How Amazon Prime is now taking book sales away from indie authors. Seriously.
Posted: October 31, 2016 Filed under: Amazon Prime, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Free kindle book, Kindle | Tags: Amazon Prime, Bookbub, free books, indie authors, Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, Lonely Planet Leave a commentI k
now we are not supposed to speak badly of those who help feed us, but I want to tell you about the newest ‘benefit’ for Amazon Prime members–all 54 million of them in the U.S. Now those members can read free books–any or all–from a Thousand Book reading list for Prime Members.
This is separate from Kindle Unlimited’s all-you-can-read program of books enrolled in KDP Select where authors are paid by the number of pages read.
These are a Thousand Books selected by Amazon for Prime members only. A closer look at this list reveals that over 80%+ of the works of fiction are published by Amazon imprints, like Thomas and Mercer. And most of them appear to be Book 1 of a trilogy.
Very clever marketing by Amazon. You get Book 1 for free and buy the next two. Book promoters like Bookbub, Read Cheaply and Free Booksy have been facilitating this type of marketing for years. But it is not so good for us indies and traditional or small publishers and those book promoters. Even Bookbub, which is arguably the most important of the discount/bargain book promoters, does not have a list of 54 million would-be book buyers.
There are also non-fiction offerings in the Thousand Books, including Lonely Planet guides to practically every country on the planet, plus a lot of books about crafts. So if you were thinking about leaving your day job to live off your earnings as a fiction writer, maybe you should wait a little bit and see how this all plays out.
As for me…I abandoned writing fiction some time ago and two of my non-fiction guides, on the right, continue to sell. The ‘How Seniors Travel for Fun and Profit’ is, in fact, a best seller and has been for over six weeks now. But I think this turn of events will seriously impact the writing future of many indie authors.
What happened with my Goodreads Giveaway–worth it or not?
Posted: April 6, 2016 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Kobo, romance novel | Tags: Amazon reviews, book reviews, ebook reviews, Goodreads, Goodreads Giveaway, Kirkus Reviews, L.A. Ladies, NetGalley Leave a comment
‘L.A. Ladies’, a romantic mystery is available as an ebook and paperback now.
Like most indie authors I felt as if getting those first reviews for my books resembled climbing a mountain in a blizzard wearing lead boots–one slow step at a time. Of course, some indies have a very supportive Writers group or belong to a book club or have some other circle of friends and acquaintances who will eagerly buy and review their new novel. And lickety-split, the reviews pile up fast. (Although if Amazon discovers that the reviews are by relatives or close friends, it will take those reviews down. And Amazon has been doing that with a vengeance lately.)
So I looked around for alternatives to the slow uphill slog and came across three well-known choices: 1) Kirkus Reviews 2) NetGalley and 3) Goodreads Giveaway.
With Kirkus Reviews the cost is $425 if you are willing to wait 2 or 3 months for a single review which can be published on their website–if you decide that you like the review. If the review is less than favorable, you can decide not to publish it. If you want rush service the price is $575. This all struck me as being a bit pricey for one review. (For heaven’s sake, I’ve heard that reviews used to cost $5 on Fiverr but Amazon put an end to that, too.) Anyway for complete details about Kirkus go here.
NetGalley was recommended by a woman who publishes romance novels, so I checked it out. So much better! For $399 an indie author can post a book manuscript for download by thousands of potential reviewers who, in exchange for the ‘free’ book, are asked to post reviews on the NetGalley website. Apparently some of these readers also post their reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. For details about NetGalley go here.
Then I looked into Goodreads Giveaway and it sounded great! All I had to do was offer to send a specific number of paperback copies of my new novel, ‘L.A. Ladies’ to the winners of a drawing. Goodreads information indicated that a month long promotion period would result in about 800 Goodreaders signing up for the giveaway. Goodreads suggests offering 10 books and notes that about 60% of the winners will actually write a review. I noticed that not all authors were offering 10 books; one offered only 2 copies. For more details about a Goodreads Giveaway, go here.
