Social Networking, the New Word of Mouth

I recently read a blog post, a retweet on Twitter, written this past fall (2011) and emphasizing that social networking isn’t built to sell books. It’s an interesting post with lots of stats and facts and irrelevant findings that concludes what sells books is not the internet, but good, old-fashion mass media—television, newspapers, radio interviews…books made into movies. Yes, I’m rolling my eyes at this point. In defense of the author, he was talking about traditionally published authors, which leaves me at a double disadvantage, first because not even near the majority of traditionally published authors have mass media available to them and as a self-published author I’m impeded yet again. The “thing”, he emphasizes, that sells books, even bad books can outsell very good books written by talented writers, is name/face recognition. He used, for example, works by Snookie and Kim Kardashian. 

But I need further clarification here. Which comes first, the author or name recognition? Based on the examples the poster put forth, I conclude “name recognition.” Being an author has nothing to do with it. Of course, all of us traditionally ignored for the “beautiful people” already know this. And how in the world could even “mass media” accommodate recognition of every author published in a year? And I’m just talking about the traditionally published ones; don’t even start thinking vanity and self-published authors. Hawking those recognized by the vast populace is simply good business to make money, and the people able to exploit mass media are backed by those with much deeper pockets than I have. For me, mass media is a non-starter.

Oh, and lets not overlook having my book made into a what? A movie? I beg your pardon? Does he mean have my book made into a movie as if it were a matter of personal choice? No one has opted to turn my stories into screenplays. I’d do it myself, but screenwriting is different from book writing, and breaking into “movie writing” is even harder than breaking into traditional publishing. I’m comforted that I’m not the only slacker out here. Most traditionally published authors aren’t rushing around making their books into movies either. But on a more serious note, no one would turn one of my novels into film. My books are pro South and the hey-day of Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper doing battle with corrupt carpetbaggers and marauding Yankees passed with the 1950s. You want a film about the South made into a movie, present the South in a bad light or one where we see the “evil of our ways.”

No, good books, like old soldiers, just “fade away” or become legend based on word of mouth and a readership that survives the ages.

I don’t think the blog poster’s findings surprised many of us authors, traditionally published or otherwise. We know the value of mass media, we know who gets it and we understand why, and we know we’d all love to have it—and most of us who’ve been around a little while know we never will. I was a little surprised, however, at his pooh-poohing our use of the internet. I think, from his context, he believes we’re looking for pie-in-the-sky, hundreds of thousands of sales in a month, but I’m not developing an internet presence under the deluded belief that Twitter or Facebook or this blog will serve as a substitute for mass media attention. I’m using social networking for just that: social networking. I’m looking for my readership.

Do any of you authors out there remember that pitch technique that evolved a number of years ago—a one liner that compares, then meshes your book with two familiar things to help an editor, agent, or even a reader understand what your story is about (i.e. “Alice in Wonderland meets Starwars”)?  Now does that give you some idea of what the prospective story is about? Me neither, but the technique was all the rage. Maybe it still is—I’m out of the pitching business. But I digress.

Regardless of my thoughts on the technique, I did give the description of my work some thought, and I now liken my work to a cross between the romance, adventure, and happily-ever-after of Zane Grey’s westerns and the dark beauty, violence, and glory of Frank Yerby’s Old South.

The Zane Greys and Frank Yerbys of this world are no longer desired by traditional publishers. They’re not deemed popular with the majority of book buyers and are therefore a bad investment. I get that. But there is a readership for those kinds of books, and there always will be. A niche if you will, one big enough to satisfy a tiny publishing house with a practical print run and books in digital format. That’s why I’m focusing on my social networking. I’m looking for that niche. And I do believe that once I’ve found those readers, I will sell more books than I’m selling now. Oh duh!

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

From Offset to Digital Printer

I’m aware that I have let more than two weeks lapse between posts and for that I apologize, but the delay was not without cause. I have completed uploading my first three books to Lightning Source (LSI) and am waiting for the proofs—each of which I will read one more time. There are reasons for such madness (I practically have these books memorized) and those are I made corrections to typos overlooked when the books were printed on an offset press years ago and I made a few content changes—clarifying questions asked of me by readers—nothing to change the story line.

