Random points

You know, if one of the big selling points of a traditional publisher is prestige, what happens when those prestigious houses start running vanity presses?

Well, then John Scalzi (via Dean Wesley Smith) starts asking Random House if they're fucking kidding him and calling their behavior genuinely shameful, while April Hamilton starts accusing Simon & Schuster of bribery.

That's the problem with prestige: It's hard to earn and oh-so easy to lose.

And a helpful commentator explained the correct way to make a link on Kobo. Thank you, helpful commentator! As much as I truly appreciate that, I feel obligated to point out that when a retailer is relying on the public-spirited to explain how things work, that's actually a bad thing.

Buy it NOW!!

It occurred to be that there's really no reason, if I have Trang at 99 cents, not to have it on Barnes & Noble directly (I'm also letting Smashwords populate the book to there so I can make it free when I want to). I changed the price to 99 cents and republished it--a simple matter of clicking a button, since it was up there before.

But I managed to screw it up, and when I went looking for the link to make a Facebook ad, I realized that the price was 99 DOLLARS.

Yeah, that's likely. I've changed it, but you know, if you hurry....

Kobo kwerks

I like to have links to Trust in the back matter of Trang, but obviously you can't have retailer-specific links in both books until both are actually up at the store.

I'd heard that Kobo will change the Web address of a book if you update it, which obviously would be a problem: I'd update Trang to include a link to Trust, and then I'd update Trust to link to Trang, but that would change Trust's Web address, so then then I'd have to update Trang again, but that would change Trang's Web address--it would be this never-ending cycle.

To see if the rumor was true, I jotted down the last part of Trang's Web address and then updated it to include a link to Trust (on the theory that if I can only have a link in one of the two books, it should be a link in the first book to the second book). Then I looked at the last part of the Web address, and by gum, it had changed!

That seemed like a really screwy way to set things up, so I opened another browser window, and the address had changed again--but, I realized, it was just the last part of the Web address that had changed. The Web address is this God-awful monstrosity involving two long alphanumerical strings, and one had changed while the other had not.

Which might mean that the Web address doesn't really change every time you update the book--just the last bit changes every time you look the book up. But I don't know for sure, because I didn't write down the entire Web address, I just wrote down the last bit.

After the bump

So, after the last giveaway, I had about two days of really good sales, and then things basically went poof, at least in comparison to those two days.

But I'm still selling much better than I was before.

It was an interesting little roller-coaster, because at the end, I have to say that I'm doing much better than I was, so that's very good and I'm happy things worked out the way they did. On the other hand, I was surprised at how short-lived the bump was, because I've read talk of a 30-day cliff, and mine was like a 2-day cliff. Of course, all talk about Amazon's algorithms is speculation by outsiders, plus they constantly change, so.... In any case, there's no point in being greedy--I'm happy with how well things went, and of course some those new Trang readers are going on to buy Trust, which is very nice.

So, what to do now? As I may have mentioned, this month is going to be very busy, so I'm trying to set things up so that I can push the 99-cent book without, you know, actually having to do any work. Since it's up on Smashwords now, I've put up Facebook ads for there and for Amazon (I'll do Kobo as well when that goes up)--I've set the per-click bids and daily budget caps low, so hopefully my credit card won't get maxed out while I'm not paying attention. We'll see how it does: Advertising a paid book wasn't particularly effective last time, but now the price is lower and the ranking is higher, so maybe more people will actually pick it up.

Progress report

Trang is off KDP Select, and I've republished it on Smashwords, as well as putting it and Trust into expanded distribution there. (I didn't get to putting it on Kobo today; I'll probably get that done tomorrow.) I've also priced it at 99 cents--as I mentioned it was doing pretty well at that price point on Amazon (although the bump does appear to falling off rather quickly), and the fact that 99 cents actually worked, even for just a little bit, made me curious to see if I can make 99 cents work in some kind of long-term way. I feel at this point that I have a decent idea of how to make free work, so I can always go in that direction (and probably will), but once you go free via price-matching it's hard to switch back to paid, and I want to have the opportunity for a good, solid fiddling with the 99-cent price point before I lose the chance.