Quickly I crunched the numbers. The books would cost me 2.69 each plus rush shipping through CreateSpace. Postage would add a little, I thought, but not much. I’d send the books using the media rate. So I jumped right in, deciding to offer 12 books–signed copies. I had already set up pre-publication orders on Amazon and B&N so my publication date was fixed–just two weeks away. That determined the expiration date for my Goodreads Giveaway. And I decided to make the giveaway available in Canada because I’d sold some books through Kobo.
Oh happy days! Those lovely Goodreads readers signed up in droves! In 2 weeks 900+ women entered my Giveaway–twice what I had expected. And within hours of its end Goodreads sent me a list of the 12 winners. One in Canada, the others scattered across the U.S. I bundled up the books and drove to the Post Office where I found that there is no media or book rate to Canada. It cost $15 to send ‘L.A. Ladies’ to Alberta! In total my shipping costs were around $70.
And now for the results. There are now 4 reviews on Goodreads, three of which state that they received the book in a Giveaway. The fourth reviewer didn’t say one way or the other whether she bought the book or got it for free, but her review was very positive and she posted it on Amazon, too. In fact, all the reviews are positive–but there are still so very few. I’ve since heard from a fellow writer in my online writing group that Goodreads Giveaway reviews come in slowly so more reviews may come from this Giveaway. But the cost for each review at this point works out to be about $30–a lot less than Kirkus Reviews. I could, of course, reduce costs by not offering the Giveaway to Canadian readers and planning far enough ahead so I wouldn’t have to pay for rush shipping, but I don’t think I’ll do it again.
Now I wish I’d followed the romance publisher’s advice. I’m going to check out NetGalley to see whether they allow books that have already been published to go onto their site. Or I may put ‘L.A. Ladies” into Kindle Select and run a freebie sale. I’ll let you know what happens next.
L.A. Ladies now available for pre-order on Kindle and Nook
Posted: January 26, 2016 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Los Angeles, Mysteries, romance novel | Tags: collie dog, cozy novel, Kindle, Kobo, L.A. Ladies romance novel, Los Angeles, mystery book, Nook, Pre-order ebook, rough collie, Scribd Leave a commentTooting my own horn here! My new novel, ‘L.A. Ladies‘ is now ready for pre-ordering on Kindle. You can find it here and read more about Robin, a ghost-blogger who is re-starting her life after the death of her husband. (And–Yes!–a collie is a character in the novel.)
The paperback edition will published on February 18th, too.
This romance-mystery is available for pre-order at other online bookstores, including Nook and Kobo. Coming soon on iTunes and Scribd.
The ebook cover of ‘L.A. Ladies’. It is now available for pre-order of Kindle
‘Speak’ and ye shall find ghost words, typos and other errors
Posted: January 16, 2016 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Los Angeles, romance novel | Tags: checking manuscript, ebook editing, edit ebook, Frog gate in Studio City California, ghost words, L.A. Ladies, L.A. Ladies romance novel, L.A. River, Speak in Word, text-to-speech in Word, typos Leave a comment
In the romance novel ‘L.A. Ladies’ Robin goes for walks along the L.A. River. This photo is of the frog gate leading to one path along the river.
I spent all day yesterday listening to the latest draft of my novel, ‘L.A. Ladies’. That’s right, I listened to it using a nifty feature in Word that I didn’t previously know existed. The feature is called ‘Speak’ and I decided to use it to see if I could find any ‘ghost words’ in my manuscript. ‘Ghost words’ are those little leftover words that accidentally end up in revised copy. When an author re-reads the revised section, her eyes slide right over the ghost words because, after all, she ‘knows’ what the passage says. The eyes and brain play tricks.
In one writers’ group online a fellow author suggested I read my manuscript aloud, but I wasn’t at all confident that the eye-brain trick wouldn’t happen again.
