Monthly Archives: February 2014

Feb 9 2014

Meeting the Challenges of Self-Publishing

Half Full

Half Empty

When the cup is half full, it’s a challenge to view it as half full instead of half empty.

So what about a cup that seems like it’s 90% empty? Can you stay positive and view it as 10% full?

Because that’s the way it seems sometimes to the indie author.

There are so many challenges to face. Charles Yallowitz recently listed dozens in his recent post, “Paranoia in Self-Publishing?”

Indie authors ride a roller coaster of hills and valleys. When several bad cards fall in place in a valley, it can really challenge you.

Writing should be the hard part, right? After all, that’s the main job. You’re a writer.

But writing comes easily. You’ve been bitten by the writing bug. Muse, rather. She’s sitting on your shoulder. You have no choice but to write. Sure, you might have to deal with writer’s block, but that’s the least of your problems.

And there are serious writing challenges, like choosing the right tense and person, balancing the show and tell act, finding the best way to present dialog, figuring out what effect your book really has on your target audience and how to pull it off as best you can, and any number of intricacies of the craft. You love writing, though, so these are the kinds of problems you live for.

It’s the publishing industry that makes you feel like you need to be connected or sell out, the editing and formatting that never seems to end, the holy-cow-how-could-I-do-that typo that shows up after you order a dozen review copies, the sales that don’t come, the false need you feel to stimulate reviews, the sales that don’t come after you get reviews, the bad review with just the right words to sting you where it counts, the in-laws and exes who point out the exaggerated disadvantages of self-publishing, and especially when a few of these issues slap you in the face while sales fall off a cliff all in the same never-ending week. So you decided to self-publish, eh?

Half Full

There are positives and there are negatives. There are times when many things are going your way. You don’t realize how much it’s going your way because you see how much better it could be. No matter how good it gets, it could always be better. But when the negatives come by, you don’t miss them.

It’s like Chutes and Ladders. When you’re going along, you think how you could be going up a staircase. When you’re going up a staircase, you think how you could be going up the super long staircase. And there are so many players in this game, some are going up that staircase. When you slide down a chute, you feel like you’re losing the game. But you could be glad that you’re making progress, on average. You could be grateful you didn’t fall down the really long chute and have to start over from the beginning. You could be happy just to be playing the game.

The negatives will test you. When several come together, they will really test you. They beckon you to react emotionally, instinctively. They challenge you to do what you know you should refrain from. They tempt you to put your reputation on the line. They may even make you question your scruples.

But it’s just a long, deep valley on this roller coaster. Statistically, there will be periods where many negatives come together.

It’s also an opportunity. To show what you’re made of. To demonstrate your patience. To be professional. To show your character. To draw motivation. To meet this challenge. To survive. So that the next time you come to a valley, you will have a positive experience to draw from, remembering how you’ve been through this before. So the next time you reach a peak it will taste that much sweeter.

You can do this.