Not that I'm going to do much fiddling right now: I realized something yesterday when I sat down and really tried to write, and totally couldn't--I'm just too distracted. Getting a bunch of new readers is, of course, extremely motivating, but I have this life crap that simply has to be taken care of (and will be taken care of by the end of the month), and it's making the kind of solid focus I need to write impossible to find.

In praise of the Hong sisters

I mentioned my recent tragic addiction to k-drama, in particular those written by the Hong sisters. And yes, I've only seen the two (My Girlfriend is a Gumiho and You Are Beautiful), but they are awesome, and I hope that other shows of theirs become available to watch. (And I've just discovered that you can watch You Are Beautiful in it's entirety, with (frankly, fairly minimalistic*) subtitles, on YouTube, which I guess is both good and bad news for me. Hopefully watching it a second time will get it out of my system somewhat.)

Anyway, I mentioned that Gumiho is kind of like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's not just because it has supernatural elements (a gumiho is a kind of spirit), including a kick-ass goblin hunter, or because it combines drama with humor. Gumiho is also really good at imbuing these supernatural elements with real meaning, which was something Buffy excelled at.

Another thing that I really liked about Buffy was that even the funny or wacky things were meaningful. Joss Whedon is somewhat notorious for turning everything into tragedy, but honestly, I think that helps because nothing is ever genuinely fluffy--even if it seems like vapid fun at the moment, you know that in a flash, it could all turn to ashes.

Everything mattered in Buffy. Take the musical episode "Once More With Feeling." Typically when a show decides, Hey, let's do a musical episode! that's all the show does--people sing and dance, and that's it. What makes "Once More With Feeling" a truly great episode is that the plot moves forward in leaps and bounds--VERY significant things happen in that episode, along with the singing and dancing. It's not just fluff.

And that happens in You Are Beautiful, too.

I don't want to give out spoilers here (because you REALLY should go click on that YouTube link and watch that show), so I'll go with a minor example. The show is about a successful boy band, and there's a very funny scene where the leader of the band, Tae Kyung, goes out into the countryside and gets chased by a pig.

Watch it here--there are no English subtitles, but it's physical comedy so you don't need them. (If you must know, he's thinking about how peaceful and beautiful it is out here in the country, away from the fans and paparazzi, and how country people are so darned friendly that they'll even wave hello to strangers. And the other guy is basically saying, "Run! A pig! Ruuuun!")

Funny-funny, right?

But, believe it or not, that scene is also really meaningful and pivotal to the narrative.

How? Well, Tae Kyung is one of the most tightly-wound people imaginable. He's a neat freak and a control freak, and very aggressive about it. He lives with his bandmates, and his three household rules are:

1. Don't touch me.

2. Don't come into my room.

3. Don't touch my stuff.

This scene is actually the first time we start to see chinks in his armor--his hidden desire to be a happier, more relaxed guy. (He ran off impulsively to go stand in that field, which says volumes about his mental state.) And the pig is just the most comical of the many, many outside threats that make him feel that he can never let his guard down.

Tae Kyung is the male romantic lead in You Are Beautiful, and for me at least, up until this point he was just kind of a self-centered asshole who was being foisted on me as someone who deserves the (very sweet) female lead's love. This scene (and the rest of the country interlude) was really a turning point for me, allowing me to see Tae Kyung as vulnerable and capable of positive change--which made the pairing something I could root for, as opposed to something I thought was a really bad idea.

 

*ETA: And in that pivotal going-to-the-country Episode 7, totally-screwed subtitles. I don't know how this happened, but in the first five-or-so minutes, you see the subtitles for both what is going on AND the last five-or-so minutes of the episode. Rather confusing, and then you hit the last five-or-so minutes, and there are no subtitles at all. Oy vey. Or, you know, Aigoo!

