Now Is The Time, Content Makers

More and more I'm beginning to see some of the pioneering purveyors of ebooks on Amazon's selling machine begin to fade away. The first publishers were simply that: first on the scene. Then, once the scene was discovered by all, the writing abilities and ways with words became increasingly disparate, and the readers sorted the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Readers still do that on Amazon, voting with their wallets for the writers who will survive and allowing to fall by the wayside many of those who were simply early adopters.

Does this mean the gold rush is over?

Not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I believe the public's appetite for content is only going to increase. As the real world becomes more troubled, it seems, the more it seems that people will reach out in equal parts for diversion. Hence the huge upswing in video games, movies, music and song, concerts, reality TV shows, and books and stories and nonfiction. If you are one of the blessed ones who can provide original, thoughtful content, if you are one of those blessed with a way with words, you're in luck. You just walked onto the modern day set of Albert in Wonderland and it is brimming with people and businesses just fighting to hand you money for your work.

Content is king.

Writers are the kingmakers.

There has never been a better time to get it down on paper and put it out there.

Write and publish. Repeat. Then do it again!

100,000 Books Sold - What Happened?

I published my first book in January of 2014. I just published my eleventh book in September 2015. Number 12 is underway with a Xmas publication date.

I write "legal thrillers." I don't know how "thrilling" my books are, but I don't make up the categories, either; Amazon does that.

Bookbub
My first month I think I sold maybe 40 or 50 books. My second month 400. My third month 1100. I was growing and selling more every month until about August of last year when I came on KBoards and found everyone talking about Bookbub. So I submitted and got accepted for a freebie on about my third try. Since then I've had eleven more Bookbubs (upcoming one is next Tuesday). Most have been freebie giveaways although a couple were promo sales. All in all Booktrakr tells me I've given away about 300,000 books, which I couldn't have done without Bookbub. And I've sold over 100,000.

So I guess BB is really the story of any success I've had. Why did they accept me so often? I think much of it has to do with my covers, which are made by Nathan Wampler. If you would like to ask him about covers he can be reached atnathanwamplerdesign@gmail.com. Please don't get him so busy he ignores my pleas for help. The guy's a genius, as far as I'm concerned and I can only say, based on BB's acceptance of my promos, they must like him too.

It's funny, but I practiced law 40 years and never earned as much as I do now by writing. I'm also an old guy so I wish (if wishes were horses...) I had started this years earlier. Whoops, actually I did. I had an agent back in the nineties when Grisham got so hot, and my agent peddled my books around NY and no one was interested. Even last January when I first self-pubbed I had just queried something like 45 agents and none of them wrote me back except for two canned, brief, brush-offs.

Hot New Releases
I like self-pub. I like writing and releasing on my own schedule. More than that, however, I've come to know that you need to play the Hot New Releases cycle and self-pub allows me to do that. For example, right now my latest book The Trial Lawyer is under thrillers > legal and it's about #4 under HNR. Also, my next book is on preorder and it's also on the first page of HNR and will remain there for the ninety days while it's being written. This is very important to me in how I move books.

KU
I'm in KU 100%. Many of my peers are wide. But I like page reads and get between 1.5 to 2.0 million per month. It would be hard to give that up for the "wide" adventure. Maybe at some point I will, but right now it works for me. Maybe not for you, but for how I'm building my backlist it works just fine. Everyone will have a different plan and use these tools to best suit their plan.

Mark and Nick
Yes, I've taken Mark Dawson's FB course and Nick Stephenson's mailing list course, with crossover between them. These guys, have taught me so much. Mark is brilliant at teaching Power Editor for FB and even a dummy like me now has it figured out. Nick was equally brilliant in teaching now to building that mailing list. My list right now has 5100 names and I can launch a book quite high in the rankings.

Can you learn from me?
This is an area where opinion seems to be all over the road. If we could replicate success from posts like this one, then why don't we all take James Patterson's course and become megasellers by following his path. But that's where it breaks down for me. I think generalities have been good for me to learn here on Kboards (write series, publish often, don't respond to the 1-stars, etc) but so far I haven't had the success others have had simply by following what someone else did. I've had to find my own way.

