Kobo and Goodreads: Weird together

I tried removing the Goodreads reviews from Kobo today to see if that would make the advertising more effective, and I can't. Well, technically I can remove the reviews themselves, but the average star rating and number of reviews remain--you just can't see what the reviews actually say. Considering that Goodreads reviews level a star lower than, say, Amazon reviews, that's pretty much the worst outcome. So, the reviews stay, at least until Amazon yanks them.

I am going to have to start shaming myself

Yeah, I've been having a nice little freak-out after restarting Trials--been laboring mightily against that dharma, people. Vital tasks have included: Taking long trips to faraway restaurants in order to eat lunch, grocery shopping every single day (because when you eat out every damned day, you really, really need more groceries), and of course discovering more great Korean music (which I play in the car as I drive to faraway restaurants and grocery stores).

Tomorrow I have a legitimate reason (providing child care) for not getting anything done, but starting Wednesday the Progress Report is going to happen daily, and it is either going to be about the work I did (NO I am not allowed to do beta tasks) or it's going to be about all the dumb little make-work I invented for myself in order to avoid writing. So there.

Progress report

I! MADE! PROGRESS! ON! TRIALS!

YEAAAHHHH!!!

Not a lot of progress--I just sort of read over stuff and made adjustments to what was already written, plus I kind of set things up for retooling the opening (cutting the first two chapters--very typical of me), although I didn't do the heavy lifting. But good enough for the first day back after a looooong absence, especially because I really enjoyed it and got right back into working on it. Big smiles here!

What else? I noticed that I'm getting a lot of clicks on my Facebook ads, especially the Kobo one, but I don't seem to be actually selling any books there. I'm not sure if there's a delay in reporting or what, but I paused the ads for now. If sales don't show up in the next week or so, I'm going to try cutting out the Goodreads reviews, and then if things don't change after that, I'll probably just go ahead and make Trang free on the theory that Facebook ads and paid books just don't mix.

(ETA: Notice that I wrote Trust and not Trials in that first sentence--fixed it, but, oops. It has been a while, hasn't it?)

Caution!

I just wanted to make a couple of quick links to Passive Voice posts regarding shit contracts. They are still very much out there, and as Harlequin novelists recently discovered, if the contract provides for you to be ripped off, and then you get ripped off, there's not much recourse for you, because you agreed to let it happen. Remember, when you sign a contract with a publisher, you do not have the same protections as, say, a consumer signing a contract with a credit-card company.

Passive Guy points out in the Harlequin post:

Who you deal with – the publisher writing the contract – is very important. If you do business with an entity that is willing to treat authors badly, you should not be surprised when you receive bad treatment.

I completely agree.

Progress report

I managed to complete the fixes to Chapter 5, 6.1, and 6.2 of the Trang audiobook before having to deal with boxes. Actually, there were fewer boxes than I feared--my memory was colored by the massive quantity of boxes I carried that were going elsewhere. So I shouldn't be completely screwed.

$%&#@$!!!

I knew all this was going to happen, but I guess I was in denial about it: The elderly hoarder relative decided that one good way to deal with all her crap, which she had been storing at great expense, was to ship it to various relatives at great expense. You know, so that we can THROW IT ALL AWAY the way God intended.

So I'm going to have a truckload of bullshit coming to me today, and then I'm going to have to sort through it (trash, trash, Goodwill, trash...) and get rid of it before the next thing happens, which is that I'll be replacing the ceiling that was ruined by the old leaky roof. The contractor came over yesterday, and it sounds like I'm basically going to have to move out while the ceiling replacement happens. Joy.

I WOULD LIKE TO GET SOME WORK DONE. That is my dream. I'm trying to keep Dean Wesley Smith's words of wisdom in mind, but the truth is that I enjoy writing, while I don't enjoy dealing with garbage, and from a purely selfish standpoint I would like to have the opportunity to do something I find pleasurable and meaningful for a change.

Anyway, enough with the venting. Today may be a lost cause, but I think I'm going to focus on the audiobook for now--it's not writing, but at least it gets me back into the habit of making time every day to work on book stuff.

Today

I had a great moment of clarity today after I drove to the airport, found that the Magical Land of Free Parking was still there (yay!), went into the hotel hosting Norwescon, and saw a line to register that wrapped around the entire inner courtyard. In that moment, it suddenly came to me: I don't really want to go to Norwescon this year. Under normal circumstances, I would go, but I feel like it's too soon after that big trip. Professional development is nice, but right now I feel like what I really need is time to focus in on the writing. Honestly, I've go so much on my plate now, book- and audiobook-wise, and it's been put off for so long, that I feel like the very last thing I need is to spend a few days learning about new stuff.

