Voices in my Head (#amwriting)

I have written approximately 70% of a new novel. It uses a few characters from my published novels and has a bunch of new folks. I’ve mentioned that I write without an outline or even a firm ending. (I am a pantser, writing by the seat of my pants.) Before I start the first draft, I have a clear idea of an inciting incident: the thing that lets the protagonist (or at least the reader) know the ordinary world is about to change. And I think I know who the protagonist will be.

I say I think because, although rare, sometimes another character throws a fact-filled, emotionally powerful tantrum and convinces me that they need to steal the story. The last time that happened, I killed the original protagonist. The king is dead. Long live the king.

Much of the arguing between characters revolves around who gets to be the bad guy(s). One might think characters want to put on their best face, be the protagonist’s best buddy, or mentor, or occasionally not-quite-center-of-the-road sidekick. And these potentially helpful people do jockey for position. But when it comes to BAD . . . let me digress to make the point.

I have sold many character names at charity auctions. Only once did an auction winner ask me to use their purchased name for a nice character (and that individual bought the name as a gift for a friend). A couple of winners expressed no opinion. Most wanted to be bad. We all have a dark side. And If we can experience it risk free, many of us jump at the chance.

Most of my characters approach the casting couch with little regard for their long-term welfare. It’s all about ME right NOW. Issues such as the future years that character might spend in jail, the increased probability of dying an early, violent death, the fact that their better nature is hidden, are not my characters’ concerns when the prospect of a bigger role in the story is up for grabs.

My new novel includes three brothers. One of them will be the primary bad guy. The oldest brother keeps arguing for primogenitary succession. Dear old dad was not all sugar and spice, and the next generation takes it several steps farther. As first born, he is the natural leader of the pack. Second son argues that being stuck in the middle causes him to have the most repressed anger at parents and siblings. The youngest maintains he has put on a facade of sweetness and light for forty years. Now his darker nature is in full revolt.

They all make such good cases, I’ve taken to referring to the villain in the WIP as “The Grandmaster.” It’s a reference to a high level of expertise in the game of chess that requires strategic long-range thinking. Each brother has embraced the name and is bending their nature to make it fit.

One of the fun aspects of being a pantser is letting these guys battle it out, not knowing who will win. I remember when I wrote Bad Policy (Seamus McCree #2), I was sure I knew who had done it. All the clues pointed to a certain individual until I realized that character was a puppet for the real evil person of the story. Now that was a fun discovery.

With 30% of this book still to write, anything could happen. Maybe I’ll let you know how it turns out. More likely I’ll sit at my desk and chortle and make you read the book to find out which brother (s?) did what.

* * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

This blog was first posted in the Writers Who Kill blog.

Autumn as a Metaphor

Earlier this week, I crossed the 50,000-word mark in the first draft of my newest novel. I’ve set a target of 1,000 words a day, which I have been meeting and exceeding. I’m enjoying the process of getting to know characters and their challenges, and at this pace, I’ll have the first draft complete by the end of November.

This is a perfect time for me to be working on a first draft: Autumn is a metaphor for my writing process. Hey, you’re thinking: You're a numbers guy, not exactly poet material. Let me try anyway—Autumn is a time for planting seeds, and only in Spring do we discover which ones will grow into something.

With leaves off the trees, my view of the woods changes. The gaudy colors that draw tourists now coat the ground, still a beautiful sight though it will soon be covered by snow. With Summer’s dress stripped by cold and wind, what’s left to observe are the structural bones of the
land.

Rocks, once hidden by ferns and grasses are now visible, poking from morning-frosted ground. I can see the mosses and lichen, indicators of clean air, covering the now visible rock. These rocks are a physical reminder of the region’s geology, of how glaciers scraped topsoil from the ground and dropped erratics (rocks from other areas) as the ice melted.

This is the ancient history of my woods. I can “see” them today without knowing the effect of glaciers, but I can’t know them and understand the hows and whys of their existence without this deep knowledge. Glaciers are to my woods as the Irish Famine is to the McCree family as it brought Seamus McCree’s ancestors to the New World. Nothing that comes after will be the same.

In Summer, the forest appears as a unified whole, composed of many species and generations. With the leaves off, each tree shows its complete form, from which nature will hang a new set of clothes the following Spring. Each tree tells its individual story in straight or twisted trunk, in limbs broken by wind storms or sheared off by the weight of snow storms when they still held their leaves. Some trees lean in toward an opening in the canopy. Those exposed to prevailing winds lean away from it. In the slanting rays of Autumn’s sun, each tree casts its own long shadow across the land.