If I were starting out today, I would: find a small niche; write and publish no more than 90 days apart; tickle the Amazon algos by boosting sales through FB ads. When I first started out I advertised on FB in order to get sales so Amazon's algos would sit up and pay attention. My ads were money losers--but it wasn't profit I was after, it was movement. A gradual upswing in sales. I am NOT saying I acquired hundreds of sales by FB, maybe 4-6 sales per day to start. It doesn't take much. But as a long-time advertiser on Adwords I had come to know that I had to invest money up front to make money on the back end. Why wouldn't that same business tactic work with Amazon? I believe it does. And what Mark and Nick are doing is showing us how to not only get movement in our sales but, by their methods, even to turn a profit. What could be better than moving books on FB ads AND turning a profit? The one feeds the other. Just my opinion, of course. But again, I was all but broke when I started publishing and I know how hard it can be to spend money you don't have on advertising. Yikes. We all come to this differently.

Finally, those who know me know that I have asked probably the most butt-dumb questions on KBoards in a long time. I had to, because I knew absolutely zero about self-pub when I first came here. When I found KDP I was a phone call away from publishing with a company called XLibris and the guy had me talked into something like a $3,000 program guaranteed to line my garage with insulating boxes of books. Thank God for KDP. I went on their site and read it like ten times, each time looking for the part where it says how much I would have to pay to publish a book. Amazon removed the last obstacle for me: the gatekeepers. And all I have to do is keep writing, which is like a virus that wracks me and won't let go anyway. With or without Amazon, I'm writing anyway.

Never give up. I lost my first six books I wrote before my first self-pub in January 2014. Left on other people's computers or lost in printed formats. Gone. But maybe it's just as well, I don't know. But the point I want to make is that I had written continuously for thirty-some years since college until Amazon opened the door for me. Nobody bought anything from me. Nothing. But once the door opened, I had unlearned a lot of bad habits and was left with a style that more than anything aims for clarity of story. That's it, simple. Nothing matters to me but clarity of story. Sometimes I hit it, sometimes I miss it. But there's my goal.

Good luck everyone.

ETA:

I'm a strong believer in preorders because a preorder can stay on the "coming soon" pages for 90 days. Then when the book is released it gets another 30 days on the HNR page and then gets into the "New Releases/last ninety days" pages after. At this point my practice is to then establish another preorder book and climb back on the "coming soon" pages again while my latest release is HNR for thirty then "New Releases/last ninety days." This is the cycle, of course. Your mailing list will help you maintain a high level of visibility as you do this.

This model requires constant publishing, every ninety days. But in my experience, it is these lists that sell books on a regular daily basis, moving them ever higher as they go. It also requires a mailing list to keep your book churn up while the HNR algos kick in.

What is beautiful is that Amazon gives us these data filters (the lists) as tools we can (and should) use. I have been unable to find another sales portal that gives me this.

The All-Time Logical Fallacy (Or, How I Saved $99.99)

There is a logical fallacy among many writers (witness the blogs and their followers) that goes like this: You sell lots of books; if I study how you did it, I  will sell lots of books, too. This thinking doesn't, of course, take into account the factor of fortunate coincidence: in the first writer's case, certain events occurred that probably won't happen again in your case. But the second factor, and what this little blog exercise really is about, is what I call the logical fallacy of success. Here it is: Your ability to do something doesn't automatically mean I have the same ability.

Let's face it. Some people are smarter than other people. That is why they happen to succeed, because they thought their way into it. Or maybe they're more talented, so they wrote books that more people wanted to read. Just because author Jones can write unputdownable books doesn't mean author Smith can do the same. For author Smith to spend $99.99 to take author Jones' course on How to Sell Books is a foolish expenditure, if viewed in this light.

Now I'm going to tell you the secret of selling lots of books as it's come to me: write books people want to read. Can everyone do that? No. Can  you? If factor one (the fortunate coincidence of events) and factor two (the level of IQ or talent) are both present, the answer for you is "maybe." Why only maybe? Because you might throw up your hands and give up on book nine when book ten was the one that was really going to sell. Or maybe you're writing romance when it's really erotica that's your gift.