So I left the flyers in the rack and plan to roll my registration over to next year. Hopefully by then I'll be excited to do it again, plus I might actually learn some new things if I let a little time lapse.

In general I feel like I'm much better situated from a knowledge perspective than I once was, and I kind of skim through or neglect most of the self-publishing blogs these days. Things have kind of settled in, you know? Of course, news still happens--Amazon is buying Goodreads, for example. On the one hand, that's one less competitor for Amazon, but on the other, Goodreads was doing such a poor job of being a business that I'm actually kind of relieved.

What am I doing with my days?

Between children, random crap, and a lack of sleep, not much! And Norwescon starts tomorrow! Sorry, new readers desperate for the third book!

But I may add to your numbers, I think. Maybe. I am seeing more of a response to the Facebook ads now--so far more people are clicking than buying, but I did actually sell a copy (yes, one whole copy) at Barnes & Noble!!! Plus, I realized that the money I paid Goodreads was for an advertising campaign, not a single ad, so now I have four ads running on there (one each linking to Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, and Kobo).

Maybe someday enough people will click on the Goodreads ads that I'll actually spend through my pre-pay there. Dreams can come true, people.

(If you want a random laugh, go watch Zico of Block B fail to navigate using a GPS device. I especially like the part where his bandmate explains to him that Riverside Road probably runs along the side of the river. Comedy gold, people. ETA: Or try this one of the entire band failing to do a photo shoot properly. Or two of the group's rappers failing to sing. Or members failing to model. Or more atrocious singing. The Block B guys are a lot smarter than the characters in Spinal Tap, but there's definitely that feel to them sometimes....)

Annoying....

So, I was trying to fix the links in the Kobo versions of the book, which I did. (And I did the ad, finally.) Then I tried to upload the new versions.

Trang didn't go up, and there seemed to be some screwy things with the chapter ornaments, so I redid them and got rid of some weird code, and it worked. Then Trust wouldn't go up, so I replaced the chapter ornaments and got rid of weird code, and it still won't work.

At this point, I'm guessing it's Kobo's problem--I mean, these are basically the same files I posted earlier, so any problems should have come up then. I may try later, but of course the book that needs to have good links is Trang, and that one's up.

Korean music and the digital marketplace

One of my top priorities during this last trip was to not become the main player in a tragic murder-suicide. To that end, I spent a lot of time with headphones on, listening to Korean music.

Why Korean music? Well, it's new to me, and it's interesting. I'm not talking about traditional Korean music, or even K-pop, but rather certain Korean rock and hip-hop artists. (I actually feel sort of weird about lumping these groups together, because they're quite different musically. The only real similarity, I think, is a willingness to cross genre lines in unexpected ways, which probably says more about what excites me than anything else.)

So, how does a non-Asian, non-Korean-speaking ajumma living in the U.S. find Korean music? The answer is, totally randomly! As I mentioned, I started looking into the music because I was trying to extend the experience of watching a show I liked. That got me to FT Island and CNBlue on YouTube. Then I was curious if Psy was actually any good, and the answer is, he sure as hell is. (Language warning on the first one--yes, Psy lived in Boston and cusses quite comfortably in English--but not on the last one, because what sounds like "nigga" is actually the Korean word "niga," which means "you are.") Then I went to Pandora's CNBlue channel, which played this song, and lo, I discovered Epik High. Then, operating on the theory that Korean bands that have had major scandals tend to produce more-interesting music, I found the hip-hop group Block B, featuring the rapper Zico. (Let's just say they were hoping to create Korea's own Eminem, and by their more-conservative standards, they totally succeeded!)

If this seems like a haphazard method of music discovery, I KNOW. (Of course, as a rule, you never know how people will find your stuff.) Poking around YouTube is just not efficient. The band's official channels tend to be dedicated to stuff like Christmas messages to (existing, Korean) fans. Pandora has been of surprisingly limited use: The Psy channel is novelty rap; FT Island didn't have a channel until just a few days ago; and Pandora has apparently decided that if you're on Epik High's channel, you're just weird, so they'll give you some folk rock. You know, to go with your hip-hop. I fully expect to hear Simon & Garfunkel on the Jay-Z channel now.