Some trees are survivors of earlier trauma. Trees that years ago had their central shoot broken have a crook in their trunk where a branch turned upward to become the new central lead. A few seem to grow straight from rocks, their long roots exposed before they plunge into the ground. A half-dozen trees grow in a straight line. Not planted by humans, they came into existence because a long-dead nurse tree that crashed to the ground fed them with its rot, allowing this next generation to fill the space its falling created.

The evergreens stick out from their deciduous brethren: two separate survival strategies on display. The ground and water determining which will work better for this acre or that.

What a dull forest (novel) I would have if every tree (character) were the same. How shallow my understanding if all I can see is their Summer finery.

Plants alone do not make a forest. Without animals, they couldn’t last long. Strategies for animal survival become more obvious as Autumn sets in. Chipmunks and red squirrels forage under my sunflower feeders, stuffing their cheeks with seeds to store for Winter. Bucks and bull moose thrash about leaving scratchings on trees and bushes where they try to scrape off the itchy, drying velvet covering their antlers.

Insect-feeding birds migrate south where they can still find bugs. Geese pass overhead in long, honking skeins. Ducks and kingfishers leave the lake before it freezes over. Sometimes a few stay too late and the ice catches them, forcing them to wait for an Indian Summer to give them one last chance.

Autumn brings with it tiny disasters that suggest how the plants and animals will react when Winter comes: the early snow when leaves are still on the trees; heavy rains that flood low-lying areas; hunters looking for food or trophies. These character tests set the stage for Winter’s ultimate challenge to survive. But that’s a blog for another day, another season.

After my daily writing, planting seeds for the future rewriting that eventually becomes a publishable novel, I often take long rambles in my woods. And every day I learn something new about them.

* * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

This post is a slightly modified version of a blog that first ran on Writers Who Kill on 10/21/18.

How to Analyze a Free Book Promotion

In today’s post I will show you how to analyze a promotion’s financial efficacy.

Given my lackadaisical approach to marketing my Seamus McCree series of mystery/suspense/thrillers, you’d be hard-pressed to guess that I earned an A in Marketing during my MBA studies. Knowing what to do and understanding how to evaluate results are different skills than actually doing the darn thing. While I deserve an A for analysis, I’d give myself a gentlemen’s D for my actual marketing efforts.

Fortunately, that lack of marketing means I have near perfect data to analyze a recent sales tactic I employed: providing free copies of the Kindle version of book 1 of the series (Ant Farm).

My specifics:

I have so far published five books in the Seamus McCree series. All are available in paperback, and I have assumed the Kindle promotion had zero effect on paperback sales. I am currently, and have been for some time, part of the KDP select. That means the only place you can buy an electronic version of the books is on Amazon for a device that reads the Kindle format (reader, computer, phone). All my books are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (a subscription service that allows readers to read unlimited pages each month for a fixed price and pays the authors an amount per page of their works read).

While the calculations below are based on my Amazon-only sales universe, the concepts are equally applicable to authors who have their books available for wide distribution (Nook, Kobo, iBooks, etc.).

Step 1: Determine baseline sales.

For me, this was relatively easy because I had done no marketing during the two and a half months prior to the sales campaign. Count the number of books sold (or better royalties paid) for the base period for each book in the series and divide by the length of the base period (in my example 2.5 months).

If you sell wide, you can add together your sales for each book or perform this step separately by venue. For those of us participating in KDP select, we’ll need to collect the royalties for electronic books sold and the Kindle Unlimited (include KOLL) pages read for each book in our series. Normalize these results by converting everything to a per month basis. I assume Amazon will pay an average of $0.045 per page read. That means I expect to earn $45 for every 10,000 pages read.

The reason I estimate revenue per KU page read is I am not willing to wait the extra time for Amazon to let me know exactly what each month’s actual payment rate will be. (It varies each month based on Amazon whim—er secret formula.) If I wanted, I could redo the analysis once the final figures are in.

These are your Base Level Results. If you did nothing else, these are the revenues you would expect to generate from your series.

Step 2: Determine Cost of Each Free Download

If you simply announce the giveaway on your social network feeds and to your newsletter subscribers, you have no cost (unless you have enough newsletter subscribers so you need to pay for that). I chose FreeBooksy (owned by Written Word Media) to advertise my free download opportunity for Ant Farm and paid for a feature that advertised that the giveaway was part of the Seamus McCree series. It cost $142.50.

During the five-day promotion, Amazon indicated I had “sold” 5,915 books at the bargain price of $0.

The Cost per download is Cost of Promotion)/Number of downloads. For this promotion that was $142.50/5915 = $.024.

