Marketing – Page 5 – Teel McClanahan

Subscribing to middlemen

Over on Google+, I lamented briefly at not having a good option for offering pre-orders; last night I put in the order with LSI for the 50-copy Limited Edition hardcover print run for Never Let the Right One Go, and won’t be able to sell any of those copies until after they’re actually here (and signed and numbered and ready to ship). Payment services like PayPal (yech) and Google Checkout don’t technically allow pre-orders; you must not charge customers until your product is ready to ship (or shipped), or you violate the TOS.

Someone commented, asking, “Have you looked at http://backmybook.com/? It’s what Scott Sigler’s using — and Scott Sigler pushes preorder of his books pretty heavily in his podcasts.” This was my reply, and I thought it worth re-posting, here:

I never get past the front page, where it says they charge more per month than I earn from my books most months, just to set up a store, and double that to try to build a community around the books. You have to keep in mind I’ve not got lots of eager, paying customers: A clue is my recent Kickstarter – which I used as a way to sell pre-orders of this book, actually – which failed because I could only come up with 14 backers.

The pre-order system I’m looking for needs to be cost-effective at selling as few as half a dozen books. Really, any store I set up needs to be that way, right now. Last year I sold 26 paper books and 133 eBooks, or an average of just over 13 copies a month. That’s across all platforms and venues – I can’t afford any platform which costs more than the <$25/month I make in sales across all platforms (most months); even $10/month is really too much.

I sell more copies each year than the last, and for most titles each new book is more popular than the last – I’m building an audience, slowly but surely. (Last year an average of over 1,500 people/month downloaded my free eBooks, and a little over half as many downloaded my free audiobooks.) I’m in this for the long haul. In another five or ten years I expect to have passed the inflection point where my books sell enough copies that I can throw money at services like Back My Book and MyWrite, and where a signed numbered limited edition hardback release doesn’t take several years to sell 50 copies. (Which, frankly, is an optimistic outlook for Never Let the Right One Go, right now. Could take a decade.)
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This also precludes services for hosting/selling digital goods (there are several out there, most charge a minimum monthly fee) such as ZIPs of my audiobooks (without all the extra intros/outros/chatter that you get on podcasts), or eBooks. In fact, it also means I don’t have a business checking account, because the minimum monthly fees would cancel out half my monthly business (and the situation was much worse four years ago when I started doing this full time) – I still do everything through my personal accounts. As a general rule, if a service provider between me and my customers operates on a subscription model or on upfront costs, rather than piecemeal (per transaction costs), I can’t afford it. My business is not regular enough, yet.

As I keep posting, even the upfront costs of printing paper books (and the subscription-type costs of keeping them available for “market distribution”) no longer make sense to me; the 50-copy print run of Never Let the Right One Go could, potentially, wipe out this entire year’s revenues, if few copies sell. I don’t expect to create paper versions of my next 4 (planned) books, three of which are YA novels. By the end of this year, I’ll have cut off the “Market Distribution” for every single one of my (paper) books; the eBooks and audiobooks will still be everywhere, but the paper versions will only be available directly from modernevil.com. With any luck, this will help maintain my gradual, but steadily increasing, distance from losing money on every book, every year.

First FREE day for Untrue Tales… Book One, at Amazon

So, today (Saturday, April 28th, 2012), Untrue Tales… Book One is available for free in the Amazon Kindle store. I would love it if you would click over to Amazon and click the Buy button -even if you’ve already read it, or listened to it, or if you have no intention of reading it, or reviewing it- because everyone who “Buys” it helps increase its Amazon Sales Rank. It would be even better if you then read and reviewed it, but that’s not really the point of this FREE day; the point is to increase visibility for the title, and if you have an Amazon account, you can help. (If you’re reading this after 4/28/2012 and before 5/5/12 – it’ll be free again 5/4 and 5/5, so you’ll have another chance to help!) Here’s the book description, in case you actually want to know what it’s about before you click through:

High school Sophomore Trevor believes he’s got a rich and detailed imagination. When his wandering mind shows him visions of car-size insects, arcane rituals, and odd-looking people talking to other creatures who don’t seem human at all, Trevor doesn’t think it’s any different from his sexual fantasies, or his daydreams about what it would be like to know what the girls from school were really thinking. When an afternoon of such intense mental wandering proves to be a real out-of-body psychic experience, Trevor soon finds himself literally teleported into an unseen world of magic and Mentalism – the science of reading other people’s thoughts and memories he didn’t know he had a natural talent for.

Transferred to a school where they teach subjects ranging from the mathematics of magical ethics to the secret histories of the magical world, Trevor tries to fit in to a student body who believes his existence has been foretold by prophecy – and that he might cause the end of the universe as they know it. Some of the students, and even a few of the teachers, are willing to risk lives and their own ethical balance to stop Trevor from fulfilling his potential, while he just wants to get through his first day at a new school.

Add the menacing conspiracy of three dark figures -two of whom work at the school- and the fact that Trevor accidentally got a girl pregnant when he thought he’d only been fantasizing about her, plus a P.E. teacher who thrusts him into a game of dodgeball where Trevor has to quickly adapt to avoiding balls of fire, lightning, and worse, and the first book of Untrue Tales gets the series off to a potentially apocalyptic start.

Please, go to Amazon and “buy” Untrue Tales… Book One for FREE, today!

Update: The book peaked at about #40 in Contemporary Fantasy (2,250 overall)… as a free eBook… and has now, apparently, lost all visibility as its sales rank has reverted to only include paid copies? Perhaps this is a failed experiment. Alternatively, perhaps some of the people who “bought” it for free weren’t just my friends/family/contacts, and they’ll actually read it. And perhaps some of them will want to read more, and will buy the full Untrue Tales series… Incidentally, it only took 85 “free” buyers (78 Amazon, 7 Amazon.co.uk) to reach #40 in Contemporary Fantasy and #2,250 overall at Amazon. I wonder how many “sales” it would take to get into the top 10.

Never Let the Right One Go is nearing completion

I managed to finish recording the audio version of Never Let the Right One Go on Friday, finished updating the text, updated the InDesign version for the hardcover, did four or more passes over every page of the book to be sure it was ready to go to print, double-checked that I was happy (enough) with the dust jacket design, and uploaded the book to LSI – I should be getting a proof copy sometime this week. Then I also got the two eBooks ready (twice) and sent out updated copies to all the First Readers who never finished, and copies to my Beta Readers and a couple of book bloggers who expressed interest in reviewing the books (still looking for more book bloggers, if you can recommend any you think would be interested). I had to build/polish/test the eBooks twice because I was sending different versions as ARCs than I’ll be selling, later; I added a couple of chapters of the other book to the end of both Sophia and Emily, so readers who only bought one will (hopefully) want to go buy the other–but I didn’t need to include those preview chapters at the ends of the ARCs, since I knew I was sending both books to everyone getting the ARCs. Anyway, then I sent the “finished”/current versions of the eBooks to Apple, to get them set up for pre-order through the iBookstore – Apple is the only eBook retailer which allows me to do this; for Amazon, Smashwords, BN, et cetera, I have to upload the files on the “release date” and hope they get processed in a reasonable period of time (Amazon can take 2-3 days!).

Remaining to complete: I have to edit the rest of the two audiobooks; I’ve only done about 10% of the audio editing so far. I need to update the Book Trailer I created for the Kickstarter, to post when the book is actually available, and to point people to where they can buy the eBooks. I have to go over the proof copy very carefully and then either approve it or prepare corrections – and once approved and the 50-copy limited edition is ordered, I’ll have to sign and number every copy (and cut one page out of each copy, incidentally). I’m considering putting together a couple/few copies of the two audiobooks as a single audiobook-package of audio CDs; it would be 14 discs, and I’d have to charge at least $35 for it; it would also be a fair amount of work, and need to be done before Phoenix Comicon. I should probably also record several versions of audio promos for the books, to run on all my existing Podiobooks – I have no evidence that any ad I’ve ever run there has resulted in a single person spending a single dollar, but … I guess I just have to keep trying, eh?

