Why I’m Turning off My Permafree Series Starter

For several years, I used the novel in my Seamus McCree series as a permafree entry point for readers. The major problem for unknown authors (I’m James M. Jackson, not James Patterson) is discovery. Permafree’s siren song is that by making the first novel in a series free, you eliminate the monetary barrier that stops many readers from trying new authors. Give them a fine book (Ant Farm (Seamus McCree #1) has a 4.4 Amazon rating and 4.25 on Goodreads) and if they like it, they’ll purchase the next in the series.

Well, it ain’t working that way for me.

In 2025, I ran promotions that allowed me to give away about 3,000 copies of Ant Farm. The average cost was modest, less than fifteen cents a book. According to industry wisdom, that’s pretty good. It suggests my cover and blurb get downloads. During 2025, the average rating on Amazon and Goodreads both increased. Those who read it, like it (ignoring the occasional troll who leaves a 1-star rating—no review, just ’cause it makes them feel special to trash someone).

Of those who downloaded Ant Farm on Amazon, less than 1% then bought Bad Policy (Seamus McCree #2). But here’s what’s fascinating: for readers on other platforms (Apple, Nook, Kobo, etc.), 75% bought Bad Policy, and 80% continued to Cabin Fever (Seamus McCree #3).

My Hard Truth

I hoped Amazon readers would behave the way my other readers did. They didn’t. They aren’t joining my Readers Group newsletter. These particular Amazon readers happily let me subsidize their preference for free books. That required me to make a business decision.

Permafree costs money, and on Amazon it wasn’t producing readers who went on to buy or engage. What it was doing was attracting people who wanted free books—and nothing beyond that. That’s not a criticism of them. It’s a market signal to me. And once I accepted that signal, it made sense to stop feeding a system that trained readers to sample endlessly without committing.

My pivot

I returned Ant Farm’s price to $4.99 (the same price as all my other novels). Readers who sign up for my newsletter now get “Low Tide at Tybee (A Seamus McCree novella)” as my thank you. It introduces them to three of readers’ favorite characters: Seamus McCree, his darts-throwing mother, and his (now) six-year-old granddaughter, Megan. If they like it and want to read more, they can choose what they want to purchase next.

I created ebook bundles for books 1-3, books 4-6 + another novella, and books 7-8. Each bundle provides a substantial discount over the combined prices of the individual novels/novella. And I offer ebooks on my website, often at a discounted price so readers and I can both benefit without feeding Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

The revised approach gives readers options: Those who want a low-risk introduction can get a complete novella and check out the Readers Group. Readers who want value can get discounted bundles. People who want to support an author they enjoy can buy direct. Just clear choices, without pressure or hidden strings.

Will it Work?

Check back next year, and we’ll explore the results.

I’m curious: what makes you decide to buy a book from an unknown-to-you author? Is it price, recommendation, sample chapters, or something else?

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James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read Low Tide at Tybee, a novella featuring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and six-year-old granddaughter, Megan).

This post originally appeared on the Writers Who Kill blog.

Amazon vs Google – AI audiobook narrators

 By James M. Jackson

I released Niki Undercover, the first of a new series, using Amazon-only distribution even though my Seamus McCree series has wide distribution. I’d prefer to distribute wide, but to do that well, I would need to spend more time than I had available to market to all channels. Initially distributing only through Amazon allows me to focus my marketing time and, by committing for at least ninety days to stay solely within the Amazon distribution system by joining KDP Select, it compensates me for Kindle Unlimited readers who read the book as part of their subscription without additional cost.

None of my books sell well enough to justify my spending money to pay a human narrator to create audiobooks. Maybe that will be different for the Niki Undercover Thriller series. For now, my choice is to create an AI-narrated audiobook or none. In the past, I used GooglePlay to create audiobooks. KDP (Amazon’s publishing arm for self-publishing) recently expanded availability of its beta version of AI-narrated books. Niki Undercover met their requirements, so I gave it a go.

Having completed that project (the audiobook is available on Amazon), I want to share my thoughts on how Amazon’s AI product and Google’s compare.

Structure and Basic Philosophy

Both providers are in beta, meaning they can and will change their offerings. Google is available worldwide; Amazon only in select countries and for select books.

Both providers start with an eBook and automatically convert it into an audiobook.