  • Count the good things. You’re a published author, you get to enjoy writing, you’ve sold X books, you’ve had Y good reviews. Make a list of 20 positives. Get your book out, look at the cover, see your name on the cover, browse through the book. You’re a published author. Enjoy the feeling. Remember when you first saw your book?
  • Exercise. Get some of that frustration out while also doing something that feels healthy. You spend too much time sitting at a desk. In stressful situations, you need to exercise and eat healthy foods.
  • Work on a writing project. Outline your next book, write a poem or short story, write a blog post (but don’t publicize problems that may cast you in a negative light), start a new book, edit a book, do something that will make you feel productive and help get your mind off the negativity. Or get away from it all and spend time with family.
  • Do a search online and read about other authors who’ve gone through tough times. Don’t let yourself get talked into making mistakes. Find mistakes that authors have made and learn from them. See that others have gone through worse. Discover what others have done that was unprofessional, and force yourself to go the professional, patient route.
  • Seek support and advice from your connections, but don’t do it publicly in a way that may make you seem unprofessional. Find someone who will give you comfort when you need it. Find someone who will tell it like it is and offer valuable advice when you can handle it.
  • Ask yourself if there is anything helpful that you can draw from the experience. Sometimes the bad provides an opportunity for improvement. Sometimes the bad is just bad and doesn’t offer anything positive. If there is something that may be useful, try to use it to improve. If there is nothing useful, try to put it in the past and move on.
  • Try something new that you’ve been considering that’s free or low-cost and doesn’t involve a large time commitment, like maybe a new marketing strategy that just requires a couple of hours to learn something new. This is not a good time to spend much money or devote considerable time; think low-cost and not much time long-term. It will help get your mind on something else, and it will give you a new source of hope.
  • Make a dartboard with your bad reviews, bad comments, lousy sales rank, or whatever other problems are on your mind. Throw darts at your problems, shred your problems, stomp on your problems. Get it out of your system.
  • Don’t make any quick decisions during these times. Think them through carefully. Get a good night’s sleep before deciding. Patience can be your best ally against stupidity and embarrassment during times like these.
  • Feel creative. Find your passion. Refuel your motivation. If you’ve been working hard, take a break and come back rejuvenated.
  • Do some small good deeds. Help others in some way. Especially, help others anonymously. The gift of giving not only helps others, it might make you feel a little better, too. It takes a special kind of someone to spread goodness during tough times. You could be that someone. You could be a super hero. A disguised super hero. It may give you the inner strength of a super hero.
  • Read a book. Go to another world, live the life of a hero, find a better reality, overcome tougher hardships. Rediscover that writing is about the reading.
  • When you get knocked down, when you get kicked while you’re down, don’t give in to the circumstances. Rise above them. Laugh hysterically. Ask, “Is that all you’ve got?” Tell ’em, “’cause I’m a writer and I could do a whole lot worse than this.”

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Feb 9 2014

Paranoia in Self-Publishing?

See if you can relate to this comprehensive list of indie publishing challenges. Toward the end of Charles’ post (and perhaps in the comments), you’ll find some suggestions for dealing with these issues.

Charles Yallowitz's avatarLegends of Windemere

I had a thought yesterday that birthed a panic attack that my dear friend Ionia had to smack me out of.  I think she rather enjoyed it a bit too much and I’m still looking for my missing contact lens, which is weird since I wear glasses.  There’s also been a phone ringing for the last 24 hours.

Seriously though, take a look at what an Indie Author has to face:

  • Negative Reviews
  • Abusive Reviews
  • Abusive e-mails, FB comments, & Tweets
  • Pressure of writing another book
  • Writer’s Block
  • Marketing failures
  • Finding marketing sites
  • Bad sales days
  • No sales days
  • Amazon rankings
  • People reacting to your rankings falling as if it’s time to pack in the dreams and head for the nearest cubicle.
  • Finding time to write
  • Editing
  • Hate sites if you get that far
  • Haters if you make a wrong move
  • Illegal downloads of your book
  • Returns of your book

View original post 501 more words

Feb 8 2014

Marketing with a Blog

blog

Milestones

This blog is relatively new: I’ve been blogging actively here only for a little over a year.

Things started out very slowly. In the beginning, the numbers could easily have discouraged me, but I didn’t let them. We see many new bloggers show up, write a few posts, and vanish, which shows that many do get discouraged. But there is hope.

In my case, I just passed 20,000 views and 2,000 followers recently. Over the course of the first month or even the first few months, there was no reason to expect that I’d reach these numbers in a little over a year. Things can improve. There are reasons to expect improvement, which I will describe later in this post.

About Marketing

I don’t blog to market. I blog because I love writing, I’m thrilled to be part of a revolutionary time in the publishing industry that offers much more freedom, and I see thousands of authors taking the indie approach.

At first I strongly loathed the concept of marketing. But I became increasingly curious about it as I realized that it’s not really about advertising or salesmanship. I discovered that this crazy concept we call marketing can be a means of sharing your passion with others.

I’ve become passionate about this perspective of marketing. I enjoy studying ways that marketing can help you share ideas that you have a passion for without seeming like advertising or sales. Traditional textbooks approach marketing like a business. Many people in the marketing world who are most qualified to discuss the underlying principles also view marketing with regard to business.

But I’m a writer who, like thousands of indie authors, doesn’t view writing as a business, but as an art. Sometimes it’s handy to think about the business side, but when I write, I want to feel like an artist. I can motivate myself to write when I feel this way. Similarly, I can’t motivate myself to market thinking of it in a business sense. But I can put time, effort, and thought into marketing when I view it as an art.

Marketing can be viewed as an art. You can be creative with it. You can market to share ideas that you’re passionate about, rather than market to stimulate sales. The end goal might be the same, but how you feel about what you’re doing is different in each case, and the distinction matters. It affects your motivation, your confidence, the passion you show in interactions, how easily you give up, and more.

Again, I don’t blog to market my books. I blog because I love to write and blogging lets me do that. I blog to connect with other writers, and have made some good blogging friends and connections this way. I blog because I see thousands of other indie authors who I feel might benefit from my perspective on marketing. It’s easy to get discouraged in the publishing world. I hope a few of my posts provide a little encouragement.

In the Beginning

My first trip to WordPress was somewhat embarrassing. I actually joined WordPress in May of 2011. I signed up, did one quick post called “A New Kind of Word Puzzle,” and vanished into thin air. The post consists of one paragraph describing puzzle books that I coauthored. It’s nothing more than self-promotion and doesn’t read well.

It had 3 views the entire month of May, zero likes, and zero comments.

I could delete this post, but I leave it there as a reminder. That’s my experience with trying this the wrong way.

From May, 2011 thru November, 2012 (that’s 1.5 years), I didn’t make a single new post.

In December, 2012, I tried a second time. I posted “Customer Book Reviews – Can’t Live With ’em, Can’t Live Without ’em.” As of this morning, this post still has only 5 likes and zero comments. If you’re one of the 5 and reading this post over a year later… wow, you deserve an award. 🙂 There were 6 views of this post in December, 2012, and it’s now been viewed a whopping 7 times.

This post was, I felt, a huge improvement over my Hello, World post on word puzzles. It relates to writing and publishing, the same theme as I adopt today.

My next two posts didn’t fair much better, but I finally received a couple of comments. I started to get a few followers. It was very slow: a few views, a few likes, a few follows. By few, I mean like 3 to 5. Few. It can be really tough starting out. I felt like my posts were helpful.

I felt, as many writers can relate, that it was easier to sell a book on Amazon than it was to get discovered on WordPress. In fact, it took several months of active blogging before my average daily views finally exceeded my average daily sales. The author who starts blogging with the intention of marketing a book could get really discouraged by this observation. Fortunately, I wasn’t blogging to market my books, so this never concerned me.

On January 5, 2013, I had the inspiration for one of my favorite posts of mine, “Reading & Writing with Passion.” Some other bloggers apparently liked this post, too, as it received some comments, a reblog, and a couple of pingbacks. This post had 39 views that month. That was huge for one of my first handful of posts.

Meanwhile, you check out your Reader or Freshly Pressed and discover blogs with hundreds of thousands of views and posts with hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. The grass isn’t just greener on the other side—it’s made out of 24-karat gold.

It Should Start Slowly

Wouldn’t it be great to achieve instant success? (Nope. It would be easy, but not great. You wouldn’t appreciate it at all. You wouldn’t feel like you earned it.)

Whether you would like it to take off instantly or not, a blog is a seed that you plant, nurture, and grow. It starts out buried in the mud. After several weeks, you might see a tendril poke through the surface. If you watch closely for several days, it might seem to get a fraction of an inch taller. Months later, when you see the first sign of a leaf, you jump for joy. Many blogs get planted, watered for a short while, and abandoned.

And that’s the way it should be, to an extent.

Your blog is new. You don’t have a preexisting fan base to find your blog in the Reader or get your post by email. You’re struggling to get discovered.

You’re discovering other blogs. You’re interacting with other bloggers. You’re hoping to get discovered. But many of those bloggers have hundreds of followers. Some are waiting to see if you’ll be a regular, or just one of the many passing followers hoping for nothing more than a reciprocal follow. Those who do visit your blog see that you’re brand spanking new: They’re waiting to see more content, to see if you’ll be here for the long-haul, and to see if you have enough posts that will interest them. They already have a very full Reader, so they’re selective about adding new followers.

The numbers game doesn’t help. You start thinking things like… I’m posting 3 times per week… Blogging 1 hour per day… Typing 3000 words per week in addition to my book… Getting 2 new followers per week… Getting 6 views per day… Getting 4 likes per post. At 2 followers per week, it will take a year to reach a mere 100 followers. At 6 views per day, active blogging for a whole year will give you a mere 2000 views.

But while blogging starts out slowly, there is much potential for improvement. I started out with very slow numbers.  Yet I just passed 20,000 views and 2,000 followers after about 14 months of active blogging.

Blogging Potential

Everyone is different, but for most bloggers stats do improve significantly over long periods of time.

Your numbers probably won’t be identical to mine, but if you’re starting out, the growth of my numbers and those of many other bloggers may offer hope.

In January, 2013, I was getting just a handful of views and likes per post and follows per week. Slowly, over the course of months, this turned into dozens and then dozens more. Now, I have more than 100 views on my blog almost every day, even if I don’t post anything new. I usually get a couple dozen or more likes of my posts within the first couple of days. I get several new followers each week. Let me take a moment to shout THANK YOU to everyone who has been even a small part of this.

That’s a huge improvement, but I’ve only been actively blogging for a year and I’m still a small fish in a big pool. There are many bloggers getting hundreds of views per day, hundreds of likes per post, and who have over a hundred thousand followers. No matter how well you do, you can always find someone else who seems to be doing much better.

But I don’t blog for the numbers. If I did, I probably would have been one of the many bloggers who give up quickly and never return. I’m just sharing my numbers to possibly give some newbies a little hope.

One of the coolest things that happened to me was receiving an email from WordPress that one of my posts, “Once Upon a Time,” a poem made exclusively out of clichés, was being Freshly Pressed. Wow, they picked little ol’ me. They said I would be getting a lot more traffic at my blog, and they weren’t kidding. As of now, this single post has been viewed 1659 times. It has 167 comments (mostly clichés; these are among my favorite comments to read), 342 likes, and dozens of reblogs. I had my record number of views for a single day, 432, and received hundreds of followers during this period.

A blog can grow significantly over a long period of time, even if it might seem to do so very slowly. Several factors may help your blog grow:

  • A gradual increase in your following means a few more people reading your blog in the Reader or by email. Some followers are just hoping for a follow-back, and some followers are outside of your target audience. But as your following grows, your real following grows with it.
  • Discovery takes time. As you regularly interact with fellow bloggers and establish new connections, your blog will get discovered more. Not everyone will like your blog. Some will offer support, but won’t be in your target audience. But as your blog gets discovered more, your blog will grow. If you post a link to your blog from your books and other parts of your online platform, this will aid in discoverability.
  • It takes time to build relevant content and for the content to get discovered. If you post content that interests your target audience, it may eventually start to attract your target audience. Some posts get discovered through keyword searches through search engines. If you succeed in writing a few posts that get discovered a few times externally every day, this brings new people from your target audience outside of your blog-world to your blog. This is the idea behind a content-rich website. What starts out as a simple blog can grow into a content-rich website with material that will interest your target audience. This helps you share your passion with others. Your “target audience” is a wonderful group of people who share your passion.
  • The more you read other blogs and interact with other bloggers, the more you learn. You get ideas for how you might make your effective use of your blog. Your posts tend to improve over time. The appearance of your blog changes. You start to explore new features on WordPress. You have more content (i.e. all those posts you’ve written) to attract interest when your blog is discovered. Your most recent posts may be better than your old posts, helping you attract more interest.
  • You may expand, feeding your WordPress posts into Facebook and Twitter (but don’t cross-feed between Facebook and Twitter or you’ll get double or triple posts). Even if you don’t plan to make much use of Twitter or Facebook, this offers potential followers another way of following you. Some people prefer other forms of social media to WordPress. Let them follow you via their favorite platforms. If you do make use of other forms of social media, some of the people you reach over there will discover your blog that way.
  • The more posts you write, the better your chances of writing a magical post that goes viral. It can happen to you.