What's been helpful with FT Island and CNBlue has been their live concerts on YouTube. They are excellent. Of course, FT Island's concert wasn't even posted by them or their label. Instead, it was put up and given English subtitles by a fan. (Which is nice, because it turns out that Mae West has been reincarnated and is FT Island's lead singer now.) CNBlue at least posted its own 392 concert, but there are no English subtitles available--and they talk and talk and talk while the audience laughs and laughs and laughs.

Once you find songs you like, there's a whole 'nuther tangle: How do you buy them? CNBlue's 392 album is $50 on CD. Presumably the songs would be cheaper (and the band would actually make more money) if you got them on iTunes, but you can't--392 is not available on iTunes.

Other CNBlue songs are on iTunes, but you'd better spell that name right. Spell it "CN Blue" like some native English speaker, and only one album comes up. "CNBlue" gets you more, but not 392. Oh, wait, you really liked the 392 live concert? They're a great live band, aren't they? I actually like the live version of CNBlue's "Coffee Shop" much better than the studio version. Too bad, though. If you want the live performances, you have to shell out $50 for a concert DVD--and forget about those little live TV appearances.

(I will say that YG Entertainment, which is Psy and Epik High's label, seems to have it waaaay more together. Presumably the success of "Gagnam Style" woke them up a little. Although they still don't have any live versions for sale (which strikes me as abundantly foolish--you can sell the same song two or three times over! What's not to like?), and they don't have English translations for the titles of a lot of their songs, meaning that once you have the MP3s, it's hard to find the particular song you wanted to listen to.)

Where this gets incredibly frustrating is when it comes to Block B and Zico. The band is suing their label for what looks to be some pretty serious financial mismanagement, and Zico managed to offend the entire nation of Thailand. (But he has yet to be sued by his own mother or to threaten anyone with a gun. Work harder, Zico!) All that means his chances of finding another label or getting the acting roles and endorsements that seem to form a big chunk of many Korean musicians' earnings are pretty slim.

So what's he been doing? Putting out a TON of music, that's what! He's put out his own mixtape (Zico on the Block 1.5) and produced one for P.O., who is another rapper in the group. Of course, he's giving it all away. Yeah. And it's not the first time--the original Zico on the Block came out a couple of years ago, and those songs were given away, too.

Do you know what happens when you give music away? No one has a financial interest in carrying it, so becomes very hard to find. And when you do find it (I really had to have this song), it's at some really dodgy download sites--I ran anti-virus software on everything, but you know, if I'm going to contract a virus from a problem-child musician half my age, I'd like to at least have a good story to go along with it. I would rather pay iTunes 99 cents or $1.29 than deal with dodgy downloads. Plus, I'm lazy enough that if Zico's music was on iTunes, I'd never even think to try to find it for free.

Obviously, I don't know all the details--maybe the contract he's suing over prevents Zico from actually selling music, or maybe iTunes is not free or easy to use for musicians living in Korea. There are legal issues surrounding selling mixtapes, of course, but I would think that that sort of thing could be worked around, since it's basically a matter of getting permissions. And I feel like if you're the kind of musician who wants to focus on making music rather than looking pretty, you need to take a serious look at how to monetize the music you make. I realize that Korea is not the United States, but look at Owl City--that was literally some guy sitting in his parents' basement uploading music to the Internet until he hit it big.

Define "work"

M. Louisa Locke has a good post on marketing via KDP Select. I keep seeing these really black-and-white posts about that strategy. You know what I mean: In the Golden Age KDP Select was a license to print money, but since the algorithm change it doesn't work, not even a little bit.

I have to question both sides of that assertion: There were plenty of authors disappointed by KDP Select back in the day, and obviously my experience shows that it can work, if by "work" you mean "improve sales," not "make me a huge bestseller forevermore." It's all a matter of your expectations, I guess--I was actually happy with how the Facebook ads were working. Yeah, BookBub worked way better, but even if it hadn't, I still would have considered the experiment with KDP Select to be a success, both because it improved sales immediately and because it pointed out an approach that I could use to improve sales in the future.

I think a big part of the problem is that people are still looking for the One Magical Thing that they can do for their book once that will take care of everything forever. And you know, that One Magical Thing just doesn't exist. I think the BookBub ad worked because of all the effort I'd put into the book beforehand, and I expect to have to continue to put effort into marketing in order to keep sales going.

Where the industry is, and is going

So the very special BFF relationship between Barnes & Noble and Simon & Schuster is going the way of all very special BFF business relationships when the market changes: Down the toilet.

Business is business, and the bottom line is the bottom line.