Amazon wants the audiobook to comport exactly with the eBook to facilitate those who purchase both and want to switch from one format to another. It converts only the sections it considers the story (ignoring all the other parts of the provided eBook). It does not allow you to add, subtract, or modify text—doing so makes it difficult to sync the eBook and audiobook.

Google converts the entire eBook, including title page, copyright, author’s note, and other works. Google allows you to add or subtract material to create your audiobook as you choose. It also allows you to modify the words of the eBook if you think that improves the listening experience. For example, without using dialog tags, paragraphing alone may allow an eBook reader to know which character speaks each line. The audiobook loses those visual clues. Google allows you to add tags to make dialog attribution clear. Amazon does not allow any changes to the text.

The ability to modify the text gives Google a huge advantage, but one Amazon can only match if it gives up the notion of 100% syncing between the two versions of the book.

Voices

Amazon provides 80 narrator voices covering masculine and feminine traits, age groups 30-40 and 40-50, and American, British, Australian, and Southern U.S. accents.

Google has 50 narrator voices. For English, they have 13 American, 3 Australian, 4 British, and 5 Indian voices. The 25 foreign language voices cover Spanish (Spain and Mexico), French, German, Portuguese, and Hindi. They also provide masculine and feminine voices, but have three age ranges: 18-30, 31-45, 46-60.

Advantage to Amazon unless you don’t want English.

Changing Voices

Amazon allows you to select a different voice for each chapter. Google allows you to change the narrator for the entire chapter, a scene, a paragraph, or even an individual word.

Advantage Google.

Pronunciation

Say this in your head: After I read a piece of fiction, I will have read that piece of fiction. When you read that convoluted sentence, you pronounced the first read as “reed” and the second read as “red.” AI narrators are not that sophisticated . . . yet. And with place names, you never know what you might get. Both Amazon and Google have a mechanism to tell the AI narrator how to pronounce a word.

Amazon lets you choose a word and spell it differently in order to get the narrator to pronounce it correctly. So, if Amazon pronounced both reads as “reed,” I can change the second one by changing its pronounced spelling to “red.” That’s easy, but when I had an organization known by its initials AHI, its attempt was something like “ah-hee.” I’d pronounce each of the letters: A H I. When I tried that, it came out “ah-hi.” My final solution was “eh H eye.” I ran across a couple of words I could not figure out how to trick the narrator into pronouncing them correctly. For those, I got close enough and abandoned the fight.

Once you have corrected a pronunciation, it asks if you always want to use the new version. That’s great for people or place names, but not good for read vs. read.

This ability to change pronunciation solved another problem. I used military time in my chapter subheadings. It pronounced something like Day 6, 2130 EDT as Day six, two thousand, one hundred thirty Ee Dee Tee. I could change 2130 to “twenty-one thirty hours” and EDT to “Eastern Daylight Time.”

Google has a similar ability to change word pronunciation. Rather than using just letters, they introduce their own version of phonetic spelling. Usually, I could type in another word that incorporated the phonetic syllable I wanted to reproduce and splice something that worked. Then, in an improvement, Google added the ability to speak the word as you want it said. It usually reproduced my vocalizations correctly. Sometimes my accent and the AI narrator’s did NOT work, and I was left to figure out the phonetic equivalent or try enunciating more clearly.

Google allows you to apply the new pronunciation universally.

Advantage: Mixed. My impression was Amazon’s AI had fewer words I needed to fix. And Amazon’s English letters were easier to figure out than Google’s phonetic approach. That said, the overall advantage still goes to Google because it allows the voice-recording approach.

Pauses and Dramatic Interpretation

Both AI narrators attempt to interpret the text and read punctuation clues to add pauses. Periods work well, commas are a mixed bag, and question marks and exclamation points can lead to wonky and inconsistent inflections. You can’t fix those, but you can do something about pauses.

Amazon allows you to shorten or lengthen pauses by 25% or 50%. Google does not allow you to shorten pauses (I didn’t find any instances where I wanted to with Amazon). For additional pauses, it offers choices in tenths of seconds from .5 seconds to 2.0.

My sense was Amazon’s narrator interpreted text better than Google. However, I have not listened to Google’s narration in the last year, and it may have improved.

Advantage: Amazon—maybe.

Cover Art

Amazon takes your eBook cover and converts it to a rounded square cover for Audible, by placing the eBook cover in the square and filling in the sides with a contrasting color. No changes allowed. (See left for Niki Undercover example.) If you look for the audiobook through the standard Amazon store, you get the same cover as the eBook. Google asks you to upload a square cover, which you can design.