Instead I decided to use ‘Speak’ and sat here at my computer following the words with my eyes while Microsoft Anna (the voice of Speak and it’s a semi-mechanical sounding voice!) read to me. Much to my horror, I discovered a ghost word in the first chapter. Somehow the word ‘handed’ had been left in a sentence right beside ‘handing’. I quickly deleted ‘handed’ and kept on listening to Anna. Two other ‘ghost words’ showed up later in the novel and in one other instance I discovered that I’d written ‘on’ instead of ‘of’. All were fixed instantly. What is also important to note is that these four tiny errors in my manuscript were all properly spelled so they would have gone right through the Kindle Spell-Check and not shown up as mistakes.
Another discovery I made while listening was that in an early meeting between Robin, the main character, and one of her love interests, she sounded bitchy instead of surprised. So I re-wrote that exchange, too. Then checked it again with Speak to make sure there were no ghost words in my revision!
Okay. If you’re interested in using Speak — and I highly recommend this approach–search Google for text-to-speech in Word and follow the steps to activate it. It’s really easy and can save you from serious embarrassment.
Later: When I posted about this topic on my FB wwriter’s group I learned from other writers there is also a text-to-speech function in Adobe’s pdf reader as well as several free programs available online. I might try them to see if those other voices are more pleasant than Anna’s.
Oh, one last thing. Anna sometimes reads ‘is.’ at the end of a sentence as ‘island’. At other times she read ‘no.’ as ‘number’. She apparently ‘thinks’ they are abbreviations.
I spent $40 for a beta reader and am glad I did! Read how this happened.
Posted: December 10, 2015 Filed under: e-book, e-publication, ebook, Mysteries, romance novel 1 CommentThis post is definitely not about a ‘misadventure’.
I’ve been writing and publishing fiction for almost 3 years. (After 35+ years writing for corporations and magazines.) I’ve learned a few things along the way and do many more things ‘right’ than I did back when I wrote and published my first novel, ‘Playing for Julia’. This is one of those ‘right’ things.
As I wrote in my previous post, I’m to the beta reader stage for my new novel, ‘L.A. Ladies’, and decided to move outside the realm of Friends and Family for beta readers. F&F will almost always tell you that the book is good and they loved it–whether true or not.
So, with some trepidation, I joined the Goodreads Beta Reading group. Following their instructions I posted a request for beta readers for my manuscript. And waited. While I was waiting I read other posts by authors and by beta readers and came across a message from a beta reader named Elle who charges $40. There was a link to her site, AlphaBeta Reading, where I found an example of what Elle does as a beta reader. Basically, she goes far beyond beta reading and provides a light edit for a lot less money than a typical editor charges for a line-by-line reading. I was impressed, but not entirely convinced. So I bookmarked her site and waited another day. Still no response to my query on Goodreads.
After a third day with no responses from the Goodreads beta group, I took a chance and sent my MS in .docx to Elle who I later learned had lived in L.A. for a while. That’s helpful since the book is set in Los Angeles and women are the target market.
Within less than a week she sent a reply with line-by-line comments as well as overall observations about characters and plot. For example, her comment about using contractions: I should use more contractions in the dialogue because one character sounded too formal. She caught grammatical slip-ups. She noted overusage of words. She pointed out which conversational exchanges should be revised and why. And who she thought “Who done it” as the novel unfolded. (And what she thought when she found out it was someone else!)
She also made comments that I don’t agree with–primarily having to do with minor characters. She suggested that I eliminate some. I love minor characters in books I read! I plan to keep them in the book, although one supporting character will probably be minimized.
Pretty Girl is the collie owned by a triathlete trainer in ‘L.A. Ladies’.
Oh, she made no comments about Pretty Girl, a collie dog that plays an important role in the book.
Perhaps the most important aspect of her reading of ‘L.A. Ladies’ is how she seemed to regard the novel: more as a cozy mystery than a romance. It’s both, but I have to admit it was easier to write the mystery parts of the book than the romance chapters. I’m now trying to decide if I should revise the novel in that direction. Well, I’ll decide that after Christmas.
Overall Elle offered much more than I expected. Take a look at the example of her beta reading at AlphaBeta Reading.
Fiction sales figures by genre for 2013 – some surprises!
