The End of my Affair... (With KDP Select!)

As I've mentioned in a previous post, the effect of KDP Select on boosting sales has been getting less and less as the months pass. Even those books still getting decent download numbers don't then go on to see the huge spike in sales that we were seeing at the start of the year. Apparently this has something to do with a change in algorithms or some kind of other technical thing that Amazon has in place (which I don't fully understand!).

Because of this, I've made the decision to remove my books from the program at the start of next month. I've been  in KDP Select since the moment it started, and I've definitely made some money and gained a great number of readers from the program, but I'm no longer in a place where it fits with my plans.

Last month we made $2.48 for every borrow, which is great as long as your book is priced at $2.99 or less. Any more than that and the author earns less per borrow than per sale. This amount has gone up, which means there are fewer authors in the program and fewer borrows, so the pot is being divided between a smaller number.

Don't get me wrong - I still think 'free' is a great promo opportunity and there are still authors (particularly those who are still trying to build up a reader base) who will benefit from KDP. However, I no longer think I'm one of them. I have several books out which are now permanently free, but the payoff of being exclusive to Amazon now simply isn't worth the five free days they offer. The freebies I have are across most sites (Barnes & Noble, Apple, Smashwords) and over the recent months I've watched my sales increase as a result of this. I regularly have readers contacting me, asking for my other books to be available on those sites as well, so I'm going to bail.


As I mentioned, my opinion on 'free' as a promotional tool hasn't changed. I plan to put a freebie out next month entitled 'Go Back' which will be a short story prequel to my novel 'Underlife' (due out in August). But unless Amazon comes up with something new and shiny to keep me interested, I'm afraid my love affair with KDP Select has come to an end.

Five tips to sell more eBooks!

2011 was a huge year for the indie author, and 2012 is so far looking strong as well. Unfortunately, ‘indie’ still has a bad name, with people who are just hoping to earn a quick buck or two hopping on the bandwagon. So in this new publishing world, free of gate keepers and quality control, how can we make our eBooks stand out in the ever-growing crowd?

1. The Cover.

Anyone in the publishing industry (and readers alike) know the old adage ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ is rubbish. A cover is the very first thing your book will be judged on. If your cover isn’t eye-catching—particularly as a thumbnail—then the reader will by-pass it without a second glance. You can buy a decent eBook cover for as little as $40. if your eBook isn't selling, why not try a new cover? Money well spent!

                           

    2.  The Price.

      

      This has always been a controversial topic. Many indie authors have seen success because we’ve been able to undercut the big boys. The $0.99 price tag has been losing some of its allure as readers are lining cheap up with rubbish. However, the $0.99 price tag does have its place, as does the ‘free’ price tag. I’ve had great results offering both the first book in my series as $0.99 and now as free. Short stories involving the characters from your novel can also be offered for $0.99 and free in order to drum up interest in your novels. However, don’t under price your work. I now offer all of my novels for $3.99, my novellas and short story collections for $2.99 and short stories for $0.99.

         3.  The Blurb.

      

       So your cover has enticed the reader in and the price tag has them thinking they might just take a chance on an unknown author. Now they’ll move on to check out the book itself. The first thing they’re going to read is the pitch. You want to sell your book to that reader. Make it concise and exciting. I read too many blurbs that start with ‘this is a story about...blah blah blah’. Seriously? Read some of the blurbs of best-selling novels in your genre and copy their style!

     4. Formatting.

       Most likely the next thing a reader will do is check out the ‘look inside this book’ option Amazon offers. Make sure your book looks like it’s been put together by a professional. Include a proper title page. Check your formatting hasn’t gone screwy during the conversion process, leaving gaps and different font sizes where they shouldn’t be. Smashwords has a good guide on formatting which is free to download.