But here's the bottom line. Can you write and sell books and quit the day job? You won't know until you try. And try. And try.

That's what the rest of us did.

But save the $99.99. That's the price of admission for one day at Seaworld. (I know, Shamu is a victim of his own success. My wife is actively campaigning to set them all free, so got that covered. Which leaves me more time to write. But seriously, go to Seaworld rather than take someone's course for $99.99. If you don't yet understand how the oblique leads to the unique in your art, you might not be ready.)

Appointment World

I write on two Macbook Pro's. One is on my treadmill desk and one sits with me in my writing chair. The last time I was in Mexico my writing chair Macbook blew up (not literally). So I took it to Geeksquad when I returned to the U.S. They sent it off to Apple, who reported back the motherboard and this or that were burned out. Fried, they said. Fair enough. So I authorized the repair bill, which was about half the cost of a new machine ($700 repair). Lo and behold, I get a notice today from Geeksquad telling me to go on their calendar and make an appointment to come pick up my machine.

Apppointment?

What rock have I been living under? In Mexico I had my eyes examined by Dr. Cornel in Rosarito (great eye doctor, by the way). But first I called for an appointment. "Just come in tomorrow," he said, answering his own phone. "Yes, but what time?" I asked him. Silence on the line. "Just come in when you're ready," he said. "I'll see you then," he finished. So I did. He got me right in the next day when I turned up in his office. No forms to fill out, go right into the examining room. Exam took all of thirty minutes, following which he fitted me with the best pair of glasses I've ever owned. They have all the bells and whistles you can buy in the States, of course, but the point I'm trying to make is that an appointment wasn't necessary even for the office visit. But back in the U.S.? Apppointment for my computer pickup?

All right, so I'm old fashioned and, to be honest, an appointment does sound better than waiting forever in the customer service line at Geeksquad. Maybe it's time I learned to get with it, American style.

Still, I think back to my Mexico days. Come in when you're ready.

It works for me.

National Book Awards: No Indies

It's happened again: another award another troubling result: the National Book Awards fiction longlist contains no Indie books:

Jesse Ball, “A Cure for Suicide”
Pantheon Books/Penguin Random House

Bill Clegg, “Did You Ever Have a Family”
Scout Press/Simon & Schuster

Karen E. Bender, “Refund”
Soft Skull/Counterpoint Press

Angela Flournoy, “The Turner House”
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Lauren Groff, “Fates and Furies”
Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House

Adam Johnson, “Fortune Smiles”
Random House/Penguin Random House

T. Geronimo Johnson, “Welcome to Braggsville”
William Morrow/HarperCollins

Edith Pearlman, “Honeydew”
Little, Brown/Hachette Book Group

Hanya Yanagihara, “A Little Life”
Doubleday/Penguin Random House

Nell Zink, “Mislaid”
The Ecco Press/HarperCollins

Surely some Indie writer somewhere penned a tome that should have found its way onto the list. But wait, there's a catch: Indie publishers are eligible IF they have published the works of other authors. The full eligibility text is here:

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"WHO CAN SUBMIT BOOKS?

Each April, the Foundation sends the official National Book Awards guidelines and entry forms to the publishers in its master database. Those publishers who do not receive the materials automatically can call or email the Foundation to request a copy. Authors cannot submit their books themselves; they must have their publishers contact us directly. However, the guidelines are always available for informational purposes here:www.nationalbook.org/nbaentry.html.

In order to be eligible for the Award, a book must be written by an American citizen and published by an American publisher between December 1 of the previous year and November 30 of the current year. Self-published books are only eligible if the author/publisher publishes the work of other authors in addition to his own. Books published through services such as iUniverse are not eligible for the Award."

---

 

Did any Indie writers make it onto the long longlist? Or even the long long longlist?

Are there other Indies out there who, with me, would like to form a publishing co-op with an eye toward entering the NBA next year?

Just saying.