Interesting links

David Gaughran has a great interview with David Dalglish where Dalglish talks in depth about how signing a bad contract really caused him some serious problems. He was able to buy his way out of it eventually, so things went better for him than they did for some other people, but the fact remains that, even today, you can really screw yourself by signing a bad contract.

Dalglish says:

The thing is, I knew it was stupid to sign it. My dad argued repeatedly to not do it. I refused to show the contract to several writer friends, because I knew they’d tear it to pieces. I didn’t hire someone like PassiveGuy to go over it and make sure it wasn’t evil. I wanted even that tiny sliver of respectability, and because of that I freaking screwed myself over hardcore.

Man, have I ever been there. Not with a book contract, but with other things. I have learned the hard way that if you're embarrassed to tell people about what you're about to do, you should absolutely NOT do it. That shame is a huge red flag--you are succeeding in fooling yourself, but you know damned well you couidn't fool someone else.

Speaking of Passive Guy, he's got two fun compare 'n' contrast links up today. One is an agent saying that publishers need to brand themselves; the other is an interview with James Patterson, who is quite open about the fact that he is more of a brand than a writer.

Yes, I think it's important to brand. But seriously, who is going to find it easier to create a brand, a publisher or an author? It's hard for a publisher to create a brand for themselves; it's really easy for writers. As a writer, you probably prefer certain genres, and you definitely have a world view and writing style that colors everything you write, whether you want it to or not. Spell your name correctly and don't make your book look like an imitation of someone else's work, and just like that, you have created a brand. (Unified cover looks help, too.)

Progress report

Nothing like getting new readers to trigger the old guilt complex--jeez, I gotta get this next book out! Today I finished off the noise removal on Chapter 7 of the Trang audiobook, so the decks are pretty much clear, although I have a couple of lines to re-record--not so much because I flubbed as because there's mike noise. That hasn't been a problem before, but I think my standing-mike setup is less secure. Anyway, I can take care of those when I get around to recording Chapter 8. I'd like to take a break from noise removal for a spell....

Wow

I've sold over 100 copies of Trang TODAY. Huh. When Amazon kicks in for you, it kicks in hard, no?

ETA: And Christ, I'm now #5 on the science fiction: series paid list, and actually cracked the top 100 (#73) for science fiction in general. (No, I never show up on the science fiction: space opera list, because that is for paper books.) (EATA: Actually, now I think I'm wrong about the paper book thing, but I don't know.)

K-drama

So, these past few weeks haven't been a very productive time. Some of it is the kids, some of it is the issue of being bored with a beta task but not with-it enough to write.

And some of it, I must confess, is k-drama.

What is that? Korean telenovelas. This all started after I read this article and decided that, if other people are destroying their lives by watching 28 hour-long episodes of Shining Inheritance in a row, why shouldn't I?

So I popped some Korean dramas into my Netflix queue and got on with life, ignoring the little time bombs I had set for myself.

Well, I never watched more than one episode of Shining Inheritance (it reminded me too much of Dallas and Dynasty). The problem is that I started with a much more dangerous show: My Girlfriend Is a Gumiho.

What's a gumiho? Oh, you can find out about that here. You can also find out what an oppa and a noona are, and the difference between jondaemal and banmal. Oh, and what are mania dramas? What's the live-shoot system? Did you know that the Korean wave now so dominates Asian entertainment that there are dating services in Japan specializing in Korean men?

You see the problem? It's not just a show, it's a research project. Add on the facts that Gumiho is rather like Buffy, that I am apparently a natural fan of the Hong sisters, and that Netflix is pulling a bunch of these shows off streaming March 1st (A DEADLINE! AIIIIGGGGGHHHH!!!), and I've got the perfect storm of time-suckage.

Really, who needs crack?

So, I started with Gumiho, went on to Secret Garden, and then had to make some tough choices because there was no way I'd get more than one series in by March 1st. So I went with another Hong sisters drama, You Are Beautiful, and now I want to watch that one again but there just isn't time! (The DVDs are fricking $110 a set, too. Way to price yourselves out of the market, idiots.)

