Category: Marketing

new eBook pricing – an experiment

Speaking of mood swings and mental instability, here’s another post about my books – with a totally different perspective from the last one.  After reading a post about the results another author has had with experimental pricing, and considering the matter, generally and in terms of my recent frustrations, I’ve decided to try a similar pricing scheme.  So, at least for the remainder of the summer, the eBook versions of my books will no longer be priced according to parity of margins.

I’ve reduced the price of the Kinde versions of all my eBooks, and then all the Smashwords versions of my eBooks, to under $2 each.  Forget What You Can’t Remember & Lost and Not Found, for only $1.99 each.  Dragons’ Truth & More Lost Memories for only $1.75 each.  And on the Kindle, each of the first three books of the Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past series for only $1.50 each.

The Kindle versions, of course, can only be read on the Kindle.  Sorry.  The versions at Smashwords can be read on most any device – your PC’s browser or word processor (.txt, .rtf, & .pdf), the Kindle and other Mobipocket-compatible eReaders, Palm devices (.pdb), Sony eReaders (.lrf, etc.), iPhone/iPodTouch (via Stanza)… pretty much anything.  And yes, for reasons I’ve stated clearly before, there are still free versions available for those of you who either 1) can’t afford to pay and/or 2) refuse to pay.

This is an experiment. Tell your friends. Twitter about it. Link to it. Set up an affiliate account at Smashwords & take a cut of every sub-$2 sale.  ($0.15 here, $0.18 there, repeat hundreds or thousands of times & it adds up!)  Copy it.  Compete with it.  Blog about how you think I’m devaluing my content. Blog about how you think I’m building my reader base. Blog about how you think Amazon’s 65% cut is terrible and I’m a fool for even publishing a kindle version.  Or ignore it.  If unit sales increase over the next couple of months, which is what I’m hoping for, great! I’ll keep the prices low.  (Sub-$2 low? Maybe…)  If, by the end of the summer, unit sales haven’t changed (or haven’t changed enough that my significantly lower per-eBook take gets close to my current -relatively low- sales numbers), I’ll put them back up.  Maybe put them up to a $9.99 price point & see if “fitting in” increases sales.  Maybe split the difference.

So give one (or all) of my books a try.  The prices are low enough that it’s worth the risk of not liking my writing – but if you like to think, I think you’ll like my books.

Update: In super news, it looks like Amazon updated the list prices of my books without updating the actual “kindle prices”… ie:

No idea if/when they’ll get this corrected, but I’ll keep an eye on it. Theoretically, this means that if you buy one of my books for your kindle right now, you pay ~$7 and I get ~$0.60. Wheee!

doubts about my writing

I never used to have doubts about my writing. Not real doubts. I knew I wasn’t writing big-L Literature, the kind that stuffy academics write theses about and debate the meaning of for centuries. I also know I am certainly more than able to write above the level of a lot of mainstream, popular (populist?) authors – better than most of what makes up bestseller lists, for sure. So many books that sell so many copies are so bad… I never used to have doubts about my writing.

Not until I began getting abusive / vitriolic / 1-star & 2-star / two-line “reviews” for my books more easily than I can make sales, I didn’t.

For every supportive, helpful reader who actually takes the time to write a blog post or post a review that’s actually composed of complete sentences and which displays a clear grasp of the English language, there seem to be two half-incoherent slams someplace else.  Then there’s the occasional coherent review by someone who clearly read the book & just didn’t like it.  Fine, alright, that’s easier to deal with – though it certainly contributes to my newfound doubts.  These few low-star reviews are often the only ones on a particular site -the people who read/listened-to my books and didn’t hate them don’t seem to bother rating them & if there are people that love them, they show up less than haters- and it sometimes gives my books a “1-star average” right out of the gate.

So I’m beginning to have doubts.  Is my writing good enough?  What can I do to improve it?  Should I be writing at all?  Why can’t I seem to “engage” my audience / build a “community” / get much feedback at all?  What about the idea that every single one of these “bad” reviews I’ve seen is by someone who clearly a) didn’t understand the book, or b) wanted it to be something I didn’t want it to be?  Should I try to have a thicker skin?  Should I subvert all my intentions, and perhaps even my passion for writing, to appeal to genre readers / mainstream audiences?  Should I give up on writing what I want, the way I want, just so my books are easier to market?  Easier to understand?  Easier to blurb?  Should I disingenuously start “participating” in book blogs & book communities I have no real interest in, in hopes that doing so will net me more readers & better reviews?

Maybe my writing really is bad. Maybe my narration (of the audio versions of my books) really is awful.  Maybe my books aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on or the space they take up on your iPod or your eReader.  I get a surprising percentage of returns of the kindle versions of my books – though I don’t really know what behaviour that reflects, on such a device.  Maybe I should give up, pack it all in, turn everything off at Lightning Source, and just do art.  Maybe I should get a ‘day job’.  (Maybe I should slit my wrists.)

