Modern Evil Press – Page 17

Fuel for writing

So, I’ve been trying to work on Untrue Tales… Book Four for the last …month and a half or so, but not making much in the way of progress since Vegas. Part of this is to do with other distractions, priorities, and time-sinks in my life. Part of it has to do with procrastination, generally. I’ve certainly (as I said) been working through ideas for it, which is better than simply setting it aside and ignoring it. Alas, progress has been grindingly slow. Like, less than 1300 words in August slow.

I know that for Book One and Book Two (not to mention: Forget What You Can’t Remember, More Lost Memories, all versions of Lost and Not Found, and a good chunk of Dragons’ Truth) I got my most productive work done while spending time at a coffee shop all day, drinking overly-sweet coffee drinks. ((For Book Three, I wrote the bulk of the book in a single 60-hour session, in my bedroom, while using modafinil to stay awake and only white tea to drink.)) While in Vegas I had 3 days to write. The first day I tried writing in the hotel room, drinking water, and barely passed 1k words all day. The second day I went to Starbucks and, after spending an hour updating podcasts/etc, I tried to get by on cheap iced tea drinks… slow. Then a bit after mid-day I ordered a super-sweet espresso drink I’ve dubbed ‘liquid awesome’ and proceeded to write at over 850 words/hour for the remainder of the day. The third day, feeling the crunch on my wallet from a few of days in Vegas, I tried switching to the cheaper drip coffee and iced tea, and only wrote ~1500 words all day (though that’s partially because I spent a couple hours chatting with a stranger).

What I’d like to be able to do is to take my laptop to a local coffee shop in the morning, sit all day drinking fancy drinks (and eating coffee-shop sandwiches/etc) and working on the book, and repeat that day after day until at least Book Four is done. ((Preferably until Book Six is done.)) I wrote most of Book Two over about a week of such days, and expect to be able to repeat that performance for the rest of the Untrue Tales… series. The only (big) problem standing between me and this goal is money. As you know from my other posts, this writing gig doesn’t exactly pay the bills. Not even close. And while my wife’s income is sufficient to cover our monthly expenses, allowing me to be a full-time creative, after going to Vegas and San Diego Comicon this summer our “disposable” money is used up for now. So while we aren’t behind on any bills, and we can afford groceries, there’s no extra money (at least for a couple of months) for spending days/weeks in coffee shops.

You can help, and I’ve thought of a couple of possible options:

First, easiest, is that you could buy the $50 signed paperback copy of the first trilogy of the Untrue Tales… series from modernevil.com. I currently have 6 copies of this edition “in stock.” Sales of the last couple copies have to pay to re-order, so they don’t help as much with coffee unless even more people order. I also have a limited number of copies of the not-currently-in-print individual paperback first editions of Book One, Book Two, and Book Three available signed for $25 each. Order any of these 4 books directly from modernevil.com at these prices and I will personally sign it (and can personalize it) and ship it to you, then add you to the acknowledgements / Special Thanks page of the second trilogy (and of the individually available eBooks)… and use the proceeds to do the coffee shop thing, for as long as the money lasts.

Second, if you run a local (Phoenix, AZ), independent coffee shop (or are friends with someone who does) and would like to sponsor or co-sponsor my writing, I would be glad to give you my loyalty, Special Thanks in the books, and lots of mentions on twitter/facebook/yelp/this-blog/my-podcasts as I work on, publish, and later podcast each book remaining in the series. I realize this isn’t a traditional way to advertise, and doesn’t reach a vast/huge/mass-media audience, but the majority of my paperback sales are hand-sales in the Phoenix area, most of my facebook friends are in Phoenix, and a reasonable chunk of my twitter followers are in Phoenix. If you’d like to be seen as an author-friendly place to be, this could help. Even something as simple as first-drink-free/day would go a long way to stretching the dollars contributed by supporters who take advantage of the first option, though if you’re a coffee-shop-owner and a reader, I’d be glad to work out a books-for-coffee exchange, too.