Step 3: Determine the Revenue earned per download:

Wait a minute; it’s cost me $0.024 per download, where’s the revenue come from?

The great thing about series is that if people like the first book in the series, even though it was free, some of them will buy the second book in the series. If they like that, some will buy the third book in the series. Etc.

The most read book in a series is almost always the first book. Someone who discovers Sue Grafton’s Y is for Yesterday, likes it and wants to read more, is likely to start at the beginning with A is for Alibi. The same for me: they read Empty Promises and like it, they’ll go back to the first book, Ant Farm.

By giving away Ant Farm, I hoped to earn revenue from sales (or KU pages read) of other books in the series.

Because I haven’t run any other promotions on the Seamus McCree series after the giveaway, I can determine how long the effect of the sale lasted. For Kindle purchases, it was about 2.5 months. Interesting to me, for Kindle Unlimited pages read, I’m experiencing a new, higher, “normal” level after the promotion. Regardless of that continuing bump, I cut off the KU effect at 2.5 months as well for purposes of this analysis.

For each book I determined royalties received and Kindle Unlimited pages read during the 2.5 months following the promotion.

That’s not all extra revenue, If I hadn’t done anything, I’d expect to continue to earn all the base revenues for each book. To get the excess revenue for each book, I needed to subtract the 2.5 months of the baseline from the actual sales.

I know lots of authors go cross-eyed looking at formulae. So, using words: we take the average monthly revenue for a product after sale and subtract the average monthly revenue for the same product before the sale to get the effect of the sale. Then, if the effect lasts longer than a month (in my case it lasted 2.5 months) multiply that result by the duration.

Here’s a simple example to see how this works. Say before the sale I earned an average of $10 a month on Book 2. During the 2.5 months after the sale, I earned (say) $60. My extra profit is the $60 less what I would have expected to earn during that period ($10/mo. x 2.5 mos. = $25). The extra revenue is $35 ($60 - $25).

Since I have five books in the series and I have both Kindle sales and KU reads, my total profit on the promotion is the sum of the excess profit on Kindle purchases and pages read under Kindle Unlimited for all five books.

An Aside about Kindle Unlimited

My expectation was that by giving away Ant Farm, those possibly interested in reading it would download it for free. Kindle Unlimited folks apparently have a different mindset. They don’t need to “own” the book; they’re happy to read it and “return” it to the Amazon library. During the 2.5 months following the giveaway, KU readers read over 50,000 pages of Ant Farm, which is the equivalent of almost 100 books for revenue of $225+. That group alone more than paid for the advertising expense of $142.50.

Back to the Main Analysis – Average Revenue per Download

Adding the extra revenue earned because of advertising and giving away free Kindle copies of Ant Farm from both Kindle sales and Kindle Unlimited reads totaled $1,023.60. Dividing that by the number of downloads gives average revenue per download.

$1023.60/5915 = $0.173

Recall that each download cost $0.024. The profit per download was $0.149. Yippee!

Takeaway #1

If we assume future readers will act in the same manner as those who participated in the analyzed sale, my break-even point is 17.3 cents per download. A quick analysis of whether a promotional website delivers value to me suggests that if the cost per download is greater than 17.3 cents, I should avoid it. How can you tell in advance? You can’t, but if something doesn’t work for you, don’t repeat it in the hopes the second or third time is the charm. Also, you can search for results other authors have shared in blogs like this one.

Question: Can we learn more from the data?

Of course. I wouldn’t have posed the question otherwise. It was an unexpected bonus to discover many Kindle Unlimited readers preferred to read Ant Farm through KU rather than downloading for free. Those pages read paid for the advertisement (and more). My original expectation of where I would make money from this promotion was that enough people would like Ant Farm well enough that after reading it they would buy the next in the series, Bad Policy.

And those who also like Bad Policy would read Cabin Fever, and so on down to Doubtful Relations and Empty Promises. [Did you catch the subtle use of the alphabet for the order of the series novels?]

That follow-through from one book in the series to another is called “Conversion” in the trade.

Conversion

Good conversion, I thought, was the key to making money from giving away the first book of a series. I figured I had a good chance of converting people from Ant Farm to Bad Policy. Ant Farm has a 4.6 rating on Amazon (50+ reviews) and 4.35 rating on Goodreads (100+ ratings).

Before I saw the results of the giveaway, I only considered one kind of conversion: from giveaway to sales of books 2, 3, 4 & 5. I discovered (others already knew this, but I hadn’t thought of it) that Kindle Unlimited readers have a separate conversion from book 1 to 2 to 3, etc.