There’s a stack of things I’ll need to do when the May 12th, 2012 release date rolls around, including uploading the eBooks everywhere, uploading the new Book Trailer, and updating a bunch of pages at modernevil.com to reflect that they’re out/available, and then there’s the “marketing” I’m “supposed” to do after that, to actually get people to be aware of the books’ existence… but the actual creation of the books is nearly complete, and that’s what I consider my real work. Then, over the following six months or so, I’ll also be podcasting the books on the Modern Evil Podcast, but since the whole thing will already be written, recorded, edited, and (probably) assembled, it’s just a matter of uploading the files and creating the posts. Which is good, because I really want to be working on my next 3-4 titles, and some art, too!

Never Let the Right One Go – Kickstarter not funded

The Kickstarter campaign for Never Let the Right One Go ended a few hours ago. There were $361 in pledges from 14 different backers, 10 of whom pledged $30 or more and wanted the limited-edition hardcover. Unfortunately, since the goal was $1000, no funds were collected, and none of those people (currently) have per-orders in place for the book. What I expect to do is post a backers-only update, when I have the books in hand, and offer the finished books to backers at the Kickstarter price. (Or the final price, plus shipping, whichever is lower.)

The main thing this Kickstarter campaign was meant to do, which it did quite successfully, was to gauge reader interest in my new books. As I said before, if a hundred or more people would have been willing to pay $30 for the hardcover, I wouldn’t want to have limited the edition to 50 copies. If 1,000 people wanted to buy the book, I’d certainly want to do an additional unlimited-edition (paperback) and also pay the LSI distribution fee, at least for the first year, getting the paperback on Amazon &c. for that huge audience’s friends. Likewise, if fewer than 50 people expressed interest (as has happened), then my planned limited edition of 50 copies is sufficient.

Interestingly, the Kickstarter campaign’s gauge of interest showed me something else: I had nearly double the number of backers, versus my last two Kickstarters. Half of the hardback-level backers were people who found the campaign on their own, browsing Kickstarter.com, and liked my project enough (not knowing me or my existing body of work, not following my links, my friends’ links, or any other thing extended from my online presence & social network) to pledge. This speaks well to the general-public appeal of the books, I believe. Perhaps the eBooks will, indeed, find an audience.

re: Printing the hardcover edition, when I take into account all the costs of producing a hardcover print run (setup, proof, printing, shipping, ISBNs, free copies for the photographers, et cetera), if I want to keep the pricing in line with my new scheme, and start at $25 or $30 a copy, and not lose money (presuming all copies eventually sell), I can’t realistically do an edition much smaller than 50 copies. In fact, I’ve been running and re-running the math, and if I follow my current/new pricing scheme, and if I start them at $25, and if I sell all 46 salable copies, my net profit will only be about $70 for the whole publication. If I start at $30, I can double that, and if I sell all 46 copies at $30 I can net roughly $457 of profit. My current estimate puts me at having spent between 1,000 and 1,250 working hours on these books by the time I’m done, not including the hours it’ll take over the years to actually sell them. Yet here I am, trying to decide between valuing my time at 6¢/hr or 11¢/hr, and feeling bad about having the audacity to suggest I might like to earn 38¢/hr for my efforts by standing fast to a single price for all copies of the signed, limited-edition hardcover.

Actually, technically, with the latest numbers, I can’t really afford to print the limited edition without putting my company in the red for the year… I’ll need to actually sell a bunch of copies to earn the difference between my early estimates and the actual numbers I’m getting now. And/or sell a few more pieces of art soon. Ack. Not to mention, the profits mentioned in the previous paragraph are on a per-title basis, not an overall-business basis, and do not take into account my overhead costs. Like, I keep thinking/wondering/hoping about how many copies I’ll sell at Phoenix Comicon, and how much money I’ll earn that way – but showing at Comicon costs me hundreds of dollars, dollars which have to come out of “profit”, one way or another. If I price to only earn $70 or even $140 on the full print run, even the best-case scenario of somehow selling out at Comicon wouldn’t actually be profitable, after overhead. I’m terrible at business, I guess.