Advantage: Draw – Amazon makes it easy, Google gives choice.

Where else you can publish the audiobook

Google allows you to take the files they create and publish them anywhere.

Although I’ve read people saying you can publish the Amazon AI-narrated audiobook on places that distribute to libraries, I cannot find that in the Terms of Service. On a help topic it says, “Customers can find and listen to audiobooks with virtual voice wherever Audible audiobooks are available today. This includes the opportunity to reach millions of listeners on Amazon, Audible, Alexa, and through Amazon Music Unlimited.”

Advantage: Google

Pricing and Royalties

In typical Amazon fashion, they require you to price your AI-narrated audiobook between $3.99 and $14.99. They pay 40% royalties. Google allows you complete pricing freedom on GooglePlay, provided you do not offer it at a lower cost elsewhere. They pay 52% royalties.

Advantage: Google

Overall Assessment

Google provides significantly more flexibility than Amazon except for the number of available English-speaking voices. I would choose Google unless (as is my current situation) I wanted to stay within the Amazon environment.

I look forward to your questions and comments.

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This blog originally posted on Writers Who Kill on October 7, 2025.

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller series and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read two free short stories, one featuring Niki and Seamus and the other taking place at Seamus’s camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula).

Amazon is Bad for Authors’ Wealth

I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. They sell more of my books than all other retailers combined. Through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), they make it easy to upload and change files. And for that, they never charge a fee. That’s the love.

What they pay me, and their arbitrary rules and the hoops they employ, trigger a strong hate response.

Amazon Prime Pricing

What does Amazon Prime have to do with my writing business? It sets the stage for my argument about pricing. Amazon introduced Prime in February 2005 at $79 for the year. Adjust that price with inflation[i], that would now be about $126. The actual cost is $139. For that 10% real-dollar increase, Amazon added Prime Video (initially without ads, but now I have to pay more to avoid them). Their initial guaranteed delivery of Prime-eligible merchandise is a thing of the past. Although shipping remains free, if the delivery date slips—well that’s life. To summarize: for the 10% increase I now have ad-supported Amazon Video, and less attractive shipping. Let’s call that a fair deal and move on to things that are not fair.

Kindle Unlimited Pricing

Kindle Unlimited is the subscription service that allows members to read unlimited amounts of the content they make available. It began in 2014 at $9.99 a month. Inflation adjusted to the present, that’s equivalent to about $12.85. The price is now $11.99, so Amazon has taken an inflation-adjusted 7% hit.

How Amazon Pays Authors for books read in Kindle Unlimited

For authors’ books to be available to Kindle Unlimited readers, the book must be exclusive to Amazon under a ninety-day contract (called “Kindle Select”) with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Press (KDP). KDP pays authors based on the number of pages of their works KU members read each month. In July 2015 (the first date included in the data published by Written Word Media[ii]), the payment rate was $.005779 per page. KDP counts pages in a way that makes sense only to them. My ~90,000-word novels average 450-500 pages the way they count for KU payments. (The actual paperbacks have far fewer pages.) We’ll be generous and use 500 pages. That means if someone read my book cover to cover in July 2015, KDP would have paid me $2.89. Adjusting that with inflation to today, it becomes $3.72.

The reimbursement rate per page has steadily declined over the years. For December 2023, it sat at $.00437. That same book would now earn only $2.19. In real dollars, they are paying less than 60% of what they were nine years ago.

Amazon will point out that their total payments have increased considerably. Obviously from the math, pages read have increased even more. I assume the growth has been driven largely by the growth in KU membership rather than in the average number of books read per user. Amazon keeps those statistics to themselves, and they alone determine the payout rates. There are no independent auditors making sure things are fair.

They’ve taken a 7% hit; authors have taken a 40% hit. Explain to any author how that is fair.

The 35%/70% royalty payment rate disaster.

Let’s move to how KDP pays authors for eBooks they sell. In the middle of 2010, Amazon unilaterally decided to pay 70% royalties on ebooks, BUT ONLY those priced between $2.99 and $9.99 inclusive. The number of pages in the book doesn’t matter, only the list price. Whether the book has illustrations is irrelevant. I’ve blogged in the past why there is no economic justification for this prejudice against lower and higher priced books. But even if there were, nearly fourteen years have passed. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the range should now be $3.85 to $12.89, but the range has not changed.