For me, this is one of the beauties of digital printing. Typos, much like a dog and fleas, are present in books—you’ll almost always find at least one. If you’ve printed 2,000 books, you live with it, multiplied 2,000 times. If you’ve printed 100 books, you live with it 100 times and you’ve fixed the problem by the time you make your next order. I love it! With digital printing, you can print as few as one copy—albeit at a greater cost per copy—instead of waiting until you’ve sold an initial print run of 2,000, errors and all, before making revisions and ordering another print run.

The other beautiful thing about this particular digital printer (LSI) is that it’s owned by Ingram—the book distributor. Now bookstore owners can order my books at the request of the customer instead of having to tell the client “it’s not in the distribution system.” Hence the term “print-on-demand.” Now, I haven’t tried it out yet—I plan to get my local B&N to order all four when I’ve blessed the last three—but theoretically, that’s how it should work, right?

So the greater “cost per book” will have been offset by cutting out the wholesaler, warehouser, distributor, and any other middle man I’m not aware of. I know other authors have been using these advantages for a while, but for me, it’s like the light just went on. I’m proud of the jobs the offset printer did for me, but I’m proud of the book package LSI does also and the paradigm works so much better for me. As of today, I have paid roughly $230.00 in interest over the last four months on my books printed by an offset printer. For that sum, I could order roughly 40 books from LSI and more than double my money on each. Okay, I left out the shipping, but you get my drift.

Oh yes, and that “double my money” part. That means I have to get out there and sell them. I do that primarily at craft fairs. I’ve got an article on my website highlighting how well that’s working for me. It’s work, for sure.

Given that, my next great quest is my online presence, which will be my focus for the next month. My mentor is John Locke (he doesn’t know it), author of How I Sold 1 Million eBooks In Five Months. I’ve read it twice. I always knew it was about finding my audience; I was just never sure how to go about it. Now I have a starting point. Check him out. Oh, and if you do, I’m reading his first western—it’s pretty darn good!

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

The Changing Face of Distribution

Over the years, fellow self-publishers have cited distribution as the self-publishers biggest drawback, and today, traditional distribution is as pie-in-the-sky for a self-published author as it’s ever been. But, again, I knew the odds did not favor my getting a major distributor (and given the size of my print run, what would I have done with one anyway?). I was content to limit my market to Mississippi and eventually the states making up the old Confederacy. I did hope for a regional distributor. As it turned out, I was my sole distributor.

When I wrote my first business plan six years ago, my first stated annual goal was to pay off the print run of my then current book (and it followed, in theory, to pay off each “current” book annually). Today, I’m in debt with three books printed by an off-set printer, because I never met my first annual goal--or met that goal in any of the years following.

In addition to my annual goal, I stated two objectives:

(1) Produce a new title each year
(2) Increase my print run by 50% (from 2000 copies to 3000 copies for each new title)

I didn’t give a timeline on point (2). Of course, any incremental increase would have been linked to a growing readership. Well, my readership is growing, but not enough to increase my print run annually, but more to move what I already have on hand. I do still believe that my old books (and their critical ancillary readership) will help sell my new ones and my new books will help sell my old, but that takes time, and I’m not sure how much having a “real” distributor would have changed that.

A distributor must be provided books to distribute. I talked—or tried to make contact with—two regional distributors back in 2006. I was never sure, but I think they were the same distributor (over in Louisiana), which had started out under one name, folded, then began anew under a different name. Whatever, numerous calls were never returned and I never made contact with anything but the answering machine.

With print runs of only 2000 books, I was of no interest to the big distributors and why should I have been? Unless I sold lots of books very fast, I couldn’t afford to print more. It was a catch-22. There was no great conspiracy on the part of the “disembodied” paradigm to shut self-publishers out. It was simply a matter of sound business.

Okay, calling the big publishers cycle from print to distribution and back to the publisher a sound business practice might be considered oxymoronic. I’m scarcely knowledgeable on their business practices and expectations, but I do know that the big publishers print huge runs of thousands of copies of each book they publish, then get them, via the established distribution system, in stores across the country. Then, sometimes as soon as one month later, they accept the unsold inventory (which may be substantial) back from the bookstores and destroy it.