Here are my actual Kindle sales conversions during the 2.5 months following the Ant Farm giveaway:

Book From	Book To	Conversion %
Ant Farm (free)	Bad Policy (paid)	0.59%
Bad Policy	Cabin Fever	60.00%
Cabin Fever	Doubtful Relations	80.95%
Doubtful Relations	Empty Promises	88.24%

Conventional wisdom suggests that those who download free books do not buy books at market prices (in my case $3.99). In fact, some readers use free books as a no-risk way of checking out new-to-them authors. If they like what they read, they’ll buy more. During the 2.5 months following the free-giveaway, only .59% purchased Bad Policy.

That seems dismal; but in fact, taking those people and following them through the extra sales of the other three series books was sufficient to make the advertising buy profitable.

There is a HUGE drop-off between those who acquired Ant Farm for free and those willing to spend money to purchase Bad Policy. Of those who went on to buy Bad Policy, 60% purchased Cabin Fever and if they bought Cabin Fever they surely became fans: 81% bought Doubtful Relations and of those 88% bought Empty Promises.

As I thought, if I could get people to buy a book of the series, a significant percentage would really enjoy the book and buy more. They key is how many people actually read free downloads. That, I have no way of determining, but enough did that their subsequent purchases more than covered the advertising costs of the giveaway.

Takeaway #2:

Even though the only place to purchase electronic copies of my novels is on Amazon, the giveaway was profitable. Those who could also give away and sell in other markets would be even better off for ebook sales alone.

Conversion for Kindle Unlimited Readers

For Kindle Unlimited, the percentages are a bit different:

Book From	Book To	Conversion %
Ant Farm	Bad Policy	106.90%
Bad Policy	Cabin Fever	60.24%
Cabin Fever	Doubtful Relations	87.58%
Doubtful Relations	Empty Promises	75.37%

I speculate that the result of more than 100% for conversion from Ant Farm to Bad Policy reflects a group of people who did download a free copy of Ant Farm and then used Kindle Unlimited to read Bad Policy. The other percentages are consistent, except the conversion from Doubtful Relations to Empty Promises is lower for KU readers. My guess is that this reflects non-binge readers. Some will pick up Empty Promises in the coming months.

In fact, while Kindle sales have stabilized at pre-giveaway levels. Kindle Unlimited pages read are still more than twice pre-giveaway levels.

Takeaway #3:

Kindle Unlimited readers changed what would have been a modestly profitable advertising buy and book giveaway into a (relatively) huge success.

Takeaway #4:

Although Bad Policy is the second in the series, it was the first published. In my opinion it is the weakest writing of any of my books. Ant Farm, the intended first book, was not bought by a publisher until I completely rewrote it after publishing Cabin Fever. The 60% conversion from Bad Policy to Cabin Fever might be because of this weakness.

It also might be that the back-matter material in Bad Policy is not optimal for eliciting readers to immediately purchase Cabin Fever. I’ve recently changed it, and time will tell whether that will bump up the conversion to Cabin Fever. Anything I can do (other than rewriting the book) is worth money because the conversion rates after Cabin Fever are stellar.

Takeaway #5:

As expected, I earned the most money on sales and pages read of Bad Policy. What surprised me completely was that Ant Farm provided the second largest profit, both from Kindle books sold and Kindle Unlimited pages read.

This, I think, shows the power of Amazon lists and “also reads.” People who did not know of the initial giveaway discovered the book through the power of Amazon’s platform. This had everything to do with placing high on Amazon’s best seller lists. During the giveaway, Ant Farm reached #22 in the overall Kindle Store for free books, and #1 for free books for both Private investigators and Suspense within the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category.

Takeaway #6

The overwhelming effect of Kindle Unlimited for me is the reason why I remain in the KDP select program and have not gone wide. Most people who have their ebooks available on multiple platforms say they receive anywhere from a rare low of 60% to a more typical 75-85% of their sales from Kindle sales on Amazon.

By comparison, in this sale, I received only 49% of the additional revenue from Kindle sales. The remaining 51% came from compensation based on Kindle Unlimited pages read.

Your results will vary.

You have a different series, different target audience, Mercury may be in retrograde, a tweet could cause everyone to forget to look at books for several days. You may be selling wide, whereas I am concentrated in the Amazon universe. You may have great international sales (mine are miniscule).

The point is, to figure out if your promotions work, you must do this kind of analysis. Now you know how. Questions?