It’s not a good week / month / et cetera for me, right now. The depression, right now, is making basic functionality fairly difficult.  I’m not sleeping right, except when I don’t want to be.  I’m eating too much, except when I have no appetite for days.  I even, finally, fell behind schedule on the podcast.  The first 77 episodes were all on time, then episodes 78 & 79 were a day late, each.  Today … today I definitely need to edit the next episode.  Tomorrow’s episode.  I don’t want to be behind, any more.  I don’t want to be a terrible author.  I don’t want to be hated and/or ignored.  Right now, I feel that way.  Right now, I feel like shit.  Not engaged in Phoenix’s “Art community.”  Not engaged in the “Podiobooks community,” not really.  & I don’t really feel I know how to engage.  I don’t know how to be part of a community.  & when I think I’ve seen a glimpse of the how, it feels like … well, that’s not something I want to do.  In the same way you probably don’t want to have hundreds of cockroaches crawling all over you & under your clothes & into your mouth, I get squeamish at the thought of forcing myself to do “community.” I get nauseous about the way professional marketers do their work.  I recoil from the idea of creating what will sell instead of creating what I’m inspired & driven to create.

And this post, this isn’t cohesive, it doesn’t come to a point.  I’d probably cut most of this out of a book.  Actually, based on how the book I’m working on now is going, I’d probably throw the whole thing out & try to start again from scratch.  I’m not blind to the fact that this post lacks focus, lacks a central idea, lacks a resolution.  I’m also aware of the fact this this “blog” is really just a personal journal.  This is my thoughts & feelings as I’m thinking them and as I’m feeling them.  It’s not a marketing tool.  I’m not trying to win keyword wars & earn money from ads.  This is a journal.  This is me.

T-Shirts, now online

I need to re-take those photos… well, probably get some photos of the shirts being worn/modeled by people, really… but I’ve finally got the T-Shirts I’ve been screen printing listed on wretchedcreature.com.  I’ve decided that, for now, Etsy is not for me.  They only integrate with Paypal for payments, right now.  Paypal has stolen hundreds of dollars from me in the past, and attempted to steal more than that, again, and if I have the choice to avoid doing business with them, and with eBay -their parent company- I do.  (I still refuse to sign up for Skype.)  Instead, I use Google Checkout for sales of my books on modernevil.com.  It’s now also integrated into wretchedcreature.com – at least for the shirts.  After spending some time at the post office & on USPS.com, I’ve decided that I’m not going to overcomplicate my shipping fees – $3 per item is close enough to what most of my products cost to ship domestically, and too low, if anything, rather than too high.

But you want to see the shirts, yes?  Just follow these links (really, you could just follow one of them, and then use the navigation on that site from there – no need to come back here):

I’ll also have all these shirts available with me in a variety of sizes at the Phoenix First Friday Art Walk, every month, and I also accept credit cards in person.  (Though I prefer cash.)

Contest, contest, who’s got my contest?

As you may already be aware, my last contest (Tell me what Forget What You Can’t Remember is about, and win a prize!) didn’t reach as many people as I’d have liked, didn’t have as broad a response as I’d have liked, and didn’t give me as many well-thought-out answers to the question as I’d have liked.  There was a lot not to like about how it went.  Since that time, I’ve been thinking about what to do about it.  I’ve only recently responded to the two winners, letting them know they’ve won and requesting their information so I can send them their free books.

Now, I’m going to try to turn something disappointing into something a little bit better.  I’m going to change the nature of the contest, and the reward.  The idea now is to have an open-ended opportunity for anyone who reads my books and wants to try another.  Anyone, at any time, for any of my books, who can provide something to help me sell my books that’s better than what I’m currently using can win a free paperback of one of my books of their choice.

If that’s a better answer to the question “What is this book about?” – great!  If that’s better marketing copy, a better “elevator pitch,” a blurb from another author that I can put on the cover & the website, or even an entirely new cover image – wonderful!  If that’s an insightful blog post, or a detailed review (not necessarily positive), or a thoughtful analysis of character, theme, plot (or lack thereof) – I look forward to it!  Be creative!  Write a spin-off or sequel, a short story in the same universe, a song or a poem, shoot a video, or create any other derivative work (automatically allowed for non-commercial uses, since all my novels are available under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license) – and you’re a shoe-in!