Self-published authors cannot afford to operate like that, at least I can’t. But book stores can’t purchase books, then just let them linger on their shelves if they don’t sell. Well, I guess they could, but before long they’d have no space for new ones and they’d stop purchasing. Now wouldn’t that cause a bottleneck back in old New York? Gee, they’d have to stop publishing until the inventory cleared out. Ain’t nobody happy at that point, including the readers. My point is that to be part of the established distribution system, the publisher must be willing to accept returns.

So the system was established “by them, for them.” There is no great conspiracy to cut the little guy out—the little guy simply doesn’t fit. And like all those thousands of traditionally published authors, many copies of whose books are returned to the publisher because they didn’t sell, I’d have great difficulty marketing my books a long way from home. Returns? Egads, what would I do with them? Well, that would be what I do with them anyway—get out and sell them in Mississippi, where I can, at least, promote them personally.

And what would have been the point in distributing my books a long way from home? The answer, of course, is to get my name/books out there. But with limited time to move my books, it was not practical, and would, more than likely, have proved a fiscal disaster. I will always maintain that an individual goes to a bookstore to buy a book, not sell one; the reader has to know its there. That’s where marketing fits in.

Getting my name out there is still hard, but expense is no longer a prohibitive factor. “Time” is, though. Recall that old adage, “Time is money”?

A quick note:  All my books are now up at the Kindle Store (see my December through February posts). I got the last one, which was my first book, The Devil’s Bastard, up this week. My goal for this next week is to have my three older books—the ones printed on an off-set press—up at Lightning Source. That will be the subject of my next post, the new distribution paradigm made possible by digital printing.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

The Ever-Evolving Publishing Paradigm

The major misconception I had when I began self-publishing six years ago was the delusion I would operate my tiny publishing house using the same pattern that had evolved for the big publishing houses. Mine would only be smaller. Much smaller. With some modifications. Much smaller, modified, and regional. The path of Loblolly Writer’s House’s books would be manuscript → editor → print/book construction [Hardcopy only–ebooks were a glint in somebody else’s eye, not mine–a book was print on paper.] → Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) → reviewers → warehousing/distribution → fame and fortune.

Okay, not the “fame and fortune” part. Seven years of rejection had left me with no illusions, but I did figure on the other steps. Creating a book was a given. After all, there was no “published author” without one, and despite the fact I sporadically submitted my ARCs to the big five reviewers (Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, USA Today, Foreword, and Library Journal), knowing the odds were great against getting a review, I did count on some sort of recognition here and there from local newspapers and magazines. I even got a couple–in small county papers.

I have to laugh when I read a positive and upbeat “how-to” piece created by a book promoter, speaking in generalities and telling me magazines and newspapers are always looking for locals to highlight in their periodicals. Maybe, but my experience tells me those local editors have more takers than they have time and space. As it turns out, the features editor at my local newspaper doesn’t (and didn’t then) believe in reviewing or even highlighting self-published work, and the big reviewers still want books with broad distribution. Today, “features” sections across the nation are disappearing along with their newspapers, and with my fourth book, I didn’t even bother to produce an ARC. No, I’m not giving up; I’m taking a different route.

More on this later. Next week I want to discuss distribution...and how its significance has changed for Loblolly Writer’s House.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Old Goals and What the Digital World has Done to Them

Recently I updated my website. It’s something I do periodically, but not as often as I should. It’s a time-consuming task, even though, as a rule, there are just a handful of pages that need a re-write.

I built the thing in 2006, the same year I self-published my first book. I took an online “Creating Web Pages” course from Ed2Go via my local community college. Have I told y’all I love Ed2Go? I next took a course on Paint Shop Pro 8. I still use it for modifying pictures, making my web graphics and creating my covers. Once I’ve sorta mastered something, I cling to it. But I digress.

In the course of this most recent upgrade, and my growing involvement with the digital world, I realized both the marketing plan and business plan I created six--maybe even seven--years ago, are woefully out of date. And the goals and realities I set forth years ago no longer apply--and it dawned on me not only how much had changed in the challenge I set for myself seven years ago when I started this self-publishing venture, but how much my lot had improved relatively recently.