Posted: November 2, 2014 Filed under: e-book, e-publication, genre fiction, Kindle, romance novel | Tags: book sales 2013, detective novel sales, fantasy novel sales, fiction sales figures, genre fiction sales, genre fiction sales 2013, mystery sales, romance sales Leave a commentBookstat just released the sales figures by adult fiction genres for 2013. The surprise is that Mysteries came in lower than Literary fiction–at least according to this information. (I’m not sure what the genre called “general” is!)
1 – Thrillers ($1.088 billion)
2 -Romance ($1.079 Billion)
3 – General ($810 million)
4- Literary ($548 million)
5- Mystery & detective ($442 million)
6 -Fantasy ($377 million)
Another valuable source of information about sales by genre can be found at authorearnings.com This site reports quarterly and provides various kinds of data for authors. Their rankings by genre differ slightly from this.
The best-selling guide provides real solutions to retirees who need more income.
My newest book is a non-fiction guide entitled Working After Retirement. It has all 5 star reviews on Kindle and B&N!
Conversations with Veronica Roth, author of Divergent, and Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel
Posted: April 17, 2014 Filed under: e-book, e-publication, Los Angeles | Tags: Barnes & Noble, Book 'Em, bookstores, Cliffs Books, Distant Lands travel bookstore, Divergent, e-book, ebook, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, L.A. Festival of Books, L.A. Times Festival of Books, LACityPix, Pasadena, The World Until Yeserday, Veronica Roth Leave a commentMore about the L.A. Times Festival of Books, the largest book festival in America. It was held last weekend on the campus of the University of Southern California. I have posted photos from the event on my other blog, LACityPix.
The line for people who wanted to see Veronica Roth speak but did not have tickets. Ticket holders were in another line that stretched almost completely around the building.
Along with literally hundreds and hundreds of other people, mostly women, I attended the interview–which the Festival called a ‘conversation’–with Veronica Roth, author of ‘Divergent’. She turned out to be taller and younger than I had imagined. She wrote Divergent while she was still in college and stated, among many other things, that the book is NOT an anti-evolution tract. This anti-evolution idea apparently has been making the rounds in academia. (I guess academics have to come up with this stuff to keep their jobs!) After she spoke, she signed books–but the number of books she would sign was limited: one per person and a green ticket was required. Given the huge fan base she had at the Festival, she probably could have spent all afternoon and into the evening signing.
I also joined hundreds of people, mostly men, to hear what Jared Diamond, the author of ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ talk about his new book, ‘The World Until Yesterday.’ He seemed to be more concerned about falling in his shower than anything else. He’s 76 years old and this is important to him.
And finally…
I had conversations with two very knowledgeable ‘book people’ both of whom were trying to make new lives for themselves as the independent bookstore world is collapsing. One formerly owned a bookstore on the East Coast; the other had worked in a now-closed bookstore here in L.A. Both seemed unsure about what lies ahead of them and both were volunteering to work in booths at the Festival. It was clear that it was difficult to let go of something they love.
One told me that Book ‘Em, a mystery book store not far from my home, is going out of business. That means there are only two remaining bookstores in Pasadena: Vroman’s, which was founded in 1894, and Distant Lands, a travel bookstore. Borders closed a couple of years ago. Cliff’s Used Books shut its doors last year. And a few weeks ago Barnes and Noble abandoned Pasadena, leaving a gaping hole on Colorado Blvd., the main shopping street in the city. Even though I am an independent author who publishes e-books, I am sorry to see this happen.
Penguin Publishing’s mobile book shop at the L.A Festival of Books.
Given the way we Americans love to reinvent things, not all indie bookstores are gone, however. A new trend is the mobile book store that goes from Book Festival to Book Festival around the country. I love this! When I was a child, libraries across the nation sponsored Book Mobiles to bring books to far flung areas of rural America. Now, instead of being sponsored by public libraries, the new mobile book sources are privately operated. And instead of lending books, they are selling them.
At the L.A Times Festival of Books, one example was Mrs. Nelson’s Book Festival, a blue truck loaded with books, that goes from place to place. Sorry, but the photo I took of it wasn’t good, but this traveling book shop looked very similar to the Penguin mobile book shop. Only blue instead of orange. And Mrs. Nelson’s mobile book shop had book signings, which Penguin did not. I hope that these ‘book trucks’ become as popular as the gourmet food trucks that are now found all over the place in L.A. and other big cities.
Results of the A/B split test I did on Facebook for my ebook cover astonished me. Read the facts
Posted: March 3, 2014 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, paranormal fiction, vampire novel | Tags: book testing on Facebook, Facebook, Facebook for testing, New Vampire Online test results, online games, test book covers, test ebook covers, test results on Facebook, vampire book cover, vampire book test results 5 Comments
The red background color for this ebook cover had an impact on responses.
It started as an attempt to find an audience for my new, non-traditional vampire novel, New Vampire Online. So far sales have been meager, but those who read this novel and posted reviews on Amazon really liked it—mostly 5 Star reviews.
So after asking best-selling author Cheryl Bradshaw for her opinion about running ads on Facebook and receiving a positive but tempered answer from her, I decided to move ahead with a week’s worth of ads which I could modify from day to day to see if I could pinpoint potential readership for the book.
What I ended up learning was much more than that.
The ad campaign was simple: Facebook asks the advertiser (in this case, me) to select a goal for the ad campaign. I chose the goal of click-throughs to the book’s page on Kindle. Then I moved on to a traditional A/B split test based on the two different versions of the book cover. Both had the same Dick Tracy-style illustration of Cate the flirty vampire. One cover, however, had a gray background, the other a bright red background.
(A digression here: When I initially published New Vampire Online a few weeks ago I used the gray background cover, then after a couple of weeks, switched, on Amazon only, to the red background. I liked the red version a lot. The artist who did the illustration liked the gray.)
Cover for the nontraditional vampire tale, New Vampire Online
These two versions of the artwork were the dominant elements in all four ads. Two ads with different color covers ran in the newsfeed, two ads in those little right column ads. The brief copy was the same for all, except for one link test I did later in the week. The targeting was also the same: Women, age 19-25, interested in the broad category of ‘Entertainment.’ The link in the ads went to the Kindle page.
On Day One, I foolishly let Facebook determine the cost per click and ended up paying $2.97 for one click to an ebook that’s on sale now at $1.99!! Nothing learned there, except don’t let FB determine the cost per click.
Cost per click now under control, Day Two’s results surprised me. The gray background cover beat the red background cover by better than 5 to 1 in the newsfeed ads. The click-throughs from the little right column ads were so minimal that the results were useless.
By Day Three it was clear that the gray cover was the huge winner. At the end of the day I began to make other changes, narrowing my search for potential readers to Women, 19-25, who were interested in Games, specifically online role-playing, action, etc. games. (A comment about role-playing online games from a young woman on Goodreads led me to this test. I thank her!) I stopped running the little square ads and paused the red cover ads.
By Day Four with only the gray cover ads running in the newsfeed to the new narrower target market, click-throughs increased. At day’s end I made an additional change: I did a version where the clicks went to iTunes. This was the only copy change made during the week. Click-throughs to iTunes surged ahead of the clicks on the link to Kindle.
On Day Five I tweaked the target market again, dropping the age to 16-25. Click-throughs sagged, so by the end of that day I went back to the 19-25 year olds.
I made no further changes on Day Six and the campaign ended on Day Seven.
So what did I learn from this testing?
1) The red version of the cover was clearly a huge obstacle that shunted potential readers/buyers away from the book. The gray version was on iTunes during the test and is now back up on the Kindle page.
2) New Vampire Online is apparently not a YA book. I thought of it as a humorous New Adult book when I wrote it, sort of a Sookie Stackhouse California style genre mash-up, and I now think additional testing for the YA market is not worth doing.
3) The book seems to have an appeal to female online gamers, but even after I reduced the amount I was willing to pay for each click-through, it still would not be cost-effective to use FB ads to generate sales. Click-throughs are one thing; actual sales are another, affected by issues other than the color of the cover.