Of course, the authors in the story are interpreting this in the way most likely to get them screwed:

Several writers published by Simon & Schuster expressed dismay that their books have been affected by the dispute but said they understood economic forces were involved and didn't blame their publisher or Barnes & Noble.

Jamie Mason, author of the thriller "Three Graves Full," published by Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books, said Barnes & Noble was "incredibly supportive" of her book during preproduction and that the chain was instrumental in changing the cover. "It was really cool," she said. But shortly before publication on Feb. 12, she learned that "Three Graves Full" would no longer receive the promotion at Barnes & Noble stores that had been expected. "It's frustrating," she said. "I'm a debut novelist. I don't have name recognition." She said Simon & Schuster has worked to boost sales elsewhere.

That's right, authors--it's your job to be understanding (not to understand) an industry that is failing you, because all these BUSINESS people who are in this to MAKE MONEY are so Gosh-darned nice and supportive.

Remember what your mother told you: It doesn't cost anything to smile. Yeah, sure, your mother wanted you to take something different away from that than I do.

Anyway, the Wall Street Journal also has an article on how publishers of coffee-table books are coping with the changes in the industry, since their books aren't well-suited to the e-book format and bookstore ain't what they used to be.

It isn't all doom and gloom for Quarto [Group, which publishes specialty books,] though. Many of its sales aren't in traditional bookstores but in specialist retailers that mostly sell nonbook items, such as home improvement and arts & crafts stores.

Marcus Leaver, Quarto chief executive, says selling books in nonbook stores can be extended to less obvious areas, adding that having the right books on display can enhance the atmosphere of a store. He cites the fashion chain Urban Outfitters, where you might go in looking for a distressed T-shirt and end up buying a book about body art....

Mr. Leaver, who became CEO in December, says books have a better chance of capturing a buyer's attention in a specialist store than in a general bookstore. In a traditional bookstore, niche titles are vying for attention with thousands of other titles.

Quarto says traditional bookstores now account for just 15% of its overall sales in the U.S. and Canada, though the figure is higher in other markets, such as the U.K.

Heading home

I go home soon (YAAAAAY!!!), so I went looking at my sales, and yes, they are clearly slowing down even more, despite the fact that the book now has 13 (!) five-star reviews and is now up to a 3.9-star average.

Which, as an aside, I think points to a limitation of those algorithms. I think that, in a perfect world, the fact that there's more data out there now about what kind of person REALLY likes the book should trigger more outreach to likely buyers. But the algorithms seem instead to be very reliant on momentum, so each slowdown in sales begets a further slowdown.

Anyway, I had set all the Facebook ads to run extremely cheaply since I wasn't going to be able to pay attention to them, and sure enough, very few people have seen the ads and almost no one has clicked. Which is far preferable to getting hammered, but since I shall soon be in a position to actually pay attention to the ads, I bumped up the per-click bid a little today.

I also realized that I never did a Kobo ad for Facebook. Gotta get on that (and fix those links) when I get home....

That's exactly what I look like when I write!

The eagle has landed, more or less in one piece, and although I am still out of state, I now have access to the Internet.

Which means I went poking around again looking at Korean entertainment--music, this time, because I found a couple of bands that I like. (It turns out that both Shin Woo and Jeremy from the imaginary boy band in You're Beautiful are musicians in real life--and they're both actually quite good, which I was REALLY not expecting.)

Since I am incapable of not turning everything into a research project, I wound up looking up English translations to some of the song lyrics, which lead me to these extremely realistic depictions of the song-writing process of the band CNBlue. As you can see in that first photo, they all hang around in ONE ENORMOUS BED as the Muses speak to Jung Yong Hwa (aka Shin Woo), who has never heard of the importance of removing your makeup before you hit the sack. WITH YOUR BANDMATES. Not to suggest that I'm not entirely dedicated my craft, but if that were me lying there, I certainly wouldn't be writing.

How much does it amuse me that Yong Hwa's life is even more ridiculous than Shin Woo's? It amuses me a whole lot.

But this kind of author porn always cracks me up. I mean, writing is just not a really glamorous undertaking--the main risks are the health problems caused by being sedentary and not having a ergonomically-sound workspace.

People keep trying, though. When I worked for an educational publisher, we did a biography of Muhammad Ali that featured as its sizeable frontispiece a photo of a young, shirtless Cassius Clay lying on his side, pencil (of course!) in mouth (of course!) as he penned his next insulting poem about, I dunno, Joe Fraiser or someone. Of course, I can't find it now, but turn this picture sideways, put a pencil in his mouth, and have him look up and to the side just like Yong Hwa does in that second photo, and you've got the general idea.