I knew back in 2005 that if I went it alone, I would not have the infrastructure set up that a traditionally published author has. She will, until her name becomes a household word, have to do her own marketing, but in the interim she’ll still have someone to edit her work free of charge, someone competent to typeset her words, someone talented and creative to produce an eye-catching cover. The LCCNs and ISBNs and copyright concerns are all taken care of...

I knew I had taken on a big job. And I knew I was going to have to put out some money, but I also knew there were some things I could learn to do myself. So I learned Quark and I typeset my books. I bought a high-resolution camera, activated my old faithful Paint Shop Pro 8, then combined it with Quark and produce my own covers. I have a good and capable friend who edits my books for grammar and usage (and, yes, for continuity), not for free, I want to keep her, but certainly less than what I’d have to pay a professional editor.

And I paid the printer. Even if I could afford one, which I cannot, I have
no place to put an offset printing press. Have y’all ever seen one of those things? They take up an entire warehouse.

For my first three books, I have paid the off-set printer a substantial sum. I’m years from getting out of debt and the books do not sell as fast as the monthly interest payments roll around on the loan.

All that changed with book four and Lightning Source and ebooks. The digital world, whether for a print on demand (POD) paper book or bits and bytes forming words in an e-reader, has changed my beleaguered future. Yes, a digitally printed book costs more per copy than offset, but I don’t have to print 2,000 of them anymore. I can pay as I go and not blow five cases worth of books on a year’s worth of interest payments. And I do want to continue to produce printed books...but I’ve gone ebook, too.

Over the next few weeks, I want to highlight how these changes are affecting Loblolly Writer’s House, and in some cases, compare my goals of six years ago with my goals today.

And I haven’t even broached distribution yet, but I will.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Book Two in Mobipocket Didn’t Prove to be the Charm, But It Is Closer

     As promised, I’m updating y’all on what transpired when I created my second mobipocket book using the templates I created back in December 2011/January 2012.
    I’m pleased to announce that I uploaded Epico Bayou to Amazon’s Kindle Store this week. I’d given myself a week to get it done, but it took me eight days from beginning to actually building the .prc, but most of that time was spent formatting the book in .html.
     The good news is that the templates for my .toc.ncx file (navigational table of contents) and the .opf  file (open package ebook format) that I created with River’s Bend worked beautifully. All I had to do was copy them into a new document, change the name of the .html file embedded in them, and make any other necessary changes. For example: River’s Bend had two more chapters than Epico Bayou, so I removed a couple of the “nav points” from Epico Bayou’s toc.ncx file.
     The same was true for the embedded Table of Contents (TOC). I copied the entire .html formatted beginning of River’s Bend down to Chapter One, then pasted it into a new document. Then I added the text of Epico Bayou. That I got by taking my Smashwords Word.doc and converting it to a filtered Word (.html) document. I started formatting from there. That aforementioned beginning to all my books (and I imagine most of you out there are like me) is generic and includes the .html document head, style sheet, title and copyright pages, and Table of Contents. Again, it was simply a matter of changing the references from River’s Bend to Epico Bayou.
     Now that only works if the “copier/pasterer” [yeah, I know it’s not a good word, but you get my gist. I’m talking about me] and her subsequent modifications do not corrupt the .html. The .html code does not take kindly to errors--and oh, those errors can be so hard to find in all that code. But in this particular case, it wasn’t the code that got me.
     When I first built, or tried to build, Epico Bayou, Mobipocket Creator told me, in its extremely aggravating, abbreviated manner, that the cover link was missing and the TOC couldn’t be built. Darn it! The toc.ncx was fine and there was a link to the cover in it. And as for the TOC embedded in the book? Well, I not only could “see” it--I could click on it and it worked. There was no link to the cover, but there never had been, and River’s Bend didn’t have one in it’s embedded TOC. Things like that are easy to see. I could not figure out what The Creator’s problem was. I kept tweaking, looking, then clicking the build button over and over with the same result. Finally, I pulled up the original .html for River’s Bend [not for the first time, but I could not see any difference in the two files], did a search on “cover,” and sure enough, right after the closing of the style sheet and the </head> there was a link to the embedded cover (which shows up in the toc.ncx, but not the embedded TOC at the front of the book). That link was missing in Epico Bayou. I re-added my cover link, which I assume I’d inadvertently deleted; Mobipocket Creator dutifully “built” my book; then I uploaded it to the Kindle Store. There was a glitch there, too, but that was on Amazon’s end, thank goodness, and they fixed it.
     For more information on how I created my mobi books for the Kindle Store, go back and look at my blog posts between 9 December 2011 and 27 January 2012. My point was to create the mobi files without the help of the Mobipocket Creator (The Creator’s files appear messy and confusing to me). I can now take the files I create, place them in the “build” window, then let The Creator build the .prc, which I upload to Amazon’s DTP.
     My goal is to create my mobi book without a hitch. The third time’s the charm, right? That would be Wolf Dawson.