Third, even if you can’t afford a signed paperback right now (or already have one and can’t think of anyone to gift a copy to), or aren’t a coffee shop owner, you can help: Spread the word. Link to this post. Give people my email address. Tell someone at your favorite Phoenix-area indie coffee shop you know an author looking for a spot, or just tell me what/where your favorite local coffee shop is so I can go talk to them myself. Tell your friends who read books about my books, and about this offer.

Until something happens on this, or until November (when I should begin to have a bit of “disposable” income again), I’ll keep slogging on at home, a couple hundred words at a time. The current setup of my desk/home, while great for podcasting, just doesn’t seem conducive to writing books in the Untrue Tales… universe.

Numbers for August 2010

First an update re: free eBooks: As you probably know, for a few months I’ve had a coupon code on modernevil.com that allows you to get my zombie novel, Cheating, Death, free on Smashwords – instead of hosting the eBook myself, as I do with my older titles. 2 people took advantage in May, 2 in June, and 4 in July. This compares to 50-150 downloads per month of each eBook I host myself. The extra trouble of clicking through to Smashwords, signing up for an account (if you don’t already have one), and using a coupon code apparently weeds out up to 99% of potential readers. In mid-July I put up a comparable code for the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut, though it wasn’t used in July or August. On August 29th, Cheating Death was listed at online-novels.blogspot.com, and in 3 days (before the end of August) it was downloaded 18 times. So, in the evening of 8/31 I went through and put Smashwords coupon codes (and add’l iBooks links) on the eBook pages of all my already-free eBooks. People are already beginning to use them. September’s numbers may be interesting/different.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers, as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

Lost and Not Found: 59 / 977 / 27
Dragons’ Truth: 135 / 671 / 71
Forget What You Can’t Remember: 88 / 2379 / 75
Untrue Tales… Book One: 95 / 1927 / 164
Untrue Tales… Book Two: 78 / 2211 / 136
Untrue Tales… Book Three: 80 / 928 / 80
Cheating, Death: 18 / 2852 / 185
Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 309 / 39
More Lost Memories (full): 0 / 1523 / 200
More Lost Memories (ind. stories, eBook only): 1
Time, emiT, and Time Again: 1 / 644 / N/A
Total for all titles: 555 / 14,092 / 977
Total YTD: 4,091 / 162,983 / 11,284
Total all-time: 12,513 / 343,084 / 22,403

Of note: Podiobooks numbers are WAY off for August. Most titles had up to 40% fewer total downloads, and up to 50% fewer downloads of final episodes versus July, which was already down 10% from June. Untrue Tales… Book One and Cheating, Death were actually flat, and More Lost Memories just finished in August (so was up), plus Time, emiT, and Time Again began in August, so it’s also “up” (from zero) – which means that the “all titles” numbers only appear to be off 10%-22% for the month.

In terms of sales: The only eBooks I moved directly through Smashwords were the free copies of Cheating, Death. “Premium” channel sales via Smashwords have not been updated since I posted last month, so who knows? Amazon says I sold 3 kindle books for ~$10; this is the new 70% royalty rate at work. The same three eBooks would have netted me only ~$5 at the old 35% rate. I’ve begun hearing horror stories from authors who have their books on Amazon and Smashwords “Premium Distribution” where some of the “Premium” vendors (read: Kobo) are cutting your prices, or where metadata miscommunication results in wrong prices, and Amazon’s new system auto-matches the lower price the author never authorized, or Amazon cuts off sales entirely while it investigates. I set my prices identically across all the platforms I offer them (at 1/2 the paperback cover price), which will soon include Amazon, Google Editions, Goodreads, and Smashwords (& thus: Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Diesel, and Sony). I am not looking forward to having to cut any of those channels out because some automated systems want to argue over how little to charge for my books, but if Kobo screws up my sales, I will. The free copies are for people who thing $5.99 is too much for an eBook – the $5.99 copies are the lowest point of entry for people who want to financially support me as an independent creator; no need for a price war, people. You can’t beat free.