This blog first appeared on Writers Who Kill 10/7/2018

* * * 

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

Early Results from a Free Book Promotion

A month ago my blog Free or Not to Free—THAT is the question addressed my assumptions about what would happen when I offered the Kindle version of the first in my Seamus McCree series for five days for free. Here is a summary from that blog:

My hypothesis goes something like this: For every 1,000 downloads, say 10% read the book. Of those, say 10% become fans and read the entire series. At current pricing, it costs them $15 to buy the other four books. Under those assumptions, each 1,000 downloads will result in $150 of sales ($100 of royalties). Plus, I expect I’ll end up with more read Kindle Unlimited pages, and I hope the publicity will spur sales of other books in the series to people who have read and liked my novels but not been motivated to buy the next in the series.

To estimate the effect of the giveaway, it’s necessary to develop a baseline: what might have happened had I not offered the five days of free downloads. During the thirty days before the five free-promotion days, I had no promotions in effect and sold a walloping nine Kindle books. Kindle Unlimited reads during that period totaled a paltry 3,637 pages. Total earnings for those thirty days: $42.

Results of the promotion

The ad cost $150 and resulted in 5,961 downloads of Ant Farm. During the promotion, Ant Farm reached #1 bestseller for free Kindle ebooks in the Suspense and Private Investigator categories, and #22 overall.

Given the nearly 6,000 downloads, my hypothesis proposes I should gain long-term earnings of $600 from Kindle books sales. In addition, I expected to significantly increase the number of Kindle Unlimited Pages read. The chart below shows the results for the thirty days starting with the first day of the promotion.

Book	Kindle Sold	Royalty	KU Pages Read	Estimated Total Revenue
Ant Farm	5	$14	30,586	$153
Bad Policy	33	69	21,663	166
Cabin Fever	23	64	14,004	127
Doubtful Relations	19	53	13,209	112
Empty Promises	18	50	12,962	108
Total	98	$250	92,424	$666

My expectation was and still is that the hoped-for $600 earnings from Kindle ebooks will occur over a long period (and therefore be difficult to measure precisely). However, I have already earned about 40% of that amount.

I also theorize that “binge” readers of Kindle ebooks belong to Kindle Unlimited because it makes economic sense for them to pay $9.99/month rather than buy individual books. If that assumption is correct, KU pages read resulting from the ad will be front-loaded relative to purchased ebooks. The first thirty days of KU reads produced an estimated $414 (at $.0045/page). The rate of pages read quickly reached 2,500 a day, eventually increased to as many as 5,000 a day and has dropped off to 2,750 a day. I’ll be interested to see how long the tail of the distribution is. Also fascinating to me is that many KU readers don’t bother downloading free books; they prefer to read them through KU. That’s great for me because the 30,000 pages of Ant Farm they have read generated over $139 of income for me--nearly paying for the ad!

The ROI on my $150 investment has already exceeded 400% —clearly a terrific investment. As a bonus, the number of Goodreads reviews and ratings has increased, pushing the series total to more than 200 ratings, averaging 4.32 stars. Amazon ratings have also ticked up a little (the series now has 148 reviews averaging 4.67 stars). Several new people have joined my mailing list.

Considerations and Unknowables

A single ad. I decided to run only a single ad for this promotion besides announcing the free days in my newsletter. Had I purchased other ads, I would have generated more downloads at an increased cost. As the results for the month before the promotion illustrate, without promotion, sales of the series die. I chose to save those other advertising possibilities for future promotions. Their mailing lists will have considerable overlap with the one I chose, but each has unique subscribers, and periodic promotions will (a) reach new readers, and (b) remind others of the series. Time will tell.

Amazon-only ebook distribution. My overall sales strategy is predicated on granting Amazon exclusive rights to sell my electronic books. There is no way to measure what might have happened with a similar promotion had the electronic books been available on all platforms, but unavailable on KU. I have noted in earlier blogs that when my publisher used a wide distribution, non-Kindle ebooks ran about 25% of Kindle sales. My KU revenue runs 53% of ebook sales. That percentage will increase after this latest promotion. Single-sourcing electronic book sales with Amazon has been a good decision for me—so far.

Diminishing returns. This promotion was the first time Ant Farm was offered free, other than the free books provided at the book’s birth as a Kindle Scout selection three years ago. I plan to make Ant Farm free again in the future, and I’m anxious to learn how effective periodic promotions will be. As more people have the opportunity to download the book, returns should diminish. The 6,000 readers represent a small percentage of the potential market for the series making it uncertain how steeply the returns will diminish.

Uncontrollable. There are many things that can affect my results I cannot control for in this experiment. I didn’t check the moon phase, whether Mercury was in retrograde, or another astronomical phenomenon. I don’t know whether mid-May works better or worse for a free promotion than other times of the year. I have no ability to test whether changing the sales copy for the free promotion could have resulted in more downloads or sales. So many unknowns, so little certainty.