         5. Write Another Book.

     One of the great things about the eBook market is that readers can get a quick and immediate fix and when they’ve read something of yours they've enjoyed, they can easily buy something else at just the click of a button.  A collection of short stories at a low price is a great way to introduce readers to your style. Not only that, it doesn’t cost a fortune to have a short collection edited and doesn’t take the best part of a year to write. Short stories will increase your virtual shelf-space and make you more noticeable to the reader.

I hope these five tips have helped if you’re thinking of getting into the eBook market or if you’ve got a book which hasn’t made many sales! Happy writing everyone!

Shiny New Stories...

What is it about the lure of a brand new, shiny idea? No matter how focused I am, those flashes of inspiration of new ideas always try to tear me away.

I don't know about you but for a writer I have a horribly short attention span. I've always been someone who does three things at once - I'll read a book with the television on and the laptop open. Unfortunately these bad habits do transfer over to my writing. I'll always have several projects on the go and I tend to flit between them, writing one until I hit a point where I get a stuck, and then I'll move onto something else until the plot point has revealed itself to me!

Sometimes though, I reach a point where I know I've got too many 'open' projects and I need to wrap some up. It's usually at this point when that brand new, shiny idea hits me, just begging to be written.

I get a lot of my story ideas through my dreams. I can literally dream whole story lines in the space of one night. Awhile ago, I had one of those dreams and I got up and wrote the whole thing down in one of my notebooks. But I have notebooks everywhere, and when it came to me looking the story back up, I couldn't find the damn thing! I was so annoyed because I knew it had been good, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what had happened. Anyway, the night before last, as I was lying in bed, just about to fall asleep, the whole thing suddenly came back to me. It probably won't make a full novel but would be a damn good novella! But I currently have two novels in my WIP pile and I know I really shouldn't add another one until I wrap one of the others up.

So for the moment, I'm trying to ignore the lure of my shiny new idea and shelve it under the 'to be written' pile. I just wish that pile would stop getting so big!

My Writing Life.

I've read a number of blog and facebook posts from other authors this week complaining about the struggle of maintaining a balance between their writing lives and their regular lives. I have to be honest, I'm normally someone who writes obsessively. I will literally snatch every moment I can in order to get a few words down. Sometimes I managed to get a thousand words written in one sitting, sometimes it will only be a hundred. However, those words quickly add up.

This past week I've had Easter to content with, along with my two daughters' birthdays and I've had family come to stay. With so many outside distractions, I've struggled to maintain my usual daily word count. Because I'm lucky enough to be able to write full time, I think I take for granted the guaranteed time I have to write. This week, with the kids off school, birthdays and families to attend to, I've probably only managed half of what I'd normally achieve.

It is frustrating and I sometimes find I become resentful. I'm a driven person and I like to be able to get a set goal achieved each day in order to feel as though I'm moving forward. But I do need to remind myself that time spent with my family and NOT writing, isn't time wasted. It's time well spent. Next to my family, my work is without a doubt the most important thing in my life, yet I never have to remind myself to work. What I do have to remind myself to do is spend quality time with my family and focus on that time. All too often, even when I'm out somewhere with my kids, I'll be daydreaming or scribbling things down in a notepad.

So, for me, while many are struggling to find time to write, I need to make sure I spend time with my family and that I'm mentally present in that time. While my writing will always been hugely important to me, my family always needs to come first.

'Captured', Book 3 in the 'Serenity' Series is Now Available to Buy!

Wow! What an exciting 24 hours it has been! Yesterday saw the release of the third novel in my dark vampire 'Serenity' series and within the day the book hit the top 100 for fantasy on Amazon in both the States and the UK.

On top of that, the first book in the series, 'Alone', is currently offered for free and is sitting firmly in the number one spot on Amazon for free contemporary fantasy!

This whole thing has just been such an adventure and I can hardly believe that this is just the start. Though I was first published in 2009, it was only when I began releasing books myself that anything started happening. I'm currently only a year into this 'indie author' course of my career and I can't wait to discover what the next year will bring. I'm literally hearing from readers every day now, telling me how much they love my books. Nothing feels better than that.