Even worse, the range for the US and Canadian markets is the same $2.99 to $9.99. The problem is C$9.99 is worth only US$7.45. And it’s not like Amazon can’t create different ranges for different currencies. For books sold in the Australia Amazon market, the top of the range to receive 70% is AU$11.99 (which converts to US$7.89). Picky? Yes. Frustrating that they don’t even consistently apply their insane rules? You betcha.

How KDP handles free books

KDP won’t allow authors to list free books. (As a “perk” of joining Kindle Select, they allow you to list them for free for five days out of the 90-day commitment.) What Amazon will do is allow anyone (including the author) to report lower prices on other markets. They’ll confirm the price is lower and then match. This is a labor-intensive task.

I have listed for free the first book in my Seamus McCree series, Ant Farm, on Google, Kobo, etc. Every Wednesday I check to see if Amazon still lists Ant Farm for free on each of their country-specific stores. I’d guess four out of five weeks at least one market has stopped price matching and returned to posting the list price. I write KDP an email, give them the Google and Kobo links to the affected markets to demonstrate they are free elsewhere. They always revert the price to $0.00.

My suggestion for a better way

When I sell a book on Amazon, they reduce my 70% royalty by a small delivery charge. For my novels that runs $0.06 to $0.08. For my three-book boxed sets, it runs $0.13 or $0.14. Why don’t they allow authors to list their books for free and invoice them with the delivery charge? They can set up payment systems the same as they do when an author places ads in the Amazon marketplace. Amazon makes more money. It doesn’t have to expand staff to check competitor prices and manually adjust the sales price, and I don’t have to spend five minutes every Wednesday determining which books I have to rattle their cages about.

Alrighty, then. I feel better now that I have expressed my dissatisfaction. I’ll crawl back into my cave and prepare for the launch of my next book (Hijacked Legacy—Seamus McCree #8, releasing 4/22/24).

What do you think? Are my complaints legit or . . . well, you can complete that sentence in the comments.

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James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website, https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get to read a free Seamus McCree short story).

[This blog was originally posted on Writers Who Kill 2/6/2024.]

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[i] I used CPI-all urban consumers, but any index would work

[ii] https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/kdp-global-fund-payouts/

 

Why Amazon Must Change Its E-Book Royalties to Indie Authors

 Indie authors have had a love/hate relationship with Amazon for years. Circa 2011–12, Amazon decided as a market strategy that e-books should cost between $2.99 and $9.99. This strategy is outdated and harmful to Indie authors.

 Amazon formed their theory as part of their battle with the major publishers about Amazon’s right to discount e-books regardless of publishers’ list prices. At the time, Amazon was trying (and succeeding) to build market share and was willing to sell e-books at a loss. This blog focuses not on Amazon’s turf war with large publishers, but on how Amazon applied their vision of e-book pricing to the detriment of Indie authors.

 I don’t know the exact date, but by 2012 Amazon set the royalty rate for Indie authors at 70%, but only if they priced their e-books in the golden window of $2.99 through $9.99. If an author priced an e-book outside of that preferred range, Amazon dropped the royalty rate in half to 35%. Amazon presented a rationale that went something like this: because there were no production costs, no storage costs, and virtually no return costs, e-books should cost consumers significantly less than print books.

If one only focuses on manufacturing expenses, Amazon’s analysis is correct: e-books cost less to produce per copy than paperback and hardcover books. However, authors sell more than a physical product; they sell hours of entertainment (or perhaps education for non-fiction works). Amazon ignored this inconvenient fact and relied on the cost of production analysis to set $9.99 as an appropriate top price. Perhaps not coincidentally, $9.99 is an attractive marketing price point. It ends in ninety-nine cents and the dollar amount is one digit, not two.

At the low end, they arbitrarily proclaimed that anything below $2.99 was discounting the value of an author’s work below what it was worth, or words that affect. Even if you bought their general philosophy, they left mammoth holes in their logic. For example, they made no differentiation between short stories that could run, say, 5000 words, and multiple-book boxed sets whose total word count could easily exceed 500,000 words.