My experiments will continue.

* * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

An earlier version of this blog first appeared on the Writers Who Kill blog.

Protect Yourself with Financial Notifications

Yesterday I was reminded why setting up financial transaction notifications can save you a lot of hassle and maybe a bunch of money. My better half, Jan, opened her computer to discover email notifications from one of her credit cards for a series of credit card purchases she did not make.

The purchases began around 1:18 am our time and within minutes totaled $900. Because these purchases were overseas, they triggered the credit card company to put a temporary hold on the fourth and fifth purchases (but not the first three). They sent Jan a text alert. Because it was in the middle of our night, her phone didn’t ping, and she only noticed the alerts after she saw the email messages. She called the fraud group at the credit card company and will receive a new card.

Under the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA), if you report your card lost before any charges are made, you have no liability. Otherwise your liability is capped at $50. If you didn’t lose your card, but your number was stolen, you again have no liability. Even though your liability is limited, the hassles can be large if you don’t catch the problem early.

For fraudulent ATM withdrawals or fraudulent debit card use, timing is important. Under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, if your ATM or debit card is stolen, you have no liability if you report the theft before it was used. If you report it stolen within two days of learning of the loss or theft, your liability is limited to $50. If between two days and sixty days, your liability increases to $500. If more than sixty days pass, you will bear the entire loss.

And consider the hassles if fraudulent debit card withdrawals mean if (say) your mortgage payment bounces. Who pays the bounced check fee, the extra interest charge? How long will it take to straighten out your credit report after the mortgage company notes the late payment in your file?

Transaction alerts allow you to catch bogus charges quickly. If you wait until you receive a statement to check for issues, days and weeks may have passed and thieves will keep using the stolen information until it stops working. And if you’re someone who doesn’t bother to reconcile your bank and credit card statements, you could suffer permanent losses.

How do you set a transaction alert?

Each financial institution has its own methodology, but they are similar. As far as I am aware, you can only set notifications online. Here’s how it works for Chase credit cards:

Once you sign-in to the online account, find the vendor’s “account services” or equivalent. You can find it for Chase in a drop-down menu on a “Things you can do” link. Other providers have it as a tab across the top or bottom of the welcome page. Under the account services, Chase has “Profiles and Settings,” which includes “Alerts.”

Chase allows you to set up alerts sent to an email account for any purchase transaction more than whatever amount you choose. In the past I chose $1.00, but now I use $0.01. I want to see any transaction because thieves are known to try out a charge for pennies to see if the transaction succeeds. If it does, they then use it for a very expensive shopping excursion. I also set an alert to notify me of any balance transfer to my card. Banks and credit cards and banks have several other categories of events that will trigger alerts if you want (payment date approaching, minimum account balance, minimum remaining credit limit, etc.). I don’t use them, but you might find some helpful.

I can hear you say, “But I’ll get so many emails.” For my peace of mind, it’s a small price to look through a few more emails and delete them when I recognize the charges. Every so often a bogus charge happens and stopping the thieves as quickly as possible saves me a later hassle, and it also saves us all money in the long run. Just because we don’t suffer a personal loss does not make financial crime victimless. We all pay for the thievery in the higher prices we’re charged.

Questions? Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them.

***

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

Free or Not to Free—THAT is the question

Whether to give a book away is not the ONLY question facing authors who have control over such decisions, but it is one with implications.

When Amazon first made electronic book self-publishing easy, one of the successful promotion strategies was to give away a book—particularly the first book in a series. Readers were just getting used to eBooks and eReaders and getting one of your books into a reader’s hands was a successful strategy for becoming known. In the early days a free promotion could generate tens of thousands, maybe even a hundred thousand downloads.

Fast forward to today and the situation is different. Few people are just now buying their first eReader, so succeeding by getting your book to be one of the first downloaded is like trying to hop on a train roaring down the track at fifty miles-per-hour. Even if they don’t have a dedicated eReader and want to try out eBooks, they can read them on their computer or smart phone.

Readers who want free books have dozens of newsletters to provide them links to free books in the genres they prefer to read. The only way for an author to stand out in a crowd is to pay for promoting his book.

Many voracious readers belong to Amazon Unlimited or other subscription services, where after paying their monthly subscription, it costs them nothing to read their next book—but unlike free promotions, reading those books provide authors compensation.

