially if you’re outside KDP Select, and if you offer a print version of your book.

What about you guys? How have pre-orders gone for you?

Pamela

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is an employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (Saving Grace) and hilarious nonfiction (What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?) by night. 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.

Adventures in Crowdfunding

Have you ever considered crowdfunding to raise the money you need to publish and/or promote a book? I hadn’t, until author Matthew Arkin told me about his success with crowd funding for In the Country of the Blind. Even then, it was only a passing thought. I wasn’t even sure I understood completely what it was. (See below for Matthew’s story)

Crowdfunding, per some schlup who posted on Wiki, is the collection of finance to sustain an initiative from a large pool of backers—the “crowd”—usually made online by means of a web platform. Google defined it as the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.

When it came time to publish our Houston Writers Guild SciFi Anthology, Tides of Possibility, author of Absolute Tenacity and lead anthology editor and HWG member Kyle Russell suggested we crowdfund. As a nonprofit, we are perpetually lean on cash. Kyle took the lead and ran a campaign that exceeded our funding goal for 100%! He used Kickstarter as our interface to crowd fund. Take a look at the excellent job he did with it, HERE. It’s going to allow to pay each contributing author a small stipend, and to pay for the cover art, various aspects of publication, and for some promotional initiatives to help launch the book. If we are very careful, it may even fund our fall fantasy anthology.

Wow.

Buoyed by his success, I looked into using Kickstarter to crowdfund for the launch of my upcoming novel, Going for Kona. It was clear that in order to attract backers, a campaign must be well-planned, thorough, sound, and compelling.

I wanted to see how that looked when someone else did it well. Here’s what Matthew Arkin had to say about successfully crowdfunding his novel, In the Country of the Blind:

Well begun is half done. A favorite phrase of mine, and one of the keys to Kickstarter success. A few months ago, shortly after surpassing my goal in my own campaign, I learned that a very close friend was going to be starting a campaign. I called him to offer any advice I might be able to give based on my experience, but he told me he didn’t need it, that he was working with people who really knew what they were doing. I wanted to say, “No, you’re not, and your campaign is probably going to fail.” No, I am not a seer, but it was clear that they already had one almost insurmountable problem: Lack of network awareness.

A Kickstarter campaign is not a magic bullet to raise money. It is only a social media platform that allows you to collect money for your project. It is not the primary way that you disseminate information about your project and generate excitement amongst your network and, one hopes, the every-expanding circle of networks created by the people who donate because you have captured their interest and enthusiasm. The reason I knew my friend’s campaign was probably going to fail was that he was a close friend. We were connected through many social media platforms. His campaign was starting in three days, and I had not already heard about it. I was not eagerly waiting for it to start so that I could jump on the bandwagon at the beginning. So make sure you get your information out there well ahead of time so that your immediate circle of donors are ready to pull the trigger on launch day. Other donors want to get in on something that is already racing towards success.

Armed with our Tides of Possibility experience and Matthew’s words of wisdom, here’s the game plan I recommend:

1. Entice Backers With Quality:

– Don’t crowdfund until you can show and tell something GOOD. You’re going to need to be able to describe your book and how you are going to finish it, and do so in a way that makes it sound like a good investment to backers, meaning you need a pitch. Don’t know how to pitch? Read from a few experts:

Pitches/Queries | The Graceful Doe’s Blog

Rejection

Graphics help, a lot. If you’ve got your cover done, use it. If not, use something resonant of your cover concept. People like purty pictures.

Kickstarter recommends you use that webcam and shoot a personal pitch for your project as well. Video. Yes, video yourself. You can do it.

2. Provide Value to Backers:

This should not be about your getting something for nothing. Instead, think of this as a pre-sale, and give back to your backers all you have to offer:

  • Thanks in your book
  • Bookmarks and other SWAG
  • Ebooks
  • Signed Paperbacks
  • Your Time

Backers should feel like they got their money’s worth, just a little ahead of everyone else.

3. Appeal to Backers’ Values:

Besides the quality of your project and the value you offer in return for their money, backers are often motivated by the intrinsic value of a project. Are you benefitting a nonprofit? Is backing you support of indie arts? Is there something socially valuable you will do with your time and/or money if this project gets funded? Is the project itself intrinsically valuable to the public? These things matter. Get clear about What’s In It For Your Backers, at the gut level.