Of course, there’s no good way to know how many people will buy the book (or the eBook; if the eBooks sell well, it takes a lot of pressure off the hardcover edition), regardless of venue. At the last two Comicons, I sold only a couple dozen books across all my titles, including very cheap books, each. My best-selling title (in paper) has sold fewer than 20 copies in two and a half years. If I were to guess, I’d say that probably 3 or 4 of the backers will follow through and actually buy the finished book, now that the Kickstarter has failed. I have no clue how it’ll do at Comicon: Probably either really well, or like a lead balloon. It would be foolish to expect to sell more than half the print run before the year is out, based on the data I have now. That many sales would cover my accounting underestimation, but then what?

I don’t know. I’m very frustrated, right now. I probably need to get some sleep. I was hoping I could work through more of this, and come to a better emotional point through logorrhea, but I still feel quite mixed up, and my eyes are begging to be shut. Expect another couple thousand words on this, and related topics I don’t want to even begin to write about tonight, soon.

Never Let the Right One Go – Kickstarter is live

The Kickstarter fundraiser for Never Let the Right One Go is now live and accepting pledges/backing/pre-orders. As I think I’ve covered (if not here, then on Google+), the initial art sales from my “Blank Canvas” Art Sale have been sufficient to cover the cost of printing a 50-copy hardcover print run of the flipbook containing both full books without putting my small business in the red this year. (I’m still looking to move the rest of my art; I’ve added an art+book reward tier to the fundraiser, and I’ll still gladly take any other reasonable offer. Email me!) This means that the pressure is off; if I don’t hit my $1k goal in the next 16 days, that’s okay – the book will still be published, and even the premium paper version of it will be created, regardless of the outcome of the fundraiser. No fear of emotional breakdowns, terrible stress, or feeling like my failure to make money represents a fundamental failure in the nature of my work and the quality of my creations. Well… maybe a little of that last one, considering all the compromises I’ve made to make these books more commercial…

Anyway, the point of the fundraiser is primarily an expression of optimism. I think these books have a chance of being very popular; my most popular and commercially successful books yet. I think there’s a chance that many more than 50 people will want to buy the premium paper version of the books. By putting this out there now, in this way, I can see before I finalize the size of the limited edition what size it ought to be. If there are a hundred, or several hundred, or several thousand people who want to buy the paper books but I only print 50, that’s a problem. If there are only a handful of people who want the books right away and I print 50, that’s no problem; I can find the extra copies’ readers later. (This is so much easier with eBooks – there are always exactly as many copies available as there are readers who want them.)

I’ve set the goal higher than my past Kickstarters for a few reasons, the biggest of which is that meeting this goal would mean Never Let the Right One Go is my first release to have paid for itself from book sales alone. (Well, barring art sales being high and book sales being low, which is an odd possibility.) The thousand dollars covers the printing cost of 50 copies, plus shipping, and maybe part of the cost of Mrs. Eaves (though I don’t feel bad about paying for that from the art-sale profits if I need to), but any less fails to. It’s a bigger expense because it’s a bigger/thicker book (two titles in one) than most of my past releases, and because it’s hardcover instead of softcover/paperback. I also have a general impression that Kickstarter fundraisers with goals larger than I’ve set before have a better overall response; like, if the goal is too small, potential backers maybe think you don’t actually need their support. Like, “What? $400? I spent that on shoes this weekend! If they don’t reach the goal, I’m sure they’ll be fine. $400 is nothing!” sigh. Except, it isn’t. Not to me.

I’m rambling a bit, I guess. Not sure what I meant to be posting about here, beyond the first sentence. Please take a look at the Kickstarter page, watch the video, tell your friends about it … back it, if you’ve any interest in the stories and can afford to. I’m sure I’ll post about this again, possibly more coherently.