Lastly, I have an untested suspicion that we have fostered a large group of people who will only read free books (electronic or print from libraries) and will not pay for their pleasure reading. A subset includes people who download stolen books, upon whom I wish the worst of computer viruses. If my primary writing goal was to have people read my books, then free is fine, but I’d like compensation for my writing, which means I need to find readers willing to pay for their reading pleasure.

Before Saturday, I focused on reduced-price promotions of my books. I have had limited success with half-price sales or $0.99 sales of electronic books. Whenever I have promoted a sale, my Kindle Unlimited pages read for all the books in the Seamus McCree series increases significantly. I’ve read anecdotal evidence that the same happens when authors give away a book in their series.

Saturday I began an experiment: I reduced the Kindle eBook price of Ant Farm (Seamus McCree #1) to free for five days (the last day is May 23). I also dropped the price on the second book in the series, Bad Policy, from $3.99 to $2.99. The prices for the other three books in the series remain at $3.99.

I’ve taken out ads, will send out my newsletter, and have written this blog. We’ll see how this works. My hypothesis goes something like this: For every 1,000 downloads, say 10% read the book. Of those, say 10% become fans and read the entire series. At current pricing, it costs them $15 to buy the other four books. Under those assumptions, each 1,000 downloads will result in $150 of sales ($100 of royalties). Plus, I expect I’ll end up with more read Kindle Unlimited pages, and I hope the publicity will spur sales of other books in the series to people who have read and liked some but not been motivated to buy the next in the series.

Regardless of how it works out, one thing I know is that I will not set up free promotions for the later Seamus McCree novels. It’s one thing to give away the first in the series in hopes of attracting new fans; it is quite another thing to set up readers' expectation that if they just wait long enough, they can get all the books for free.

So, if you haven’t read Ant Farm, here is the link to get the Kindle version for free.

*****

Update on the results after two full days of the free-book promotion:

Over the weekend, ANT FARM had 4,552 Kindle eBook downloads. That was sufficient to drive it to Amazon's #1 free book in both the Suspense and Private Investigator categories. The book also reached #22 in the entire Kindle store! The promotion continues through Wednesday 5/23, so feel free to share the good news so others can discover and enjoy Seamus McCree.

*****

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree mystery series. Empty Promises, the fifth novel in the series—this one set in the deep woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—is now available. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

Feeding Your Addictions

The psychologists have poo-pooed the idea of an “addictive personality,” but I’m here to tell you that I have one. A “friend” recently introduced me to the Wordscapes app for my phone. (It’s available for Android and iPhone.) It’s been sucking up my time ever since.

Here’s the blurb for the Android app:

This text twist of a word game is tremendous brain challenging fun. Enjoy modern word puzzles with the best of word searching, anagrams, and crosswords!

You’ll never experience a dull moment after you try this addicting word puzzle game! (Emphasis added). Play this crossword puzzle once and just you won’t be able to put it down.

➤ Escape and stimulate your mind by visiting the beautiful destinations of Wordscapes!
➤ Get your word hunt on with over 3,700 cross word puzzles!
➤ Challenge your brain and vocabulary – this crossword puzzle starts easy and becomes challenging fast!
➤ Think you can beat these anagram word puzzles? They start simply but ramp up fast!

Wordscapes is the word hunt game that over 10 million people just can't stop playing! It's a perfect fit for fans of crossword or word anagram games, combining [the] best of word find games and crossword puzzles.

I prefer math games, but saw my friend playing this and thought it looked interesting. I downloaded it, and the rest is addictive history. The game is this: You are provided with a number of letters. (It starts with 5, I’m up to 7 and I don’t know what the upper limit is.) You are given a blank crossword puzzle setup, and the task is to fill in all the entries. (The only clues are the number of spaces.) Sometimes there is a “bonus” word that is separate from the crossword. Those suckers are a problem because the only thing you know is the number of letters and that the word does not appear in the crossword.

There is no time limit or penalty for wrong guesses. The app is free but comes with ads. For $2.99 you can eliminate the ads; I don’t pay for aps (expect birding aps), so I put up with the ads, which don’t last so long as to break my addiction!

Here are a couple of hints for new players. Check in every day and accept the free gift box which often contains coins (see later for coin use). There is a daily puzzle which can earn you extra coins. When you play it (and why not?), try to find answers for the entry that includes a butterfly. You’ll earn extra coins that way.

Coins – currency of the realm. Want a free letter? It will cost you 100 coins. If you are stuck, the first thing to do is rotate the available letters. Often that is enough to find new words. However, if the only missing word is the bonus word, I’ll sometimes buy the first letter. With that, I always find the answer.

So, that’s my current addiction. I invite you to try it out. After all, these games are good for preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s, right?