4. Promote Multi-phased Campaign Message from a Well-Established Social Media Platform: 

If you don’t have a robust social media platform, your crowdfunding effort is not likely to be successful, so start on that years before you launch a Kickstarter project. Then, as Matthew points out above, create a gently building buzz for your project in the weeks before you launch it, so that by the time you do, people can’t wait to pre-purchase your book and/or other stuff, and fund your project.

My own Kickstarter campaign for Kona will launch in June, and I will report back on the success of that initiative. In the meantime, tell me about yours–what did you promote to fund, and how did it go? What made it most successful–or vice versa?

Pamela

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is an employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (Saving Grace) and hilarious nonfiction (What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?) by night. 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.

Author Blogging: Yay or Nay?

Another post by Eric “Excuse the Typos” Hutchins, the last of the series he wrote on his five-week trip to Siberia.

Should an author blog? It’s all about perspective. If your goal as an author is to attract new readers to your published work I think you are wasting your time writing a blog. There just are too many fishing lines already in this water and it is too hard to make your bait look interesting.

However, if your goal is to create and nurture an author platform, I think having an active, polished, blog is an essential part of it. I would argue that it is the most important one, and here is why. Authors today need “Super Fans,” who through their enthusiasm become critical in promoting their favorite authors.

To an avid reader, an author is an actress, a top 40 musician, or a professional athlete (without the cameras and newspaper reporters). If a new reader loves your book they will want to discreetly “meet you.” They will want to know what you are like, what your interests are, what motivates you: the personal things that you are willing to share that make them feel like an insider. And they want it to be current information. That back cover on your book is not enough. They live in the world of internet and instant updates, and they are fascinated by YOU (I know that may seem weird to some of you), and that is a good thing. AND, they are making a decision whether or not to buy your other books and sign on as a lifelong fan.

So where are they supposed to go for this type of information? Your Facebook page? No, there’s no depth, and too much other noise; it’s too hard to find your history. Twitter–forget it. Those 140 characters are fun, but they’re not enough for Super Fan.

You need a website with a blog. A simple website with a static page about your books with an old static bio isn’t good enough. It sends a message that either you are lazy or that they are not important enough for you to put in the effort required to keep the site fresh and their interest piqued. A blog brings them on the inside, shows them a slice of your life, and how you think. It keeps them engaged. You need their engagement.

So let’s review. Do I think a blog will attract new first-time readers to buy your book? NO.

Do I think blogs are important to cultivate and nurture a strong fan base and author platform? YES.

[Here’s a bonus opinion, slightly on-topic: Do I think blog tours sell books? Not very well (however under certain circumstances and for very specific reasons you may still want to do one, and visibility is one of those specific reasons).]

The other benefits of author blogs:

  1. Blogging allows you to practice your craft. Writers write. Writers get better at writing by writing. Calenderizing a blog schedule, no matter how un-fun that is, is no different than a marathon runner planning a training schedule. Your next book is the marathon. If you are not practicing at all, it is going to be pretty hard to be good. Now, you may not use a single word you write on your blog in your book. You don’t do weights or stretching during a race either.
  2. Blogging creates this huge library of your words, sentences and paragraphs that you can use later. Write the blogs with purpose, and then index them in a way that you can find what you need and repurpose them later. There may be only a phrase or a sentence you can re-use, but, they sure come in handy when you are stuck in an “I am boring” rut in your writing. Go grab an anecdote written when you were feeling witty, or scary, or sexy, and repurpose it.
  3. It is THE BEST way to gather a mailing list of people who “Opt-in” for contact from you. While it is important that you don’t overuse this list, it is the Holy Grail for generating buzz for a new release. It helps you generate an initial burst of sales that gets you up in rankings and primes the sales engine.

One thing I wouldn’t worry about is how many comments you get on your posts. Most people are way to busy to leave one. Others are far too private. I also wouldn’t stress about your traffic. Stat counters typically underestimate, often by a lot. Worry instead about putting something up once to twice a week, something short, something with news about your writing,and with small glimpses into your life, the life your readers are dying to follow.