Instead, I've been thinking about why the shows are compelling, even when they're kind of disappointing. (The live-shoot system basically means that the quality of the show is guaranteed to degrade in the later episodes, which really works against the strength of a telenovela in my opinion. One nice thing about the Hong sisters is that they plot things out in advance--and whether they like it or not, the fact that their shows aren't popular enough to get a few extra episodes tacked on to the end at the last minute is also helpful. I think Secret Garden would have been a much better show if it hadn't done so well in the ratings.)

Certain conventions in Korean dramas seem...odd to me. For example, they use soliloquies, which strikes me as a little unnecessary because the acting is usually quite good. A lot of tears get shed: You get about three-quarters of the way through and everyone's just weeping and weeping and weeping. These are romances, but they can't show a lot of physical intimacy, so guys demonstrate their interest in girls by grabbing their forearms and dragging them around like they were a sack of beans. (Honestly, girls, just do the "wax on" thing, OK? That's an easy hold to break.)

But thinking about why I like these shows (despite not being too crazy about romances), is that they tend to be in the Pride and Prejudice school of romance-as-a-mutually-beneficial-partnership, rather than the Twilight school of romance-as-salvation-for-the-woman.

In other words, in the k-dramas I found compelling (and even in the one I didn't), the guys need work. There's certainly a fantasy element to the men (they're typically rich and/or famous, plus good looking and capable of eventually becoming a worthwhile and stable partner), but at the beginning, they tend to be pretty seriously damaged. They need to learn some life lessons and become better people. Likewise the woman typically needs help and/or work, which she receives from the guy.

It is simply more gratifying to me to see a partnership develop where both parties have something to offer and both are improved. You don't have this useless wad of a gal sitting around feeling sorry for herself until Mr. Wonderful rides in on his white horse and wooshes her away to his magic castle.

I really don't like the notion that it's someone else's job to fix you--in my experience, you either fix yourself, or you stay broken. That's probably the core of my discomfort with romance, because these days the barriers tend to be internal, which usually means that there's a damaged person there who needs to be fixed.

But--and I realize this sounds like a subtle distinction--I don't mind it when a character is motivated to fix themselves in order to obtain a romantic goal (or any other kind of goal).

That's why Knocked Up didn't bother me, even thought the Seth Rogan character was, you know, a Seth Rogan character--a seemingly hopeless man-child. The Katherine Heigl character explicitly surrenders the job of fixing him. She means that in a positive way (she doesn't want him to change), but her leaving the ball in his court essentially forces him to take responsibility for his own life and his own choices for the first time.

And that's what these k-dramas get right. The guys (and the women) grow, and they grow on their own. They do it for the other person of course, but they also do it very much for themselves.

I know damned well there are people who are completely incapable of growth--the notion that people can improve themselves is in its own way something of a fantasy. But many people (sometimes some very surprising people) do grow. And I'm not such a black-hearted cynic that I can't enjoy it in fiction.

The day after the giveaway

So, not shockingly given how much better this giveaway did than the others, I am actually seeing some benefits after having switched back to paid: I'm #19 on the science fiction: series paid bestseller list, which just barely puts me on that all-important front page.

I've also dropped the price to 99 cents, for two reasons. Reason number 1: I still plan to make the book free. Reason number 2: People have suggested that, if you do have a good response to your free days, dropping the price can keep the momentum going.

My previous experiment with the 99-cent price point was a bust, but this time around (when I have more reviews and better placement on the bestseller lists), it's working like a charm--I haven't gone through the old sales reports to do an exact count, but in all likelihood I've sold more copies of Trang today than I did in 2011 and 2012 combined. Of course it's impossible for me to know if I'm really making more money this way than if I'd kept the price up and took the higher royalty, but since I'm planning to make Trang free anyway, I'm OK with making 35 cents a sale if it keeps the book on the front page.