Thanks for reading.


Charlsie

The Decision not to Traditionally Publish

I’m a member of a number of on-line groups, several of which discuss self-publishing to exhaustion. Inevitably, such discussion leads to a comparison of self-publishing with traditional publishing and the advantages of one over the other. I am often amazed at the number of self-published authors who “decide” to self-publish vice taking the traditional route.

Before I go any further, I need to point out that I am a fiction writer, and it is widely accepted that an author has more difficulty marketing and selling a self-published work of fiction than non-fiction (self-published how-to/self-help books sell especially well). This post applies to works of fiction.

I tried to break into traditional publishing for seven years. I am now a true self-publisher, meaning, I own my books’ ISBNs.

As a self-publisher, I am responsible for each phase of the publishing process. This paradigm differs from a “so-dubbed” vanity press, where, for a price, the publisher-for-hire handles all facets of the process, leaving the author to “proof and pay.” Those publishers provide the ISBNs. I have nothing against vanity publishers, nor traditional publishers for that matter. I only draw the distinction for the purpose of my post.

I am responsible for editing/copyediting, typesetting, cover design, printing, marketing, and distribution of my books. Printing/book manufacturing and copyediting I farm out, but the other tasks--typesetting, cover design, and marketing/distribution I do myself. And despite the fact that I pay an editor to edit my book, I do a lot of self-editing—reading and re-reading the manuscript over and over, correcting, changing, and tweaking until I’m sick of it—an evolution that in time makes me immune to my own errors. Those I repeatedly read through. This is why a self-published author, in my opinion, needs another competent set of eyes to look at her baby.

In fact, the main problem that I see (and this is just my opinion) with self-published fiction is that all too often we independents put our books in print before they’re ready. But I digress.

For my first three books, I handled distribution myself. That’s a euphemism meaning there was no distribution. I chose Lightning Source (LSI), a print-on-demand printer, owned by Ingram, as the printer for my fourth book. Ingram will now serve as a primary distributor for that book nationwide. That does not mean it will be sitting on bookstore shelves from sea to shining sea. That merely means if an individual wants one, theoretically, he can walk into his favorite bookstore anywhere and order one. LSI will, with little delay, print the book up and send it to the store. This is lightyears better than what I had before.

I didn’t take on publishing responsibilities lightly; I had some inkling of what was in store for me, when, after those seven years, I forsook efforts to find either an agent or a publisher. And I’m here to tell you that the only choice I had was to either take matters into my own hands or run the risk of passing to glory before finding a publisher willing to take my work.

Given my experience, I wonder how long the majority of fiction authors who “decided” not to traditionally publish actually sought a traditional publisher. Truth is, like me, few self-publishers have such an option. With the traditional publisher, power is in his hands, not the author’s. I would venture that in very few cases does a fiction author “decide” to self-publish over a valid offer to traditionally publish. Odds are a better that he or she decides to self-publish/choose a vanity publisher vice “attempt” to find an agent or a publisher—and perhaps that’s what the individual really means when she says she “made the decision not to traditionally publish,” and I’m just splitting hairs. In truth, given the ever-growing ease of self-publishing—especially epublishing—maybe that is what those folks are actually refering to after all.

I can buy that, but to imply that one is self-publishing vice traditionally publishing as if it’s a matter of flipping a coin is either delusional or disingenuous. Simply put, except in very rare cases, there is only one decision made and that is the decision to “self-publish.” I say don’t even address the spectre of “traditional publishing,” especially if one “decides” to forgo the submission-rejection process completely.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie