KDP Select (Exclusivity or Anonymity?)

When Amazon announced KDP Select a month or two ago, it caused the kind of sensation and intrigue that only Amazon can have in the book world right now. For those of you unfamiliar with the program, let me lay out the pros and cons, with the cons being first:

Pros:

1. Increased exposure through promotional efforts by Amazon
2. Increased exposure through borrows adding "purchases" to move your book up the ranks
3. Borrows are converted to dollars at the end of the month depending on your share of the number of borrows through the KDP Prime/Select programs

Cons:

1. 90 day minimum exclusivity with Amazon for eBooks

1 con? Well, yes, but it's a pretty big one if you believe that a free market is important. If you want to support your readers being able to purchase your eBooks from wherever they want, then this is a big deal. Similarly, if we don't want Amazon to monopolize the book market and dictate how books are handled, then exclusivity clauses are the worst way to approach that because it will do just the opposite.

But, from an author perspective, this is a godsend. Lucifer's Odyssey took almost a month of prep work to distribute to all of those markets due to issues with the Smashwords distribution system and the Meatgrinder conversion process. Uploading to Amazon was done the first night. They use a much more standardized and easier-to-prepare HTML-based document, and the conversion was flawless for the table of contents. B&N's process was similarly smooth, and this decision would affect them as well, but the Smashwords process was a real pain. Exclusivity will make this process more streamlined because I'm only preparing one document upload.

The second, and most important aspect, is the exposure. In December and January, KDP Select books are tearing up the charts and reaping thousands of dollars in earnings for authors who use the system. My tally from all vendors of eBooks? Maybe a dozen dollars for December, one of the supposedly best months for book selling was a complete and total dud for me. Despite dozens of good reviews on Amazon and other places readers go, there's no traction for me, and from my point of view, my options are severely limited.

Authors like David Dalglish or others making thousands of dollars on Barnes and Noble, Apple, etc. have a tough decision to make. Losing thousands where their books already have prominence is counterproductive, but for me? The decision seems like a no-brainer. Exclusivity or anonymity? Despite my reservations about monopolies in markets, I think I'll take the former.

First draft complete on Goblin Rebellion

It's been a rough past four months for writing fiction. I had my dissertation defense back in December, and dozens of conference paper deadlines, presentations, job interviews, and dissertation proposal and defense writing projects spread across the past few months, and the deadlines coming up are even tighter and more frequent. This month alone, I have three papers due in the middle of the month.

Despite the pressure (or maybe because of it), I've managed to finish the first draft of the Goblin Rebellion. Today, while on flights back from California, I wrote the final two chapters, and I'm feeling pretty good about them. Total word count is just shy of 80,000, and it's likely to grow slightly over the next two weeks as I fill in setting and expand character interactions slightly.

I've talked to my editor, and everything should be set for a late February or early March release. Stay tuned!

"Best Edition" according to the U.S. Copyright Office

So, just out of curiosity, what book medium do you feel is the best edition? Electronic media that is searchable, indexable, does not degrade over time, and is easy-to-backup? Paperbacks? Hardcovers?

Luckily for all of us, the US Copyright Office has a handy priority list for what is a best edition for copyright purposes. In fact, they even have a legal definition of best edition embedded into US law. "The ‘best edition’ of a work is the edition, published in the United States
at any time before the date of deposit, that the Library of Congress determines
to be most suitable for its purposes."

The US Copyright Office thus defines best edition of a copyrighted work to be:

1. Printed Textual Media (Hardcover over Softcover)
2. Photographs
3. Motion Picture (Film over video tapes)
4. Other Graphic Matter
5. Phono records
6. Musical compositions
7. Microforms
8. Machine readable copies (i.e., Electronic media)
9. Electronic works only available online
10. Works existing in more than one medium

So, why is this important for an independent or self-publisher? If you register a copyright, the US Copyright Office will demand that you register the "best edition". If you offer your book on CreateSpace, Lightning Source, Lulu, etc. before the registration of copyright is filed and processed (takes months), then expect an email or letter stating that they cannot process your request until they receive 2 copies of the "best edition", which in this case is the hardbound or softbound edition, in that order of preference, respectively.

Something to keep in mind...

10th Amazon Review for Lucifer's Odyssey

Today, I received my 10th Amazon review for Lucifer's Odyssey, and amazingly enough it was five stars. For those authors out there who are curious how I did it, I've got an easy answer for you: LibraryThing giveaways.

My sales have been low, but my downloads have actually been decently high for a first-time author with no fanbase. To date, LibraryThing readers have downloaded 157 out of the ~190 books that I offered in giveaways in September and October. This comes out to about 82% claim, and of that, there have been:

10 Amazon reviews (4.50 avg)
10 Smashwords reviews (4.20 avg)
05 Barnes and Noble reviews (4.80 avg)
14 LibraryThing reviews (3.73 avg)
07 GoodReads reviews (4.44 avg)

All of that within two months of the first giveaway, and all of my reviews have come from giveaways so far. So why be happy about it?

Because those are readers, most of which are looking forward to the sequel that comes out in February. And having interested readers is a great thing. Also, those reviews, barring something catastrophic, are permanent and signal other readers about the quality of the storytelling and premise.

If you missed these giveaways, don't worry. I'm giving away 50 copies on Goodreads during the Winter Holiday book extravaganza. Feel free to talk to Scott or post in the thread to learn details of the giveaway.

Keeping my nose to the grindstone

It's been a busy month. Wedding coming up. Dissertation proposal is right around the corner (I'm at 63 pages), and I've still managed to add some weight to The Goblin Rebellion. It's definitely on the backburner. Life thankfully keeps on going. I say thankfully because if I was depending on writing for my income I would be in deep trouble :D!

I'm dropping Lucifer's Odyssey to 0.99 to coincide with a banner I'm doing at Kindleboards on October 11th. Other stuff going on with writing? Nothing really worth mentioning. Multiple 1 star bombs from the same reader on my Smashwords page, but *shrug*. I'm not going to let it bother me. I'm writing the best books that I can.

Life is too comical for us to keep taking it so damned seriously. Heading to Crete, Greece in less than a week. I guess I should pick up a camera to share some pictures with everyone. Have a great rest of the weekend!

P.S. Here's a funny SNL skit that makes fun of Twilight.

P.P.S. The reader who left the multiple reviews was gracious enough to remove four of them. Thanks Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk! I appreciate your honest comments and your willingness to remove the accidental duplicate one-stars.

Review bombs and happy fun times!

So, I've been patiently waiting for Smashwords to finally distribute my free story collection to Barnes and Noble. I've been checking every day several times a day, and yesterday, Eureeka!!

Only, someone else beat me to it. Apparently, within 2-3 hours of the 11,000 word collection going live, someone had read it and given it two stars. Then, within 2 hours of that, another person gave it a scathing 1 star review--one of those that lamented the time spent reading the free work.

The funny thing about this is that I'm not upset about the one star. Sure, it might hurt the book from gaining more exposure, but honestly, Angels and Demons was just a fun experiment with first person perspectives where your afterlife can be determined by what someone else might do to you. I just thought it was something interesting to think about. Either some people really, really didn't see it as interesting or fun at all, or someone is legitimately review bombing me (I've read about these kinds of things on KB).

Here's the thing, though. Either way, I'm not mad at all. I'm not even a little upset. Publishing books is fun, and what I love about the books I'm working on is that I actually enjoy reading them. I've read Angels and Demons several times since I released it on September 3rd, and I still get a kick out of it.

The maelstroms? The homeless, amoral sidekick? The charred wings and the devil trying to kill as many people as he can before God's angels catch up with him? A naked angel walking around Oslo? It just seems fun to me. Someone else could have written it better, but for some reason, I had the idea instead. Sorry about that.

I've heard of authors who can't stand to read their books, and directors or actors who would never watch their movies again, but I'm just not feeling it. I have fun rereading my books and stories--often way more than I enjoy reading other authors.

Anyway, I expect a lot of 1 and 2 star reviews, and I'm sure I'll have earned them in spades. Maybe that comes with writing specifically what I want to read. It sounds pretty darn selfish, but it doesn't mean I don't want other readers to be happy and enjoy themselves. I value feedback from readers, and I hope that others take a chance on Angels and Demons and provide your opinions in all their unadulterated honesty and sharp, serrated edges.