So that's all very nice for me. But I think it points to some larger lessons for all indie writers, which I shall patronizingly spell out in a numbered list because I've got a really big head right now:

1. Prepare. A lot of the stuff I did, like backmatter links, targeting the cover and description, getting into the right Amazon categories, and getting reviews did NOT pay off immediately. Clearly, it was still worth doing, because it's paying off now. (OK, it's not paying off in a financial sense yet--I still have a long way to go before I break even. But you have to crawl before you can run, and the momentum is definitely in the right direction.)

2. Experiment. Do we need to go over how much money I've wasted on marketing that did not work? It's embarrassing when that happens, and if you're me and you know you don't know much about marketing, it makes you feel like this is something you'll never really get a handle on. But if I hadn't been persistent with BookBub (and it took two tries), I wouldn't have had such a successful giveaway. And I doubt that I wouldn't have gotten into BookBub in the first place without all the work I did earlier to get reviews, have a good description, have a targeted cover, etc.

3. Believe. Recently Edward Robertson did a post on giveaways in which he says, Oh, you should be getting thousands of downloads. Which, I didn't before. But the important caveat there is that if you get your book on one of the free book sites you should get thousands of downloads. And you know, once I did, I did.

It can be hard to hear stuff by people who are better established and are saying things like, Oh, just get your book on Pixel of Ink (can't, sorry); or, Just make your book 99 cents (didn't work); or, Don't market. They're trying to be helpful, but when what works for them doesn't work for you--or doesn't work to a level that they would deem acceptable--it can make you feel like a big old loser who has written a crap book.

But there are still differences in the playing field, even on Amazon, even with e-books. Someone with a 20-year career as a novelist behind them is simply going to have an easier time finding readers. Amazon is going to help you a lot more if you've sold 20,000 copies than if you've sold 20.

It's hard starting from zero. But it doesn't mean you wrote a bad book. It doesn't that your book lacks potential. It just means that...it's hard starting from zero. True in any career.

4. Persist. Always the bottom line for writers, right? You can't win if you don't play. 

Hah! Awesome!

So at this very microsecond Trang is the #1 free sci-fi title on Amazon! Very cool! It will fall into complete obscurity again in about 35 minutes, but I'll enjoy what I have now. That's 7,297 copies given away today (ETA: 7,344 by the end)--again, props to BookBub!

And now I feel very good indeed about the cover art and the description....

The final free day

So, today's my last KDP Select free day, and the first time I've used BookBub. The BookBub ad cost $60--so slightly less than my first Facebook campaign, which was $70.

And I've gotten 10 times the downloads!

So, yeah, big ups to BookBub for being a highly cost-effective way to reach readers. Other advantages: They don't shut you out if you don't have a review average of four stars, and (although it costs more and presumably would result in fewer buys) you can buy an ad with them if you simply put a title on sale as opposed to making it free, so you aren't locked into KDP Select.

Oddly, I don't seem to be moving up the Amazon bestseller list like I did in the previous two campaigns (only at #14 now in science fiction: series, but at least I'm on the front page). I'm assuming that just a lag or a glitch, since that number hasn't changed since early this morning (and yeah, you can really tell when that BookBub e-mail goes out).

(Of course, it's possible that it's not a glitch--that Amazon doesn't count the BookBub downloads when compiling its bestseller lists. Which would suggest that, once the book goes free permanently, I'd actually be better off spending $70 on Facebook, because I'd get better visibility on the lists. Interesting.)

Goodreads is still a dog that won't hunt: No clicks so far. At this rate, the $60 I pre-paid them will last into the next century.

By-the-by: Before the giveaway, sales for February were maintaining their January levels, which were substantially higher than I'd seen before (although not high in any non-relative sense).

Moving on to reviews: I picked up three reviews over the past month--all of them were five-star reviews, moving the book from two five-star reviews to five five-star reviews. I happen to believe that psychological factors play a large part in whether people think a book that they enjoyed is worth three, four, or five stars. So, before I thought anchoring was playing a large role in the average star rating on the various Web sites.