Also, while updating my spreadsheet today I noticed there was a miscalculation that effected the numbers I posted last month. The error only effected Podiobooks numbers, and only for “all titles” numbers. I have corrected the post.

Smashwords formatting update

In reference to the frustrations I voiced in a recent post, I just spent the last several hours removing trailing spaces from all the paragraphs of all 23 of my eBooks, and adding extra line-breaks where I’ve already got page breaks but didn’t previously think extra line-breaks were appropriate. I did not change my titles or cover images. Then, as I made changes to book after book, I uploaded them to Smashwords.

About half of them are finished going through the meatgrinder right now (there’s been a queue of between 160 and 220 eBooks waiting to be processed all afternoon), and they seem to be being approved automatically by the AutoVetter for “Premium Distribution” within another few minutes of conversion. I do not recall ever having seen the system work so smoothly or automatically, even prior to the introduction of “Premium Distribution.”

Well done, Smashwords! I may be stubborn and opinionated about how I want my eBooks to be formatted, but for anyone willing to follow your (relatively straightforward) guidelines it looks like your system is actually approaching both easy-to-use and works-right. Hooray!

…now, to go figure out about getting ePub versions of my books ready for Google Editions and Goodreads.

Discount percentages

When I make paperback versions of my books available, I do so through Lightning Source, which makes them available to booksellers everywhere. You can walk into just about any bookseller in the US and order any of my books … if you know the name/ISBN. It won’t, generally, be on the shelf. As far as I know, only my zombie book, Cheating, Death, has ever graced the shelves of a bookstore – a horror bookstore in Wylie, TX. (If you live near there and read horror, you should totally check them out!) But you could order any of them. If it were your bookstore, you could have them on your shelves.

Now, there are two important things that small press / independent publishers need to do to get their books on bookstore shelves. One is marketing – contacting book buyers at all the book stores you want your book in, and convincing them to stock the book. This is, strangely, where most big publishers believe their sales end; they see the customer for their books as the book stores, not the readers. So a lot of effort and expense goes into getting book buyers for the big chains (and the indie book stores) to buy/carry publishers’ new books. Frankly I can’t afford to compete in that marketplace, even if I didn’t have an aversion to traditional marketing & sales.

The other thing publishers need to do is get their discount right (and for their books to be returnable, which mine are). The discount is the percent off the cover price wholesale buyers (bookstores) have to pay. Lightning Source allows me to set my discount just about anywhere I want, down to 20%. The recommended discount, the industry standard discount (a ridiculous number, if you ask me), is 55%. I’ve read that the big chains (Borders, Barnes & Noble) won’t even consider a book if the discount is lower than 50%; like, theoretically they won’t display it to their employees as even being orderable if the discount is too low. This is because the discount is where the bookseller makes their money. If the cover price of a paperback is $13.99 and the discount is 55%, the bookseller can make up to $7.69 by selling you that book. If they want to sell it to you for 20% off, they still make ~$4.90. On the other hand, with my latest book at $13.99, with a 50% discount, I only make $3.47 per copy sold (after printing cost), and the bookseller can make up to $6.99. In a world where the bookseller does most of the work of finding new readers, their making twice as much per copy as the publisher might make sense.

So… I’ve been setting my books’ discounts at 50%. Until today. (-ish… The changes won’t trickle through to all booksellers’ systems for “up to 45 days”) Today I changed the discount rate on all my “backlist” books to 20%, where “backlist” means it’s been in print for more than a year. Sales of these books, right now, are at a trickle. As far as I know, no one is walking into their local Borders and asking to order a book I put out 3 years ago; they’re going to Amazon.com or bn.com or such to order online. Or they’re buying the eBook for their kindle/iPad/nook/whatever. So… my sources lead me to believe that most/all online book stores will continue to carry (if not discount from list price) my paper books, even at a 20% discount. Because I’d sure like that trickle of book sales to be able to cover the cost of keeping them in print, which, luckily, is only $12/year/title.