Rethinking Charitable Contributions

If you used to itemize your deductions, last year’s massive tax law changes may affect the optimal way for you to make charitable contributions. Three major modifications in the law are responsible for the changed situation:

(1) The 2018 standard deduction increased substantially. It’s $12,000 single/ $24,000 married, which is significantly higher than in 2017. For those over age 65, the standard deduction increases to $13,600/$26,600 (assuming both members of the couple are over 65).

(2) The deduction for state and local taxes is capped at $10,000, regardless of whether you are single or married (a clear marriage tax penalty in a bill that is otherwise very friendly to families, especially if you have children – go figure).

(3) The provision for Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) was made “permanent” in the new law, meaning taxpayers no longer need to wait until December to find out if Congress will extend the provision.

The combination of (1) and (2) means the standard deduction will now apply to a significant number of individuals who itemized deductions in the past. Charities have their fingers crossed that these people will not reduce their contributions because they have “lost” the deduction for them. It also means that the group of people who benefit from “doubling up” contributions changes.

The “doubling up” strategy involves developing a contribution schedule that crosses two calendar years. If your itemized deductions are less than the new standard deduction but greater than 50% of it, you might benefit by moving all deductions you can from year 1 to year 2 (or vice versa). For example, let’s say you routinely make $10,000 in contributions each year and under the new law that means you will take the standard deduction. Instead, make no contributions in year 1, and on January 1 of year 2, donate the carryover $10,000. Then donate year 2’s $10,000 sometime before the end of the year. If the $20,000 donation is sufficient to allow you to itemize in year 2, then you’ve converted some nondeductible contributions into deductible ones and reduced your overall taxes.

Also effective is delaying optional medical expenses (in standard deduction years) or pushing them forward (in itemizing years). To a lesser extent, timing the payment of real estate taxes or state income taxes might also help.

What’s up with Qualified Charitable Distributions?

Making the QCDs permanent means anyone who must take the Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from an IRA and donates to 501(c)(3) organizations might benefit. Once you turn age 70-1/2, current rules on IRAs, 401(k)s and the like require you to take certain minimum annual levels of distributions or pay a huge tax penalty. As with any such distribution, RMDs are taxable to the extent they do not reflect a return of nondeductible contributions.

QCDs apply only to standard IRAs and allow you to DIRECTLY donate up to $100,000 per individual to qualified 501(c)(3) charities and exclude the donation, to the extent it was taxable, from income. What’s the benefit?

(1) If you take the standard deduction, this provision allows you to effectively deduct what would otherwise be nondeductible contributions. A clear win.

(2) Even if you do itemize, making a QCD reduces your adjusted gross income. That reduction may help you avoid the Medicare High-Income Surcharge, possibly reduce the proportion of Social Security benefits that are taxable, and reduce the limit before medical expenses can be deducted.

(3) Because you’ve reached the age requirement for RMDs, you were going to have to take money from your IRA anyway, and this might be the most efficient way to do it.

What are the rules for QCDs?

(1) You must have reached age 70-1/2 before the distribution is made.

(2) It must come from a regular or rollover IRA, not a SEP or Simple IRA in which employer contributions are still being made. They can’t be from a 401(k) or 403(b).

(3) The receiving organization must qualify as a 501(c)(3) organization (not all charitable organizations do, and private foundations and donor-advised funds are not eligible)

(4) The contribution must come directly from the IRA. If you cash out the IRA and make a contribution with those funds, it will not count. Many IRAs offer a check-writing privilege and that technique will work because the check is coming directly from the IRA. Otherwise, you’ll have to donate securities from the IRA.

(5) Had you not used this technique and instead deducted the contribution in the normal manner, it must have been entirely deductible (e.g. you can not receive any benefit from your deduction—so make sure to reject that coffee mug from NPR and turn down those tickets to the charity ball.)

QCD Implications

Since 401(k)s and 403(b)s do not qualify for QCDs, and if you make considerable charitable donations to 501(c)(3) organizations, you can consider rolling over the qualified plan into an IRA to take advantage of the QCDs.

Increasingly, states income taxes use different rules than Federal income tax law. Any analysis of your contribution strategy must include how any change affects your state income tax in addition to the federal effects.

If you are approaching 70-1/2, QCDs are one more thing to think about as you determine whether to take your initial RMD in the year you turn 70-1/2 or wait and take it by April 1 of the following year.

Warning

We’re talking taxes here, and these are my understandings of the rules. I’m not a lawyer or accountant, and I’m not providing any advice. You really must check with your own tax advisor before making any decisions (or make sure to do your homework).