This time around I think it's actually a response to those one-star reviews. The new five-star reviews are quite short, and I think what happened is that people enjoyed the book, and decided to have a second look at it on Amazon. Then they saw those one-star reviews, and thought, "That's SO unfair! Those people didn't even read the book! And that one is such a sanctimonious asshole--ooh, this frosts my shorts!" So instead of giving they, say, four stars, they get their dudgeon up and give it five.

Which is a reminder to myself that even jackasses have their uses....

Progress report

Not enough sleep + too much caffeine = very hard to concentrate. I did noise removal on a hunk of Chapter 7 of the Trang audiobook. I was hoping to finish the chapter, but I feel like I'm going to get dangerously sloppy soon, so I'm calling it quits.

Progress report

OK, the kids are gone, I've gotten some sleep, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Today I re-recorded lines for the second half of Chapter 6 of the Trang audiobook (and that chapter is at last wrapped up--huzzah!), the relatively few lines of Chapter 7, and some random fixes.

I've been kind of struggling with what Lily White LeFevre dubs "time anxiety," which makes it hard to undertake large projects when I know I'll have to stop fairly soon and go help my elderly relative move. But it's going to be a couple of weeks before I have to do that, and rationally I know I can get a hunk of work done in that time.

Large sums of money

The Passive Voice today posted an article about Patricia Cornwell, the bestselling crime writer who discovered the hard way handing all your money over to someone and saying "You take care of me" is a really bad idea.

Anyway, Cornwell realized there was a problem because she only had $13 million in the bank despite having earned at least $10 million a year for the past four years. The jury rectified the situation by awarding her $51 million.

And yeah, all that is a lot of money--I don't argue that--and there were a couple of comments suggesting that all those large sums are just kind of a blur to people.

Which is a common reaction when figures in the millions are bandied about. Most people (especially writers) think of those kinds of sums as mind-bogglingly huge. And when everything gets lumped together in the "mind-bogglingly huge" department, it all seems like it's kind of the same.

But it's not.

Why not? Well, again we get into the difference between annual income and short-term earnings, which is important for writers to be aware of because our incomes tend to swing up and down dramatically.

Cornwell had four VERY good years. But in this business, four really good years can be followed by four or fourteen or forty really crappy years. Cornwell's income could take a dive for lots of reasons: Maybe people get burned out on Bones-type stories; maybe Cornwell gets sick and can't write.

I think most people without a lot of financial experience think that when you get a windfall, you should go ahead and live off it. Which is another way of saying, spend it. But the problem with spending a windfall is that people tend to spend it all and run out of money, especially if they are younger and have a long life ahead of them. (See: Every bankrupt Hollywood star, ever.)

So I would argue that writers need to look at short-term or one-time earnings as something that they can turn into a source of regular income that will see them through the dry spells and enable them to retire.

The problem is, a large one-time chunk of money provides a surprisingly small annual income, which is why most retirees eventually spend through their savings, even though they receive supplemental income from the government.

A million dollars? Invested relatively conservatively, that generates an income between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. Does that sound like MILLIONAIRE!!!! money to you?

Cornwell's $13 million? Between $260,000-$390,000 a year. Much nicer, yeah. About what the average specialist physician makes. The average specialist. Not, you know, Dr. Oz or Andrew Weil or even a top doctor at a large hospital. Well, at least it's better than being a general practitioner.

If you add in the $51 million the jury awarded her, her annual income finally starts to top $1 million a year--hooray, we're finally in bling territory! Now she can afford that private helicopter and that $40,000-per-month Manhattan apartment! Except for the fact her financial advisors probably spent the money, so I'm not sure how she's going to get it back, and then she'll have to give a big chunk of it to her lawyers...yeah.

I hope Cornwell realizes that, even in Manhattan, there are cheaper apartments.