What does a “short” 20% discount do to my share of a sale? For Forget What You Can’t Remember, another $13.99 title, my share (after printing) goes from $2.25 @ 50% discount to $6.44 @ 20% discount. Amazon, which doesn’t currently discount that title at all, will see their cut of each sale go from $6.99 to $2.80. My after-printing cut on More Lost Memories, goes from $3.05 to $6.94 per copy, while a bookseller will see their cut drop from $6.49 to $2.60. I’ve set up similar pricing across my other titles. (Except for the Untrue Tales… Book One, Book Two, and Book Three combined edition, at 416pp and priced at 24.99. My cut after printing at 50% was $6.19 (about the income of 2 books), and at a 20% discount will be $13.68. The bookseller’s cut will go from $12.49 to $5.00.) What this does is… it means I only need to sell two copies of each book per year to “profitably” keep them in print forever, instead of 4+ copies.

What it doesn’t do is change bookstores’ intentions of carrying my backlist books; except for “classics” and ongoing bestsellers, bookstores typically don’t carry any book for more than a couple of months after its release (and my new books will remain at a 50% discount). Alternatively, Amazon carries books as long as they’re available and -unless I’ve been seriously misinformed- will gladly carry books that are priced with a short discount of 20%. If my books start disappearing from online stores next month, maybe I’ll consider changing it back… but I think this will work out fine. Because the people paying for my books are, theoretically, doing so because they want to support my work financially (otherwise they’d just take one of the free versions), changes like this and like offering my signed copies for $25 apiece seem to make sense to me. Do they make sense to you?

Getting fed up with Smashwords

First, the good: Smashwords exists. It allows independent authors to publish & sell their eBooks in a variety of formats, all without having to learn how to encode their own eBooks or build their own online store. Smashwords has also partnered with many of the major eBookstores out there, including Apple’s, Barnes & Noble’s, Kobo, and coming soon: Sony, Amazon, and Diesel, putting independent books on all the major eReader platforms. Smashwords takes only a moderate cut of eBook sales, leaving the authors with most of each sale.

Now, the bad/bizarre: I have been fighting with Smashwords for the last two months (and over & over with other issues over the last year or so) over their inconsistent and sometimes inappropriate application of their “style guide” and “Premium Distribution” rules. Currently, six of my eBooks are held up from “Premium Distribution” – all for things that are also “wrong” with my other 18 already-approved eBooks.

What’s wrong, you ask?

Well, when formatting my books, I like to use both an indented paragraph and a small trailing space (less than 1 line-height) after each paragraph. I believe that this enhances readability on dedicated eReaders, and I’ve been doing it for years. When my eBooks started getting rejected for this, I took a look and discovered that the Smashwords style guide explains how to do both, then says you are not to do both, but only to do one. All 23 of my eBooks have the same formatting, in this regard. When my 7 latest eBooks were rejected for this, I emailed support about this, making reference to the 17 others that had already been approved and my personal preference for it, and Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords) emailed me to say that “since this is what you want we’ll let this through.” One of them was approved, the others stayed rejected until I tried re-submitting them yesterday – now they’re rejected again for this and other reasons:

I use page breaks. Apparently (this is a new one to me, so I haven’t checked the style guide again today about it) the style guide advises that “since not all Smashwords formats respect page breaks we recommend you insert two paragraph returns before every page break.” Which I do, everywhere I feel it is appropriate. I’m aware that “not all” the formats respect page breaks! Last time I checked, only 3 of their 8 formats retained my page breaks. At the same time, I don’t feel extra line breaks are always appropriate where a page break would be the best option, and in some of my front matter I only put a single line break, so that -if page breaks aren’t available- the front matter doesn’t stretch on and on with unnecessary space. (ie: if it’s all going to be on one page, let’s try to keep it all on one page!)