I mean, I realize they're writing songs and short poems, but how productive can you be lying down, with no shirt on and/or several bandmates in bed with you? Why gaze up and to the side when your paper is right down in front of you? And what's with the pencil and paper? Computers exist for a reason. If you really prefer the look of writing over, you know, actual writing, just go all the way with the quill and the blotter like Will Wheaton at the 5:30 mark here,

How a tinny earlobe!

I've never had a problem watching movies with subtitles (yeah, you have to read a movie. For me, that is not a problem). That means I've watched a lot of foreign films, which means I've read a lot of really crappy translations, which is part of why the translators in the Trang book are so damned clunky--I like to share my pain.

Translation is an interesting process: I once worked as an editor on a series of books that had been translated from French, and the really fascinating bit was how the (native-English-speaking) translator had fallen down on the job in actually making the book English. For example, in French, you say, "It is the dog that is big" when you mean "It's the big dog," and "It is that which we want to do" when you mean "That's what we want to do"--you're not trying to be wordy, that's just the way the language works. But this person was leaving in all the "thats" and "that whiches" that you have in French, even when there was simply no reason for the English version to have them.

My fellow editor thought this meant that the person's French was not very good, but my theory was that once you get into the syntax of another language, it's actually pretty hard to get back into normal English syntax, and this guy just didn't complete the process. I felt like if he had the translation aside for a week and then read it again, he would have realized that you never need to use "that which" in English, ever.

The translation issue came back to me when I watched You're Beautiful a second time with different subtitles. It's not like the first set of subtitles was perfect by any means, but the second set lose anything even vaguely resembling humor in the dialog--I'm guessing because they used auto-translation technology, and algorithms are not exactly known for their wit, timing, or aesthetic sophistication.

The difference is pretty stark: At one point, two characters, Tae Kyung and Go Mi Nam, are discussing what to do on Tae Kyung's birthday. In the first set of subtitles, the interaction went something like this (this is from memory--the original was probably clunkier, but the repetition was there):

TK: You brought me here against my will, so you decide what we're going to do.

GMN: But you never want me to decide what to do. You always decide what we do.

TK: And I've decided: You're going to decide what we do.

In the second set of subtitles, the scene is:

TK: You brought me here against my will, so you tell me.

GMN: You didn't like me to decide for us, do you? You always decide for us when we are together.

TK: I will just follow you today.

"I will just follow you today"? Honestly, that borders on an out-of-character line for the acerbic Tae Kyung.

There's also a priceless scene where Tae Kyung (who is the dour leader of a popular boy band) explains slash fiction to Go Mi Nam (who is a very naive former nun-in-training). The example I'm going to use first is actually from yet another set of subtitles, but they are quite similar to the first set:

TK: Fans write novels with us as the lead characters. There are lots of love stories without a woman involved.

The second set (oh, look how you have to log in as an adult to watch that video. Because it contains The Gay!!!):

TK: Our fans always write novels about us. Women don't even appear in some of their novels.

It's like, come on. I know nothing about Korean, but which approach is funnier in English? It's a comedy! Work with me here, evil translation robot!

March sales

I'm not going to be able to do anything book-wise for pretty much the rest of the month, and I won't even have reliable Internet access much of the time, so I figured I'd get a note in now about March sales.

If you recall, after my last giveaway on Feb. 26, I got a big two-day bump, so in the final two days of February, I sold almost 200 copies of Trang. Then things slowed down, and at this point I might sell 150-200 copies in March. Which is certainly less than the 100/day rate, but FAR better than I was doing before.

The question in my mind is, will sales level out or continue to dwindle? I'm off all the bestseller lists at this point, so visibility is reduced. On the other hand, whenever I'm convinced that things have totally run out of steam with the 99-cent price point, I get a burst of sales.

Of course, since Trang is 99 cents and Trust is $4.99, at this point I make 10 times the money on the sale of a single copy of Trust than I do on a single copy of Trang. Trust sales are chugging along nicely at the moment, but if they start to dwindle, then it will be time to reopen the mouth of that funnel.

So it turns out that I'm actually at a good place to just ignore everything for a couple of weeks, because it will force me to wait until I have more sales data before I decide whether to keep Trang at 99 cents or go ahead and make it free.

(And Jim, I saw your review--thank you very much. But feel absolutely free to yank it if Amazon gives you any static whatsoever.)