The only way a short story author could earn seventy percent royalty on their work product was to either charge $2.99 (generally considered way too expensive for an electronic version of a short story) or combine multiple short stories into an anthology. A boxed set containing 500,000 words is the equivalent of five 100,000-word novels, each of which Amazon believes should not cost less than $2.99. Amazon should encourage a minimum price of at least $14.95, but if the Indie author charges that amount, Amazon subjects them to a 35% royalty rate

Amazon retains its right to discount an author’s e-book whenever they chose (and keep paying the normal royalty rate). But if the Indie author discounts their e-book below the $2.99 minimum, their royalty rate drops.

In 2014, Amazon created Kindle Unlimited (KU), a subscription service for readers. Indie authors who choose to list their e-book exclusively in KU have several perks that lessen the financial burden of pricing e-books priced outside of Amazon’s golden window. Two key features are (1) the ability for Indie authors to periodically run promotional sales and keep the 70% royalty rate, and (2) in KU, since it pays authors based on pages read not books read, boxed sets and short stories are on the same footing as regular novels.

Yeah, Jim, I hear you. But it’s been ten years since Amazon created the golden window of pricing, and seven years since they introduced Kindle Unlimited. This is all old news. What has changed?

Inflation.

In the decade since Amazon introduced its golden window of e-book pricing, prices as measured by CPI–U rose 23.543%. (The December 2011 CPI-U of 225.672 increased to 278.802 in December 2021.) Amazon’s golden window of e-book pricing rose exactly 0.000%.

Even if we assume that Amazon’s heavy handed royalty rules were appropriate at the beginning of 2012, they are outdated now. Amazon has not suffered by their lack of action, but Indie authors have. To reflect the overall level of inflation in the decade, the $9.99 maximum should now be $12.34. The inflation-adjusted equivalent of the $2.99 “minimum” is $3.69.

Keeping the $9.99 maximum becomes another method for Amazon to exploit its position as a dominant player in the U.S. e-book market to disadvantage Indie authors.

Since I think Amazon should pay 70% royalties on any e-book, I’m not advocating for them to increase the $2.99 minimum to $3.69. However, Amazon must increase the top end of its golden pricing range from $9.99. I suggest $12.99 as a minimum to accommodate expected inflation during 2022.

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James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

This blog first appeared on the Writers Who Kill blog 2/1/22

Making Endings for the New Year

 

In Western cultures, January 1 starts the annual calendar and with it come resolutions for the new year. We vow to lose ten pounds, exercise more, get organized, save more, quit smoking, learn Swahili, et cetera. I have nothing against goals. They can be helpful if used the right way, and five years ago I wrote a blog on Making Your Goals SMART. We can start a self-improvement project any day of the year. Today, however, I want to suggest that making good endings can be a critical step to our success.

Have you had the experience of trying to solve a problem and, seemingly out of nowhere, a solution appears, often long after you have actively been thinking about the problem? In college, I kept a notepad by my bed because I would wake up in the middle of the night knowing how to work a math problem that had stumped me the previous day or two. As an author, my recent experiences take the form of resolving a plot hole that had bothered me, or realizing I have a plot hole that I had not recognized. These sudden inspirations often occur while I am walking or listening to music.

Our minds are wired to work on open issues. Think of a computer that has programs open for Facebook, YouTube, a spreadsheet to collect receipts and expenses for your taxes, three incomplete short stories, a webpage providing information about how long it takes a body to decompose in Georgia clay, a to-do list with a few items checked off, a calendar reminding us that next week we have a colonoscopy scheduled for Tuesday at 9:20 a.m., and we need to pick up our child from soccer practice at four this afternoon, and our email program dings every time a new missive arrives. That’s a lot of stuff going on. The computer has algorithms to tell it how to allocate memory, CPU, space on the screen, and whether to access your printer remotely.

Our brains operate in a similar fashion with the positive result that our brainpower keeps working on problems we couldn’t solve. Often when we least expect it, an answer appears. They are not always great answers, but often they are spot on. Unfortunately, our brains aren’t good at prioritizing which problems to work on. Consider those times when you catch yourself thinking about the job you didn’t take seven years ago, the day Sally laughed because your clothes didn’t match, how embarrassed you felt in fourth grade when you snorted milk out your nose. We can’t change these past events. Although it may be useful to learn from past mistakes, dwelling on them at the expense of moving forward isn’t productive – and yet, if we allow them to remain open issues, our subconscious keeps offering opportunities for review. Example: two days after Sam crushed us with a negative one-liner, we think of the perfect response. Too late to use that response, but if we accept it as a fine solution to the problem, we can close that mental tab.