Eric

Eric R. Hutchins is the owner of SkipJack Publishing

 

 

 

Print Books: Eric Makes His Case

There is a raging debate in the world of independent authordom, (and sometimes even in our house), about the value of print books in an independent author’s marketing plan. While there is no clear winner in my opinion (and it depends heavily on your long term goals), I do believe that getting your books in print and working very hard to get them in and keep them in brick and mortar stores (and everywhere else you can) has real value.

In the short run, I believe an author has a better chance of scraping out a positive return by NOT doing print books at all. If you are an indie with little visibility and your sole venture into the print book world is Amazon with expanded distribution, I think you have little chance of ever recovering your formatting, book cover and initial fees. And you get to enjoy the pleasure of seeing that poor thing ranked #4,342,334 with very little you can do about it.

There are many indie authors who add print books to their portfolio simply for romantic reasons. They love the smell and feel of a print book. They want to put one in the hands of their mother who will never get a Nook or iPad, or maybe in the hands of that naysayer that told them they would never make it (the book) happen. In today’s world of low cost print-on-demand, those are often reasons enough. However, I personally believe print books can play a much larger role.

First, though, the cases in which is does not make sense to do print:

  1. You have a very limited budget and want to focus whatever money you have on one format.
  2. You are not comfortable with amount of “putting yourself out there” necessary to market your book to stores, conduct books signings, and do interviews. There is no shame in this. It is a very difficult thing to do, and do well.
  3. You have only written one book and you’re not sure if you plan to write another.
  4. You are allergic to paper.

Now the reasons why, if you can do print well, you should.

Your book cover is your calling card, your trade mark, your brand. Print books have a long life. They can be passed around by friends, sold to discount books stores and resold, and donated to libraries. All of these things lead to the possibility that someone will read it, love it and tell others about it. For an author, marketing is the business of generating fans who love your book so much they will pay for your NEXT book. You don’t generate fans by telling people on Twitter that your book is really good. You generate fans by having them read and love your book. Therefore you must make your books as accessible as possible.

If you have an issue with giving away your books, get over it. You need to do it, a lot. Now, as best as you can try to attach a string to the gift (like requesting a review in trade for the free book); however, expect a very low percentage actually will. If you have the funds, buy your book in bulk through Lightning Source to get volume discounts that make these giveaways less painful, and make your direct sales at speeches and appearances more lucrative.

Probably the most often asked question of us at SkipJack is, “How did you get Pamela’s books in Barnes and Nobles and will you do that for me, too”? There is no recipe to follow, no simple answer that results in that Nirvana. Pamela is the hardest working person you will ever meet, and she has a team that believes in her and together they put in an incredible amount of effort. And it still is an every day battle to keep them on the shelves. I will not go into it all here, if you want to learn what she did, read LOSER. Suffice to stay it takes blood sweat tears luck and money.

Has it paid for itself yet? In pure balance sheet figures, heck no. HOWEVER, many wonderful things have happened for Pamela since we started down this path. Interviews, radio shows, invitations to speak on Panels with NYT-bestselling authors, newspaper articles and Book Signing events that set store records. Most of these, if not all, were the direct result of having print books. And while all this stuff was going on, she sold and incredible number of eBooks. Would she have sold all those eBooks if it weren’t for the events that I mentioned? Who knows? But I doubt it.

Statistics show that on average people do not purchase an item until they have seen that particular item at least five times. So even if you manage to crack Amazon’s secret algorithm code and your eBook flashes in front of a potential reader, it is unlikely that they will buy it that first time (or the second). But maybe if that see it a couple of times in a coffee shop first, in the arms of one of your readers who is carrying it around, and then in an advertisement about your booksigning, maybe, if you are lucky, they will click “add to cart.”

We have had Hastings and Barnes and Noble managers tell us directly that people come into the stores with their Kindles, Nooks and iPads fired up. They troll the shelves flipping through books ‘til they identify ones they like . . . and then buy the eBook on their devices! (Bookstores, I feel your pain).

Those of you that have been at this a while know that having “life changing” success as an author is a long shot with odds roughly equivalent of winning the lottery. The “success” of your book is dependent on that random chance of it being photographed in the hands of a celebrity, read by a producer, or “discovered” by some media heavyweight. Every book on the shelf in a store, in a library or left on a table at a coffee shop is a lottery ticket. If your book is great and you believe in it, why not buy every lottery ticket you can?

Eric

Eric R. Hutchins is the owner of SkipJack Publishing

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We are looking for tales of learning, success, and failure to share with our readers on Skip the Jack, and we are looking to cross-pollinate. If you think you fit the bill, email info @ skipjackpublishing .  com to volunteer. We are seeking 300-800-word pieces or excerpts on publishing and promotion that address current topics relevant to writers outside of traditional publishing.

Eric, Owner

SkipJack Publishing

Tides of Possibilities KickStarter Launched

SkipJack Publishing is excited to announce the kickoff of the KickStarter fundraising project for its joint venture with Houston Writers Guild, the nonprofit SciFi anthology TIDES OF POSSIBILITIES. To date, we’ve received over 125 submissions, and there are so many pieces deserving of inclusion.

Would you like to pre-buy your copies? For only $5 you can support the project and get an ebook. For larger donations, you get more in return. In fact, you have to check it out to believe all that we are giving away: signed books, books by KJ Russell and Pamela Fagan Hutchins, as well as some of the other authors. Prominent sponsor opportunities in the book itself.

Please, help us help authors and the wonderful nonprofit Houston Writers Guild by supporting this initiative AND help us ensure that we are thus able to create the same opportunity for Fantasy writers this fall. If we exceed our fundraising goals, we may be able to add additional authors from the submissions as well, which would make a lot of writers very happy.

CLICK HERE to see the KickStarter Campaign.

Watch for exciting announcements about the selected authors. We’ll let KickStarter announce them first, but we’ll follow up here.

Many thanks to KJ Russell for editing and spearheading the project. An awesome writer, a devotee of the arts.

Thank you,

Eric Hutchins, Owner

SkipJack Publishing

BookBub: Read the Fine Print, and the Email

Last November I had a spectacular 99 cent promotion with BookBub for my novel Saving Grace, selling over 4300 of it in five days, plus a few hundred of my other books. It wasn’t all on Amazon either. Bookbub has incredible reach with Nook, iTunes, and Kobo, too. So great that I couldn’t wait to get my next novel, Leaving Annalise, on it. I decided to hold off, though, until the launch of the third book in the series, Finding Harmony. Bookbub would be the perfect way to get readers out to see the entire series and guarantee an effective launch.

Like most of you, I have a day job. This author gig will probably never replace the money I make as an attorney and business owner. I also have five kids, four dogs, and a husband, and I am President of the Houston Writers Guild. Suffice it to say, I lead your average hectic life.

A few days before my promotion, I got an email from BookBub. I was traveling for work at the time, and I read the first few lines on my iPhone. It reminded me to make sure I had my prices set correctly for promotion. I did. I felt virtuous. I marked the email to read later. It never occurred to me not to trust BookBub completely.

I got home late the night before the promotion. On the day of, I set to work catching up with my life while I kept an eye on sales. About 11:30, I got the daily promotions email from Bookbub. I’m signed up for mysteries and thrillers, which is the category my novels run in. There was Leaving Annalise. I felt a frisson of excitement.

By mid-afternoon, I noticed that sales weren’t picking up on Barnes and Noble Nook. Hmmm. With my first BookBub run, I had over 1000 Nook sales in the first 24 hours. I started to feel worried. About that time, my husband emailed me.

“My BookBub email only shows LA on Amazon.”

My stomach lurched. I checked my email. SHIT.

“Mine too,” I replied.

I checked the history of emails between BookBub and me. I had signed up for promotion on Kindle, Nook, iTunes, Kobo, Sony, and Smashwords, and that BookBub had confirmed it. I opened the pricing reminder email I had previewed a few days before, and that’s when I saw it: the bottom of the email showed where BookBub had me slated for promotion. KINDLE ONLY. Between their confirmation email to me and this one, they had dropped off all the other sales sites. The email asked kindly that if there were any errors I let them know, as nothing could be done once their emails flew.