You won't get backlash from me. You're more likely to get a high five and a thank you, especially if you actually offer valuable feedback. Sometimes, as an author, I can't see the forest for the trees. I've even had stories that intermingled with each other, and while I'm rereading one of them, I might patch it in my mind with stuff I wrote somewhere else and not notice where holes or something like that might lie. So a bad review is often a blessing in that regard, and I look forward to them.

It's all good. Heck, it's more than all good. It's fun! So, review bomb or not, I hope more people speak their minds about books and give honest reviews. 1 star, 2 stars, or 0 stars if you can manage it. If a book needs work, let other readers or the author know about it. Similarly, if you loved a book, tell everyone why in detail. It can only help us authors get better!

Happy reading everyone!

P.S. Before I finished this post, another reader appears to have plopped down a 5 star rating to offset the 1 and 2 stars and brought the average up to 2.5. Thanks whoever you are! It's nice to know that I'm not the only one having a good time reading these things :D!

P.P.S. In the spirit of the light-hearted way in which this collection was composed, I've updated the Smashwords description--which will eventually make its way to Barnes and Noble. It's sort of Samhainy :D!

Some Lessons Learned from Paperback Publishing at Lightning Source

Hello everyone,

The paperback is out for Lucifer's Odyssey, and boy have I learned some very valuable lessons from the process--and I do mean VALUABLE. Others who go through Create Space will probably have a different experience as CS is a lot more friendly with submitting revisions.

First, there's something I guess you should understand about Lightning Source. It's a business that seems setup around making you pay a lot of money upfront for setting up a title, and it can be pretty brutal for someone with a steep learning curve. You may think that a paperback is just as simple as uploading a PDF and whammo--job done. Right? Not quite.

There is no preview box for the book or anyway to check margins for readability or anything like that on either the cover or the interior PDF (the contents of the book). My cover illustrator had offered to take care of the cover part, but that ended up being a huge hassle as the interface just wasn't as easy as I guess Create Space is. He tried uploading it maybe four times, and I had to keep submitting revisions. In the end, we both got frustrated, and I took over that part--applying their template for a 5x8 stock (which isn't actually 5x8 inches, btw).

Anyway, I finally tweak the cover and interior and away goes the proof. That's $110 well spent, right? Everything is ready to go.

Not so fast.

I get the proof, and the back text is not quite the way I need it to be on the cover (so big and wide across the back that it looks goofy). Even worse, the interior is set to .5 inch margin all around--which was their recommended setting. Turns out a .5 inch setting makes the interior edge extremely difficult to read. The inside edge is simply too deep into the binding.

So, not only am I changing the cover (35 dollars) and the interior (35 dollars), but I'm ordering another proof to make sure this .75 inch interior actually works (I asked Lindsay at LS, but she just said "Oh yeah, lots of clients seem to use that. You'll like it."). Thanks for not telling me on the first batch and saving me 35 bucks before the book is even out! LOL.

So, 220 dollars down the tube and the book isn't even out in the wild yet. No one has seen it, and there is no indication that anyone will ever buy it--even though I'm sure my family would probably pick up some paper copies. I still haven't told family and friends about this book yet, and I'm not sure when or if I ever will. We'll see. Anyway, I just learned a 110 dollar lesson that I wanted to share with you guys. The initial 110 was expected, so I'm not including that. The lesson comes from the additional expense that I hadn't expected that was mostly due to the illegibility of the inside edge (which their customer service rep could have told me about during her proofing of the book).

Oh well, lesson learned. I found a typo since then, but I'm sorry, that will just have to wait until the 2nd edition--likely next year after my wedding because I'm running on fumes right now.

But you know what's really sick and twisted? Despite the cost, I'm totally stoked about it. I love the Matte finish, and from what I understand, CS just didn't have that. That being said, if a debut author ran up to me and asked me what they should do for paperback when starting out, I'd tell them definitely go with CS first. Less up front cost and it will give you practice on what to look out for with internal margins and such before you get in the hole early. Stupid hole.

Anyway, here's a webified version of the final upload. Lucifer's Odyssey is finally complete... for now...