More than Just a Blog

Blogging isn’t about marketing.

There is so much here at WordPress:

  • There are many wonderful bloggers to interact with. Many of us feel that the interactions are the best part of the blogging experience.
  • There is so much wonderful material to read. Browsing through your Reader or Freshly Pressed is better than any magazine, in my opinion, and it’s free.
  • The WordPress community can be very supportive. This can be part of your support network.
  • WordPress abounds in creativity. It’s fun and inspiring.

In addition, your blog can be more than just a blog. It can also function as a content-rich website. This is the latest trend in marketing. The hope is to attract people from your target audience beyond your blog by posting relevant content. But I don’t think of this in a business sense. I see it as a means to share your passion with others. I see designing and growing your website as an art form. I don’t think of it as marketing in the usual sense of the word.

Visualize what your blog can be and work toward that. Enjoy it. Don’t focus on the stats, which can deceive and discourage you. Think positively.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Feb 6 2014

Amazon Customer Reviews—Simple Survey

Reviews 3

I’m curious how you, as a reader, feel about customer reviews at Amazon. I made this simple survey hoping to find out.

Please answer how you feel as a reader (not as an author).

This survey is just for informational purposes only.

Here is your chance to review the review system. 🙂

Pros:

  • You can learn about experiences that other customers have had with the product.
  • The number of reviews give some indication of how much a product has been purchased.
  • Feedback often includes a variety of opinions to consider.
  • You get to express your opinion about products where thousands of other shoppers can read it.
  • Critical reviews can help to prevent the sale of products that really aren’t fit for sale (though returns and complaints could achieve the same outcome).
  • Honest customer feedback has the opportunity to determine the success of a product.

Cons:

  • Opinions are often contradictory, making it a challenge to judge what to believe.
  • The system can be abused, both with favorable and critical reviews (though Amazon has made it much more difficult to do this compared to a couple of years ago).
  • There are sometimes spiteful remarks in the review section. This is one feature that seems to contradict Amazon’s focus on creating a positive shopping experience.
  • Customers aren’t required to either buy or use a product in order to review it.
  • Reviews can be posted anonymously. This is a pro in terms of internet security, but leaves room for occasional reviews that abuse the spirit of the review system.
  • Some external advertising services require a minimum number of reviews and average star rating, providing an incentive to recruit favorable reviews rather than encouraging reviews to come about naturally.

Overall:

  • Do you feel it’s beneficial, as a reader, to have customer reviews on the product page? That is, do the pros outweigh the cons?
  • Do you like the comments, the ratings, or both?
  • Do you feel that you could improve the customer review system? If so, how?

Vote:

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Feb 5 2014

What Is the Value of a Book?

Value 2

It’s interesting to compare the value of a book to other products:

  • Suppose you’re thirsty and decide to buy a bottle of water. If you’re lucky, you might get a bottle for 99 cents (plus tax!); you might spend $2 or $3. A few minutes later, your bottle is empty. Is an eBook that provides hours of entertainment worth just the same?
  • At lunchtime, you might grab some fast food for about $5. Maybe not the best meal, but it’s quick and relatively cheap. You gulp it down in a few minutes and it gets you through the day. Which is worth more—the meal or a good book?
  • Remember the last time you went out for a movie. Were you able to get a ticket for under $10? Did you double or triple your expense with popcorn, soda, and candy? When the movie was over, did anyone say that the book was better? It’s funny how many people say that the book is better than the movie, but spend more money watching the movie.
  • The next time you spend $50 on a date, ask yourself if the date turned out to be better than several good books.
  • How much money would you spend for the chance to ride in a spaceship? You don’t have to spend a penny to enjoy the experience in a science fiction book. Now that’s a bargain.
  • You can experience the lifestyles of the rich and famous or travel just about anywhere for the price of a pizza, simply buy reading a book.
  • Learn how to do something new, take a vacation from the monotony of life, or live a fairy tale. The experience is priceless. The book that provides it is exceedingly affordable.

If you enjoy a book and feel that it’s worth much more than the price you paid, leave a tip:

  • Have you ever left a tip for table service when the service wasn’t all that good? Have you ever not left a review for a book that you enjoyed? If you answered “Yes” to both questions, how do you reconcile this?
  • If you find a new restaurant or business that you like, you tell your friends, right? What if you discover a book that you enjoy? Do you share that, too?
  • There are many ways to help support an author whose book you enjoy: Write a review at Amazon, tell your friends, like the author’s Facebook page, mention the book online and what you liked about it, contact the author to deliver a simple thank-you, like the author’s page at Amazon, click the link to be notified of the author’s new releases in the top right corner of the author page at Amazon, rate or review the book at Goodreads, or join a fan club, for example. Authors appreciate any support at all, no matter how little.

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Feb 3 2014

Tags for Dialogue and how to use them

Check out my guest blog at Jade’s Jungle. Thank you, Jade, for this opportunity. 🙂

Feb 2 2014

If Reading Were a Spectator Sport…

Just Read It

Imagine if reading were a big-time spectator sport like boxing or football:

  • Nerds would be the jocks.
  • The most popular slogan would be, “Just read it.”
  • Common advice would include, “Keep your eye on the text.”
  • Franchise teams would have names like the Chicago Verbs, Denver Hyphens, Los Angeles Chapters, Mississippi Twains, Dallas Texters, London Haiku, and Philadelphia Lyrical Wonders.
  • Fans would come to the big event shirtless and with words written across their chests and cheeks.
  • Every tail-gating party would feature poetry recitations.
  • The only injuries trainers would need to attend to would be eye soreness and backaches.
  • Close plays would be shown again in slow motion on Instant Readplay.
  • The umpire would shout, “Read Words,” at the beginning of every game.
  • The big game at the end of the season would be called the World Sentences.
  • Instead of people spending $100 to watch two guys beat their brains out for several minutes and 99 cents to read a book for many hours, thousands of spectators would pay hundreds of dollars to watch their favorite teams compete as readers for a few hours.
  • Participants would be called acathletes.
  • Acathletes would earn millions of dollars to show off their amazing reading skills.
  • Teens would dream of going on dates with the top acathletes.
  • Coaches would earn good money to teach valuable reading skills.
  • Publishers and bookstores would sponsor the teams, adding their logos to the jerseys.
  • Stores would sell expensive jerseys featuring authors, books, and acathletes.
  • At home people would watch the big event on giant e-reader screens.
  • Kids would spend their free time practicing their reading skills and would dream of becoming talented readers when they grow up.
  • People would think, “We sure have come a long way since the day of the gladiator.”

Copyright © 2014 Chris McMullen

Educators have permission to freely copy part or all of this list entitled “If Reading Were a Spectator Sport…” for non-commercial purposes in order to help promote the spirit of reading.

Feb 1 2014

Authorpreneur vs. Writing Artist

Authorpreneur

Authorpreneur

All authors—indie and traditionally published—are being labeled with this new term, authorpreneur.

This is easier to see for the indie author, who must not only write the book, but must also arrange the editing, formatting, cover design, publishing, and marketing. However, the term also applies to traditionally published authors, who write query letters and book proposals, still need to market their books, and have a better chance of getting published if they tailor the book to the needs of an audience.

There is a growing perception that an author must write and function like a businessperson in order to succeed as a writer. Publishers are in the business of writing: They want ideas that will sell. Even the indie author may perceive writing as a business, feeling that’s what it takes to sell books.

Writing Artist

Let’s look at the other extreme—the author who writes passionately without regard for sales. In the utter extreme, the author doesn’t write for an audience, but for his or her own reasons. This author is driven by passion, not business. Getting the book right, carrying out the author’s vision… this author cares for this more than sales. Yes, this author would like to share his or her passion. This author won’t give the book away for free because he or she wants the work to be valued, yet this author is driven by the art of writing, not the royalties.

Which Are You?

Most authors probably aren’t extreme authorpreneurs—focused solely on business—or extreme writing artists—completely disregarding the business aspect. You might feel like you fall somewhere in between, and presently you’re trying to gauge which way you lean and how far.

Would you like to write as a businessperson or as a writing artist?

Most authors feel that they must do one of the following:

  • Sell out, so to speak, writing for business rather than pleasure.
  • Write as an artist and then publish and market as a businessperson, sort of combining the two aspects.
  • Write purely for pleasure; don’t worry about the business side at all.

However, there is another important option that most authors don’t consider.

The Art of Success

You don’t have to turn your art into a business. Instead, you can turn the business into an art.

Here’s what I mean: View marketing not as a business strategy, but as a means of sharing your passion with others. Put your imagination into it and carry out your marketing as an artist. Just like you write with passion as an artist, find a way to feel like an artist when you market your work and become passionate about marketing as a way to share your writing with readers.

It’s a matter of perspective. Consider the following definitions.

Perspective

book

  • business: a product designed to create profit.
  • art: ideas fueled by passion and crafted by a wordsmith.

cover design

  • business: a tool that helps direct traffic to your book’s product page.
  • art: a reflection of your work that helps readers find what you so passionately wrote.

editing

  • business: reshaping an idea to sell better.
  • art: perfecting the art and craftsmanship to get it right.

formatting

  • business: improving the design of a book to attract more customers.
  • art: visually complementing the beauty of the writing.

marketing

  • business: strategies for delivering the product to the target audience.
  • art: motivating yourself to share your passionate creation with others.

Readers, too

As a reader, would you rather read a book that was written for an audience and designed to sell or would you rather read a book that was fueled by passion and shared passionately?

Of course, the question is never put like this. However, as a reader you do buy books. When you buy books that were written and published under a business model, you support the perception that writing should be a business. When you buy books that were written by artists and craftsmen, you support the perception that writing should be an art or craft.

The choice is yours. Each purchase counts as a vote.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

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Feb 1 2014

CreateSpace Royalty Math

list price

CreateSpace Royalties

When you self-publish a book with CreateSpace, you set your own list price and your Amazon royalty is based on the list price that you set. In this way, you have the freedom to determine your own royalty rate.

Unfortunately, the formula that CreateSpace provides to calculate royalties for Amazon sales is a little roundabout:

CS share 2

(For a more direct formula, see the section below entitled “Amazon Royalty.”)

CreateSpace’s share is the sales channel percentage (40% of the list price for Amazon sales) minus the author cost. The author cost includes two parts: the fixed charge of the book plus a per-page charge. The fixed charge also depends on the page count (add one page if needed to make an even page count):

  • For black-and-white interiors with up to 108 pages, the fixed charge is $2.15.
  • For black-and-white interiors with more than 108 pages, the fixed charge is $0.85 plus 1.2 cents per page.
  • For color interiors with up to 40 pages, the fixed charge is $3.65.
  • For color interiors with more than 40 pages, the fixed charge is $0.85 plus 7 cents per page.

Example: Consider a book with a black-and-white interior with 200 pages. The author cost for US sales is $0.85 + 200 x $0.012 = $0.85 + $2.40 = $3.25. CreateSpace’s share for US Amazon sales is $3.25 + 40% of the list price. If you set the list price at $8.95, CreateSpace’s share is $3.25 + $8.95 x 0.4 = $3.25 + $3.58 = $6.83. In this case, your royalty would be $8.95 – $6.83 = $2.12.

Fortunately, there are a couple of simpler alternatives to this calculation. However, you need to know your page count. To do the calculations by hand, you’ll still have to determine the author cost first.

Royalty Calculator

However, CreateSpace does provide a convenient royalty calculator: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content6:royaltyCalculator. It’s worth playing around with it.

While the royalty calculator is fun and handy, there are actually a couple of formulas that may still be useful.

Amazon Royalty

Here is a more direct formula for determining your Amazon royalty for CreateSpace paperbacks:

royalty

Example: You set the list price at $7.95 and the author cost is $2.50. Then your Amazon royalty is $7.95 x 0.6 — $2.50 = $4.77 — $2.50 = $2.27.

One thing you can see from this formula is the effect of changing your list price. Once you have a tentative list price in mind, consider raising or lowering your list price by one dollar. For every dollar you add to the list price, you would earn 60 more cents per book; for every dollar you subtract from your list price, you would lose 60 cents from your royalty.

This can be an important figure. For example, suppose you were thinking about pricing your book at $4.95 and had determined that your royalty would be 40 cents. By raising your list price to $5.95, your royalty would be $1.00 instead. You would have to sell 2.5 times more books at $4.95 compared to $5.95 for the lower price to pay off. For every person willing to pay $5.95, do you really see 2.5 or more people walking away who would instead buy the book if the price were $4.95? This is unlikely, unless you happen to be in a unique market where most of the similar titles are selling for less than $5.95.

Let’s look at a second example. Suppose you’re planning to set the list price at $9.95, for which you’ve determined that the royalty would be $3. If you raise the price to $10.95, your royalty would be $3.60. In this case, if you can sell 20% or more books at $9.95 compared to $10.95, it would be more profitable to go with $9.95. It’s just a dollar less, but looks like a one-digit number instead of a two-digit number of dollars. Here, I’d be inclined to try $9.95. You could also consider $8.95, for which the royalty would be $2.40. Most customers who would be willing to pay $8.95 would probably also be willing to spend $9.95, so the lower price might not draw the extra 25% of sales needed to make it pay off—unless, for example, there are many similar books selling for $8.95.

Royalty Rate

Something else you can do is pick the royalty rate that you’d like to make, like 25%, and see what the list price would be. I’m not saying you should set your list price this way, just that it’s worth exploring.

The following formula tells you what list price to set in order to make a given royalty rate. For this to work, express the royalty rate as a decimal. For example, write 25% as 0.25 (just divide the percentage by 100). Remember, this is for Amazon royalties for CreateSpace paperbacks.

list price

Example: The author cost is $3.00 and you wish to earn a 25% royalty rate. Set your list price according to $3.00 / (0.6 — 0.25) = $3.00 / (0.35) = $8.57. This gives you a royalty of $2.14, which is 25% of the list price, $8.57.

Research

You shouldn’t just base the list price on the royalty amount or royalty rate that you’d like to make. You should look at these numbers, but they alone shouldn’t dictate your list price.

It would be wise to research similar books on Amazon. Don’t just compare prices of books similar to yours in terms of topic, but also compare the page count, the depth and range of content, the quality of writing, and other factors that customers are likely to explore when shopping. If your book is noticeably below or above the typical range for comparable books, it may greatly deter sales.

Underpricing doesn’t always create more sales, and even if it does, it takes many more sales to generate more royalty (e.g. you might make more money selling 200 books at $8.99 than you would selling 250 books at $6.99). Many customers believe that you get what you pay for, which is why lowering the price doesn’t always improve sales frequency. Quality of content, good packaging, and effective marketing are often more important than price, provided that the book isn’t significantly underpriced or overpriced compared to similar books.

Another consideration is the Expanded Distribution channel. If you have a large page count or color interior, for example, adding the Expanded Distribution channel (which is now free) raises the minimum possible list price. Opting out of the Expanded Distribution allows you to set a lower list price. For most books, you should be able to set a fair price and draw a healthy royalty with the Expanded Distribution; the exception usually applies to books with large page counts or color interiors, where comparable books have competitive prices.

Think of your CreateSpace paperback as a trade paperback, not as a mass market paperback, when comparing prices of traditionally published books.

Finally, note that Amazon often sets a sale price below the list price, offering customers a discount. This is good for you because CreateSpace still pays the royalty based on the list price, not based on the sale price; if anything, the discount will probably help sales, not hurt them.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.