As before, simply email your entries to me at teel@modernevil.com – perhaps containing your entry, or perhaps linking to your blog / a review / a video – and I’ll consider all entries using my personal judgement as to whether you’re doing a better job marketing my book than I am (which shouldn’t be hard – Marketing is not one of my strengths).  Every time I receive an entry that I believe will help sell books, I’ll send out a signed paperback copy of one of my books (their choice) to the entrant, and I’ll get my marketing efforts updated to incorporate the new materials.  So go, read or listen to one of my books, and think about how you might let someone else know about them.

Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary: You can read the eBook or listen to the podcast for free. Officially open to US Residents only – but only because I don’t want to deal with shipping books internationally. You can still enter from anywhere and, if you’re willing to help me with international shipping, get your free book. Winners will be selected by whatever method I want – probably I’ll just pick the entries I think are best, but I’m not ruling out asking people on Twitter or some such. Contest runs until I don’t feel like it anymore – which probably means it never ends, since when wouldn’t I want to sell more books?  By submitting an entry you are granting me an unlimited, nonexclusive right to use your entry and any derivations thereof for any purpose, including commercial – ie: the point of having better marketing material is to be able to get more people to read and/or buy my book, so I need the right to use the best entries to that end.  If you create a derivative work & would like to license it for commercial use (ex: you want to be able to make money by writing a sequel and selling it yourself), we can talk. I’m open to that, too.

wishing I hadn’t renamed my blog, right now

Calming down.

I’m calming down.

I get too upset, too easily.  Little problems sometimes feel very big.  Little frustrations, little failures, sometimes feel very big.  I can get very emotional.  A little while ago, a few words, a realization, a revelation, a simple email, got me so upset, so angry, that my vision literally went blurry.  A few words.  A small mistake.  A communication failure.  And anger.

I’m trying to calm down, though.  I’m calming down.  Nothing can be done.  Anger can do no good.  Emotional turmoil can not help, here.  Nothing can.  Too late.

Here we are: It’s May 1st, it’s supposed to be the deadline for my contest.  You remember the one, where I ask people to tell me what Forget What You Can’t Remember is about, and the winners get free books & maybe their name in my next novel?  Timed to coincide with the Podiobook’s completion two weeks ago, when hundreds of people would suddenly be able to consider and answer the question.  Plus, by using a mid-roll ad, I could have a quick announcement of the contest inserted into the Intro of every episode of FWYCR downloaded from Podiobooks.com.  Starting three weeks ago, a couple of chapters before the final chapter was posted, the ads were supposed to be started.  This would have let everyone who was partially done with the book know about the contest, and the ad would have continued after it was complete -which is a trigger for a lot of people to go dl the rest of the book, and for many who like to listen to an entire book at once to begin- for the two weeks leading up to today.  I had also hoped that this would spur people who might not be keeping up with new episodes to try to get through the rest of the book in time to enter the contest, and that if people started thinking about answering the question 3 weeks ago they might have a better chance of coming up with a good answer by today.  In addition, my contest was announced over at Podioracket (I recorded an audio insert for them, similar to the one that was to be inserted mid-roll at podiobooks.com), and I blogged about it and tweeted it and talked about it with friends.

Yet I’ve only received two responses so far.  Two.  Two?  Dozens of people have bought the paperback.  At least 176 people have downloaded all 31 episodes from Podiobooks.com (and over a thousand have at least got the first chapter).  Something like three thousand chapters should have had a reminder of the contest in them.  Is my work so seriously a failure to engage an audience that only two people were willing to send an email to try to get a free book?

It’s hard to say.

See, the email that got me so upset was one that let me know that the person over at Podiobooks.com that I trusted to turn on the ad-insert … never turned it on.  Maybe it was my fault for not being clear enough, or for putting too many thoughts/words into a single email.  Maybe it was my fault for not checking sooner to be sure that they’d followed through.  Maybe it was their fault for not doing it.  Turns out it doesn’t matter whose fault it is – as is generally true, placing blame can’t alter the outcome of events.  Deciding whose fault we think an error is doesn’t go back and run the ad in three thousand episodes.  Nothing does.  Nothing can go back and make the hundred and fifty plus people -who were actually engaged enough with my book to keep current with the episodes and/or to get the whole book as soon as it completed- aware of the contest.

I could extend the contest.  2/3 of the people who have at least downloaded two chapters haven’t finished downloading the rest of the book.  I could extend the contest, make up a new version of the mid-roll ad, and hope that some of the people still listening will bother to answer.  That’s certainly a possibility.

Instead, I’ll probably just send books to the two people who entered, put both their names in my next novel, and say ‘fuck all’ to running contests.  And to relying on other people to do what they say they’ll do.  And to the thought that I could ever build a fucking fan base.  I’m pretty sure I could name all my fans, right now, and count them up without running out of fingers.  I’ve been putting out books for five years, podcasting books for nearly a year, and I can’t get three people to send me an email to win a free book?

fuck all