I sent off a frantic email to BookBub. I laid out the whole story.

They responded quickly and took 1/3 off my price, with apologies.

I answered basically as follows: 1/3 off $540 doesn’t get me back traction on Nook and iTunes, and you guys are the only game in town for effective Nook and iTunes promotion. I’ll lose $1000 at a minimum over what I would have netted on this promotion. And thank you for the 1/3 off.

Here’s where they were awesome. They couldn’t resend the email or re-include LA on the next day. What makes them rock stars is their two million subscribers, all of whom are a mouse click away from unsubscribing if BookBub annoys them or doesn’t deliver value. But their staff came up with a helpful partial solution. They would promote LA on their Facebook page, something they never do for paid books, and only do in groups for free books. While it wouldn’t fix things completely, it would help, and it was in tremendously good faith.

When they posted, the Nook sales started. They never skyrocketed, but they were respectable. All told, I cleared over $1500 above cost in the five days of the LA BookBub promotion.

$1500 obviously was a mere whimper compared to my previous promotion. To help clarify the problem, since I’m not exclusive to Amazon, I only net 35% on sales of 99 cent Kindles. If I’d have been in KDP Select, I could have retained 70% and made twice as much money. (Or, if BookBub had run my promotion correctly, I would have made twice as much money because of the sales on sites other than Amazon.) There’s synergy too once the buzz starts, and the ranking surge on one site has a trickle-over impact on the sales on other sites. Heck, I got up to #7 overall on Nook in November. This time, nada. Not only that, but this was this promotion that I had counted on to launch Finding Harmony, especially on Nook and iTunes. I didn’t have another method that would work. It wasn’t just about LA or about this five days. It was about sales of the whole series for weeks if not months.

Moral of the story: BookBub is run by some really nice humans who are, well, human. If a mistake gets through, they can’t fix it because of the nature of their business. Those preview emails they send are more important than you will ever know. Read them thoroughly and in a timely fashion. Don’t trust; verify.

My game plan? To get my series back up on BookBub as soon as I can. They’ll only run a book once every six months (if then), so SG is eligible in June, and LA in August. I hadn’t planned to drop Finding Harmony’s price so soon, but I’ll submit it to BookBub here in the next few weeks. I am bummed that my LA promo fell apart, heartbroken really. But the BookBub folks were genuinely responsive and understanding, and I can work with people like that. They are also one of the most effective means around, at this time, to gain visibility and credibility, not to mention sales, rankings, and reviews, and practically the only means for non-Amazon-exclusive promotions (http://storyfinds.com is a distant second). BookBub status remains HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is an employment attorney and workplace investigator by day who writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries (Saving Grace) and hilarious nonfiction (What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?) by night. She is passionate about great writing and smart author-preneurship. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start.


New Release and Audiobook Giveaway!

 

Finding Harmony, #3 in the Katie & Annalise mystery series, released!

16 five-star reviews on Amazon on day one!
 katie and annalise series

Finding Harmony takes you on a high stakes race through the islands with suspense, a little voodoo, and lots of laughs.

=> 99 cent ebook sale during February on #2, Leaving Annalise, in honor of the release of Finding Harmony

** Leaving Annalise hits bestseller rankings on Amazon for the first time!

leaving annalise amazon bestseller first time

=> #1, Saving Grace, reached bestseller status in mystery and suspense on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple. 100th five-star review posted on Amazon!

Katie’s already on edge when a dead guy shows up at Annalise and shady locals claim there are slave remains in the foundation, but when Nick doesn’t come home to her and the kids, she’s ready to lose it. A frantic Katie launches a Caribbean-wide manhunt, calling on Kurt, her stoic, steady father-in-law, and Collin, her badass big brother, to help her search air, land, and sea for her husband, who may be in very big trouble indeed.

See why this series won contest after contest.

  • 2011 Winner of the Houston Writers Guild Novel Contest
  • 2010 Winner of the Writers League of Texas Romance Contest
  • 2012 Winner of the Houston Writers Guild Ghost Story Contest

Once Upon A Romance Calls Hutchins an “up and coming powerhouse writer.”

  • If you like Josie Brown or Janet Evanovich, you will love Pamela Fagan Hutchins. A former attorney and native Texan, Pamela lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands for nearly ten years. She refuses to admit to taking notes for this series during that time.

The series reviews are in, and they’re good. Very, very good. Read all Finding Harmony reviews HERE.

  • An exciting tale that combines twisting investigative and legal subplots with a character seeking redemption…an exhilarating mystery with a touch of voodoo. Midwest Book Review Bookwatch
  • A lively romantic mystery that will likely leave readers eagerly awaiting a sequel. Kirkus Reviews
  • A riveting drama with plenty of twists and turns for an exciting read, highly recommended. Small Press Bookwatch
  • Katie is the first character I have absolutely fallen in love with since Stephanie Plum! Stephanie Swindell, bookstore owner
  • Engaging storyline…taut suspense, with a touch of the jumbie adding a distinct flavor to the mix and the romance perfectly kept on the backburner while dealing with predatory psychopaths. MBR Bookwatch

Pick up a paperback at any brick and mortar bookstore and many libraries — if they don’t have it in stock, ask them to order it from Ingram for you. Want a signed copy? Get those at SkipJack Publishing. Paperbacks are also available online, everywhere. So are ebooks, in all formats. Download audiobooks on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. For all sales links, visit Pamela’s website. To catch media, reviews, and giveaways, follow Pamela’s blog.

Reviews online and recommendations to your friends are appreciated more than you will ever know.

Here’s the reward for reading until the end: The first 15 people to reply to this message with a commitment to post an honest review on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes get the $19.95 Audible download of the Finding Harmony audiobook, FREE.
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Catch Pamela at one of her upcoming events or appearances, like the February 22 Houston Author Bash (free admission) and Book Signing, where she is one of the headliners and a featured panel author.

Additional Credits for Finding Harmony:

Publisher: SkipJack Publishing
Editing: Meghan Pinson
Cover Art: Heidi Dorey
Audio Narration: Ashley Ulery
Publicity: Nicole Hutchins
And one last announcement: What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes, and How Can I Be One, Too?, released August 2013, won a surprising and somewhat ironic 2013 USA Best Book Award in Business: Publishing.

  • “The best how-to book I’ve ever read.”
  • “You don’t expect to enjoy reading this type of book, but I did. Pamela is hilarious.”
  • “It’s not a book It’s an investment.”
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Tides of Possibility, Anthology

The Tides of Possibility Anthology is currently 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 is going to be funded via a Kickstarter campaign starting in March.

Submission Guidelines

The deadline is February 15, 2014.

We are looking for science fiction submissions of no more than 8,000 words. Flash fiction and short short fiction are acceptable ; there is no minimum length. Even poetry is acceptable if it has a sci-fi lean to it. We are not interested in fantasy, be it urban or otherwise, but all forms of science fiction are invited. The science fiction element may be slight, butmust be present and integral to the plot. We are hoping for original fiction, but are not against accepting reprints if the work in question is an exemplary piece of science fiction that has not been very widely circulated.

Again, no fantasy. And no erotica either.

Please do send multiple stories, if you have them. We would love to feature more than one story by great authors, within reason. Don’t send us fifty stories and expect us to publish twenty. Do send us three stories and hope that we will want more than one of them.

Payment is half a cent per word on acceptance, and three free copies of the anthology. An internal contest will determine one story as the best in the anthology, and this writer will receive a $50 bonus for their submission. What we’re 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, this means that we’re taking first world English rights. If it has already been published in any way whatsoever (even on your own blog), then we’re just taking reprint rights. We require no exclusivity on the stories we publish. You maintain the right to do whatever you want with your own work, except sell First Rights to someone else, because once those are gone you can never sell them again.

Please submit your manuscript in the proper format, as an attachment, with a simple cover letter in the body of your email, to editor Kyle Russell at [email protected]. Try to avoid submitting stories that are found on Strange Horizon’s list of stories they see too often. When you send your submission we will acknowledge that it has been received within a few days. Acceptances and rejections will be sent in late April, early May. Please query only if we do not confirm that we’ve received it, or if it’s mid-May and we have not accepted/rejected your story yet.

Happy writing!