'Captured' is my fourth published novel, but I still have plenty more to come! I have three completed manuscripts waiting patiently in my laptop. One of which, 'Underlife' is my personal favourite and I hope to have out in August. I could get the book out sooner, but I want to take a break from the editing for a while. I'm planning on writing my Young Adult spin-off over the summer and then I'll start editing again!

I've also made the decision of employing the services of the lovely Danielle at Philia Book Tours to help me do the one thing I'm terrible at in this business - scheduling guest blogs! She is going to be setting up blog posts for me each month so I hope she'll keep me in line. If I've got a deadline for anything, I'll always get it done, but if it's a case of 'I can do some writing or I can start contacting people to see if they'll have me on their blog' you can bet I'll chose the writing every time! Danielle is an absolute necessity for me if I'm going to start having a presence in the blogging world.

So don't forget, if you have not tried the series yet, you can read book one, 'Alone', for free at many different book sites, including Amazon. And, for the first week only, 'Captured' will be offered at only $0.99, so if you're thinking of working your way through the books, now is a good time to buy. Just click here to go through to Amazon!

Catch you all later. I'm off to plan book four!

Has KDP Select Lost Its Impact? And Reasons I'm Not Giving Up Just Yet!

There have been a lot of vibes around the writer's social networking sites lately about how KDP Select isn't having the same sort of impact as it was three months ago. Really, this is only to be expected. When KDP was first introduced back in December, it was met with polar views. Some of us jumped right on the band wagon, while others held back. Many people thought Amazon's attempt to monopolize the market was unethical and thought having all your eggs in one basket was always going to be a bad idea (something I do agree with).

However, as the fist month or so passed, those waiting on the sidelines started to hear amazing stories of indie authors propelled from obscurity and onto the best-seller lists. Here was a platform where the indie author could reach hundreds, if not thousands of people, all in the click of a button. So the months went by and more and more authors jumped on the KDP bandwagon. The result? Thousands of free eBooks flooded Amazon's virtual shelves. Competition to get free downloads increased, so instead of getting thousands of downloads each time a book went free, many were now struggling to hit hundreds. On top of that, readers started to get bored of downloads. They already had loads of free books loaded on their kindles - many of which they'd probably never get around to reading - so why bother adding more?

With all that against KDP Select, why am I still in the program? Well, that decision is pretty simple for me. I believe every single reader reached through KDP Select is a reader I wouldn't have otherwise found. So what if I only give away 200 books in my next free period? If only a quarter of those people go on to read the book and only half of those people actually enjoy the book, well that's twenty-five readers I've gained. If I can reach those readers through other means as well - by getting them to like my facebook page or signing up to my mailing list - quite possibly they'll be one of my guaranteed buyers, a reader who will follow me from book to book, will leave reviews and tell their friends. Those types of readers are worth their weight in gold and are what an author's career can be built on.

On top of this, over the next month or so, as author's 90 day exclusive periods are up and people start to pull their books from KDP Select, the level of competition will reduce. Hopefully the result will be that the number of downloads and those all important post-freebie sales will therefore increase.

So for the moment I'm sticking with KDP Select. I'm going to take advantage of being able to reach those few readers who may then go on to become long term fans. Six months from now, Amazon may withdraw authors being able to put their books up for free and those who didn't take full advantage will be kicking themselves. After all, eBooks are still a relatively new market. Who knows what will change the game next?

Read an eBook Week! Get Your Free Copy of 'Alone'!

I'm going to keep this one brief as I'm both swamped and exhausted after my weekend away at a writer's conference (not a good combination!).

This week is 'read an ebook week' over at Smashwords. If you head on over to the site, you'll find a  whole heap of ebooks either with discount codes or that are being offered for free!

My own novel, Alone, is currently FREE so click on the link here and grab it while you can. This offer will only continue for another week!