New Thaddeus Murfee Book: The Lawyer's Lawyer

I love writing about court cases where the target is moving. Where things are not what they seem. Because, in truth, that is the human condition: that things are never what they seem. We think we know our spouses or our children or our best friends, but do we really? The same thing is true with what happens in court. A guy gets arrested for something. Lawyer A, who has been paid $100,000 to defend the guy, pulls out all the stops. There is scientific evidence, there is a human factors expert, there is an economist, a treating physician, DNA testing and etc. Lawyer B, who has been paid $10,000 to defend the guy, shows up for court in a new suit and a recent haircut. There are no experts, no paid witnesses, no DNA testing experts and evidence, and no stops are pulled out. Lawyer C, the public defender, is paid $0 and immediately starts looking to plead the guy guilty to something. No offense meant; this is a budgetary matter. PD's are damn good lawyers, many, many of them even better than private lawyers, but, alas, they have no money to work with.

What's this all mean to me? That a lawsuit in my novel can have many different faces, depending on the motivation and expertise of the attorneys involved. So my main guy, Thaddeus Murfee, has money to burn. Why? Because that's how most all of us lawyers would like to handle our cases: ones where resources are unlimited. What a different world that would be.

In my latest Thaddeus adventure, due to be released in about 5-6 weeks, Thaddeus is defending a man with multiple motives to murder his wife, opportunity, and means. But there are other possible suspects as well. They also have motive[s], opportunity, and means. Are things as the client says they are? That's the rub: they never are. Which is the great thing about fiction: you can have two legitimate narrators in one book and they can both report the exact same scene differently--even vastly differently. So my client tells me one thing in the office, the police say something entirely different in court, and then the judge comes along and decides out of all of it what parts the jury gets to hear and what parts they won't access.

This is courtroom fiction at its best, this latest Thaddeus book. Be sure and preorder on Amazon. A good one-half of the book is taken up with the trial, my most ambitious yet.

Entertainment.

How I Wrote and Published 10 Books in 18 Months

Whew!

And I get asked about it lots. How the heck did you write so many books in a year and half, books with hundreds of reviews and high (low) rankings?

Truth be told, I wrote them over the past forty or fifty years. Not these published books specifically, but other books. Books that kept me writing nonstop over weekends with work weeks in between. Books that kept me up until three or four in the morning while my future readership was sleeping (or not yet conceived...), books that tortured me with misgivings because I couldn't make the damn book say what it was I was trying to say. And on and on. I wrote wrote wrote. And I submitted submitted submitted. All the major magazine's saw my short stories: Harper's, New Yorker, Atlantic--they all got a taste of my art.

And they all turned me down. "Not quite there," they might scrawl on their rejection slip, or "Please try us again--" -- very popular with the New Yorker way back when. Now I don't know what they write on their rejection slips by way of encouragement, if anything. I don't know because I no longer submit to them. Why would I, when, with the advent of self pub, I can put my voice out there for millions to hear simply by clicking through a few Amazon categories and sub-categories.

In January of 2014 when I published my first novel, it really wasn't. Wasn't really my first novel. I had written my Hemingway lookalike while in college. I had written my Updike lookalike a year after. I had written my Salinger shorts during that same era (all dialogue, all trying to sound East Coast cranky). I had written my Ken Follett novel, my LeCarre ambiguous spy thriller, my Thomas Harris minimalism and my John Grisham soundalike careless toss-away flashes of genius (the other John's: I'm not saying I've ever had any of my own.) So when I published in 2014 you were able to buy a writer who had sounded like everyone else out there and who now had found his own voice and you could hear that and decide whether it was your cup of tea or not.

I then washed, rinsed, repeated nine more times. Or is it ten more times? The count is beginning to escape me. And my writing speed is mine to click into because the structural-grammatical-dramatical pieces are long ago in place. Through practice practice practice.

Now you know. How I published 10 novels in 18 months, downloaded 450,000 of them, and earned well over $100,000. The next twelve months look to be 2.5 times better. Wow on me.

One other thing. I would be remiss not to mention this. Bookbub allowed me to grace its email ten times over the last twelve months (counting this coming Saturday's number 10). Sales upon sales upon sales.

There's a bit of luck involved with all this too.