4) I suspect that the heightened response to the ads linked to iTunes may be a function of Facebook viewership on iPhones.
So what started as a search for potential readers/buyers ended up giving me much more information.
My budget for all this? $30. And for those few dollars I discovered that Facebook is a terrific place for testing covers and learning more about potential book buyers. I can think of several other factors to test and if I do it, I’ll report on them.
Perhaps more publishers and indie/author publishers should consider doing this type of testing before they do ‘cover reveals’. It may be that the cover being revealed is actually damaging to sales, folks!
A final disclosure: I spent a number of years working in direct marketing and the lack of data in the world of book/ebook publishing astounds me. In any other field, there would be testing and more testing. Best practices and widely-known truths would be readily available based on hard data. I hope this test moves the ebook publishing industry in that direction.
***
Some shameless self-promotion: the day after I posted this information about testing on FB New Vampire Online received its 10th review on Kindle. 7 reviews are 5 Star. 2 are 4 Star. And one is a 2 Star–she admits she didn’t read the book. So now–ta-da–I can now advertise New Vampire Online on some of the major ebook newsletters. And I know for sure which cover I’ll use.
Indie Recon, the online convention for Indie authors starts Feb. 25 and it’s free!
Posted: February 18, 2014 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, paranormal fiction, vampire novel | Tags: Alicia Vancil, Barry Eisler, free online writers convention, humorous vampire novel, indie authors, Indie ReCon, indie writers convention, New Vampire, New Vampire Online, online convention for indie writers, Susan Kaye Quinn, vampire book Leave a commentI heard about this yesterday. It’s an online event for indie writers and it looks good. Better yet, registration is FREE!
Here’s the link to their site: http://www.indierecon.org/
And here are the first four of 15 reasons you should register.
Cover for the nontraditional vampire tale, New Vampire Online
I’m particularly interested in the marketing information because my newest novel, New Vampire Online, has recently been published and, of course, I want everyone to know about it and buy it. New Vampire Online is a very untraditional vampire tale of contemporary vampires dealing with today’s world. Cate the vampire loves stilettos and has a website where she sells lipstick. Her current boyfriend is in security and her old boyfriend is a surfer, among other things.
Free copy of New Vampire Online–but there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always!!) ‘Pay’ with a review.
Posted: February 12, 2014 Filed under: e-book, e-publication, ebook, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, paranormal fiction, vampire novel | Tags: ebook, ebooks, New Vampire, New Vampire Online, Story Cartel, vampire book, vampire boyfriend, vampire. vampire novel Leave a commentCover for the nontraditional vampire tale, New Vampire Online
Here is where to go for your no-cost copy of New Vampire Online:Story Cartel. The whole idea behind this site is that readers ‘pay’ for the books they download for free by writing a review of the book. But this is definitely a limited time offer. It won’t go on forever!
If you’re an author, you know how important reviews are. If you are not an author, you should know that my wanting reviews has nothing to do with ego-gratification! Reviews have everything to do with future sales. Many online newsletters, blogs, and fan pages require a minimum nunber of reviews and a minimum standard of reviews (usually 4 star or better) before a book can be advertised on them. So in order to advertise and generate more sales, reviews have to come first. From that problem, came Story Cartel.
So visit Story Cartel today. I hope you like New Vampire Online. It has humorous moments and not a lot of blood and gore. Here is some info about the novel:
Cate the vampire has launched a new online business with the help of Conrad, her sexy Cuban-American vampire boyfriend. Everything seems almost perfect until Evgeny the Zombie Vampire and his girlfriend, Tatiana the Liar, land on the terrace beside her. Then her old vampire boyfriend, Jack the Surfer, turns up again. Before long, cops show up asking questions. And more cops. Then there is that little adventure at the Chateau Montaigne near the Sunset Strip and the disappearance of her RV. Maybe Conrad is right: Cate seems to run into trouble everywhere.
Misadventures in E-Publishing 