publishing – Page 15 – Teel McClanahan

getting my mind right

I’m in the midst of working through something, mentally and emotionally. I’ve been working on this for a long while. This was a significant contributing factor to my taking some time off from showing at art walks & art fairs a couple times a month (though getting to a point of running in the red month after month (probably due to the down economy) was the most significant factor), which I paused in March of this year. It’s the effect of commercialism/capitalism on my creative output.

I don’t believe in capitalism. I hate money. I don’t like business. Accounting rules are literally insane. Marketing makes me nauseous. Sales, inasmuch as I can do it honestly, is moderately acceptable, at best.

I’m concerned with the questions of ‘why’. The ‘why’ of my art, of my writing, of my publishing, of my life – none of it has to do with money. I’m not interested in wealth. I don’t want those concerns to alter or infect the ‘whys’ of my creative work, or my life in general. When I need to address a question of ‘why’ I created this book or that work of art, I don’t ever want the answer to be something like “to make money.”

This has been easier to maintain with my books, possibly because they’ve never been “profitable” in any financial sense. They’ve always been works of love, the ideas behind them and the effort going into them based on expressing myself and writing the books I wanted to write rather than the books I thought were going to sell. For a long time, this was true of my art, as well. Then I began doing the art walks every month. Twice a month, at times. Investing as much or more time in selling my art than I was in creating it.

The mini-paintings were literally a money grab. The reason I bought small canvases (mostly 4×4″, but up to 8×10″) to paint was so that I could have items for sale under $20 at the art walks, where people often balked at paying realistic/appropriate prices for art. One problem with this was that, after a while, I would get down to a day or two before an art walk and -in a panic- paint half a dozen mini-paintings at once, almost entirely at random, just so I would have something that might sell. Another was that they became an overwhelming percentage of sales. In 2008, where I only did art walks for four months, they made up 28% of my unit sales and about 3.6% of my revenue from art. In 2009 where I showed probably 18+ times, they were 66% of unit sales and 25% of my art revenue. If I exclude the sale of the original artwork created for my book covers (and sold explicitly to people who wanted to support the publication of my books), for 2010, which I only showed at 3 art walks before pausing, mini-paintings make up 100% of my art sales. (Actually, looking at my spreadsheet, I also sold a crocheted mobius strip for $5 and a crocheted zombie to a fan of my books at Comicon, and I consider my crocheted creations to be sculptural artwork. If I account for those works, the mini-paintings only make up 71% of unit sales and 52% of revenue for 2010.)

So, even when I first began to create the mini-paintings, I was already uneasy about the significantly commercial nature of their existence. Certainly they were each an original work of handmade art, created with my own style and ideas. Just as certainly, I was creating them for the express purpose of making sales at art walks. When they began to make up a larger and larger proportion of both my creative efforts and my actual sales, it made me very uneasy. The point of showing at the art walks wasn’t really supposed to be about finding something that would sell and making that, over and over again, just for the sake of sales. The point was supposed to be that I already create art and the only way to sell it is if people know it’s available. I believe (though I’d have to go to my other computer and dig around in Quickbooks for a while to give accurate numbers) that I made more sales online via Twitter/Plurk/facebook in 2008 and 2009 than I did at art walks (not in volume, but in revenue). My art walk sales were mostly, then, works I’d created from a drive to have something to sell, rather than from a drive to express myself or to create what I wanted to create. Which makes me a bit sick.

My wife and I have been working on our financial situation fairly diligently for the last ~3 years (we’ll have been married 3 years on 12/1), and I’ve been working on structuring my “business model” for Modern Evil Press so that I’m not running further in the red the more books I write (see: selling paintings to pay for the cost of publishing, specifically the original cover art (and possibly interior illustrations, in future) for the book in question), and this year we reached a point where we’re slightly better than breaking even both personally and in terms of the business. I’ve got us on track, barring unexpected negative changes (apocalypse, housefire, expensive car repairs, pregnancy and the like), to have all our debt (was close to $45k when we married) paid off except Mandy’s student loans (another $40k) by mid-2013. That’s without Modern Evil Press earning another dollar. That’s without selling any more art. If I could make money from my art and books, we could get there faster, but it isn’t necessary.

This is what what I’ve been working on, mentally and emotionally. This is how I’ve been trying to get my mind right; to deeply realize that making money from my creative output isn’t necessary. With a model similar to what I did with the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut, going electronic-only (eBooks & audiobooks) until/unless sales (generally: the original cover art) cover the cost of going to press, I can write as many (or as few) books as I’d like. With the amount of canvas & paint & yarn I currently have stockpiled (from excellent sales at local stores), I’ll have a debt account or two paid off before I need to go shopping for real (expensive) art supplies again – so I’ll be able to afford it, even if none of the art I create between now and then sells. I need to fully return to a point of creating from inspiration rather than from profit motive.

I’ll accept profits, if and when they appear, but that isn’t -and shouldn’t be- why I work.

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?