Whoever reviewed my eBooks for premium qualification also decided that some of my books need new covers and new titles. They think they might be too confusing. Here, take a look at my books on Smashwords. You’ll notice that the top 7 eBooks have similar covers and titles. If you actually spent more than the briefest moment looking at them, I suspect it would become clear to you that 6 of them are individual short stories from the same collection, and the 7th is the full collection – since that’s what it says in their descriptions. And if you downloaded the preview of any of the individual short stories, so does the Preface to each story, very clearly. So since what I’d like is for people who try one of the individual stories to buy the full collection, I’m doing what I can to keep the stories connected to the collection, both by title and by covers. If you scroll a little further down the page, you’ll see I did the same thing with 7 short stories from my 2009 collection, More Lost Memories. (All 8 eBooks of which have been approved for “Premium distribution” more than once without my being told they were “too confusing.”)

Actually, when I’d originally submitted the first couple eBooks from this new collection, I got an email from Mark Coker asking what I was doing. I replied with an explanation similar to the above & never heard anything back… and now I’m seeing them rejected with this reason included once again in the long list of things “wrong” with them.

Prior to April of this year, when I went through and re-formatted and re-created all my eBooks for Smashwords (because they had their meatgrinder re-process all their eBooks and then decided to reject about half of them from “Premium Distribution” for the following), it was because they were rejected re: their Copyright declaration. At first it was that I used a correct Copyright declaration that said Modern Evil Press was the publisher (it is), but had failed to mention Smashwords. I also wasn’t using their recommended license statement, which I consider excessively informal, because I was using a proper, formal license statement instead. I guess their automatic filter was looking for either their recommended license statement or the phrase “Published By [publisher] at Smashwords” – I opted for the latter. Of course, then I had to go through and do it all again, when a few days later their system started rejecting for including the © symbol on the Copyright page.

You know, because some eReaders might not display it properly.

So I’ve been rejected for properly declaring my copyright. I’ve been rejected for making informed decisions about how I’d like my books to appear on eReaders. I’ve been rejected because my book covers might confuse readers, “especially once these go out to distribution.” (Because people who would spend $hundreds on an eReader are obviously pretty stupid, right?) I’ve even been told I need to change my books’ titles. The audacity.

This is why I am beginning to get fed up with Smashwords. Yes, all my titles are available to customers who go directly to Smashwords.com, and “Premium Distribution” isn’t the end of the story. Yes, if I go re-format all my books (because if I only go re-format the 6 currently rejected, I won’t have consistent formatting across all my titles – I’m trying to be professional and consistent, so if I take out the trailing spaces after paragraphs in some, I’m compelled to take it out of all of them – and resubmit them all, hoping they don’t get rejected for some other, new reason) for the third time this year to accommodate Smashwords’ ever-changing requirements, then it would simply be a matter of them telling me what I can and can’t name my books and what my covers are allowed to look like. Yep.

In other news, I don’t have this problem when selling directly into the kindle store. Everything there just works (once I’ve hand-coded my book into their proprietary format). Ooh, and apparently I can sell my eBooks directly through GoodReads, now? Maybe I should suggest to Mark Coker that Smashwords should partner with GoodReads as a “Premium Distribution” channel. Because (seriously) I’m nowhere near fed up enough with Smashwords’ frustrations to pull my books or otherwise give up on them; I like what they’re doing enough to want to see them do better. That’s why I suggested (to founders on both sides) that Smashwords and Podiobooks (both distributors of independent electronic fiction) should work together – and now they do. That’s why I tell every indie or aspiring author I know about Smashwords. I love hearing about upgrades, enhancements, and new partners… even when they do lead to some of my books going undistributed for months at a time.