Sometimes we can catch ourselves wallowing in the mud hole of a past situation and issue a personal cease and desist order. This is the advice not to cry over spilt milk.

We can control a vast number of mind-tabs that opened with the best of intentions that we should put to bed. As part of preparing for 2021, I decided to end five writing projects that once excited me so they no longer suck up precious resources from more desirable projects.

Five writing projects I will end

1. Audio Books & Screen Plays: I will not create audio books for the Seamus McCree series. Closing that path means I don’t have to spend time or effort to compare (yet again) alternative financing methods and royalty splits, or find a narrator, or worry about whether Amazon is treating its vendors well. Nor will I follow several suggestions I have received to convert some of the Seamus McCree novels into screenplays.

2. Analysis Paralysis: For 2021, I will not reconsider whether I should maintain wide distribution for the Seamus McCree series or return to the Amazon-only universe with its access to Kindle Unlimited readers. Nor will I make comparisons to what happened in 2020 or 2019.

3. Dystopian Novels: I will put my idea for a dystopian YA series on hold and spend no more time world-building and sketching character arcs.

4. Class for Writers Using Microsoft Word: I know many writers could use a class to help them efficiently use Microsoft Word to prepare their drafts, manuscripts, and format their material for printed books. I enjoy teaching and could do a good job. But the time it will take me to collect material, prepare lessons, market, and deliver the course far exceeds the financial or psychological benefits I might obtain. I will turn down current requests.

5. Dealing with Psychic Bleeders: I call people who sap our positive energy with their negative energy “Psychic Bleeders.” Their techniques include “Woe is me” posts and emails, constant complaints about others, and refusal to do the most basic work themselves while looking for others to spoon-feed information. I’m giving up trying to help (some might say to save) psychic bleeders. I’ll politely refuse to engage with their antics.

The above list is not all-inclusive, nor (except for #5, I hope) am I precluded from resurrecting a project in the future.

Ending projects also holds for the non-writing parts of my life. I plan to give special emphasis to ignoring political Psychic Bleeders on whom I have spent inordinate energy this past year! [I wrote this before the events in Washington, DC on January 6. I still have some work to do on this one.]

Does this idea resonate with you? What endings should you make to free up time and energy for the important things in your life? I look forward to your comments.

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James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. Furthermore, a novella is the most recent addition to the series. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

(A version of this post first appeared 1/5/21 on the Writers Who Kill Blog.)

Amazon, Authors, and Asymmetric Information

By James M. Jackson

Asymmetric information occurs any time two parties to a transaction have different levels of knowledge about a situation.

Sometimes that’s a very good thing: When I go to the doctor with bothersome symptoms, I expect her to know a lot more than I do about diagnosing the problem and how to treat the underlying issue.

Sometimes it is not a good thing: for example, when you buy a used car from a stranger, the seller knows much more about the car than the buyer does. The seller knows whether the car had all its routine maintenance, whether the son red-lined the engine drag racing with friends, whether it sat for a week in a flooded garage. Unless you are a mechanic, or hire one to inspect the car, you will suffer from asymmetric information.

Let’s Focus on a self-published author’s relationship with Amazon when using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

What does Amazon provide to self-published authors who use KDP (Amazon’s publishing platform)?

You know your royalty rate depending on choices you make about pricing your book and what markets you want Amazon to sell into. There are no hidden costs.

They provide information about your sales—it’s not always 100% accurate, but it’s reliable, and it’s current (at least reasonably so) to within a day.

If you enroll your books in Kindle Unlimited, you can determine the number of pages members read, again daily, with good accuracy.

Amazon provides these data sooner than what an author receives from traditional publishers.

Where does Amazon use its Asymmetric Information to its advantage?

Book Rankings: No one knows exactly how Amazon determines book rank. Sales have something to do with it: we’re sure of that. But sales over what period? What effect does sales momentum have? Sales memory (past sales)? Pages read by members enrolled in Kindle Unlimited also count toward a book’s ranking, but we don’t know how. Does your book share a level playing field with big publishers? How about with Amazon’s own imprints? (i.e. How level is the playing field level?)

One example of a non-level playing field is this: If you give your book away, Amazon assigns a separate ranking for free books. However, free downloads of Amazon Imprint books included in their “First Reads” promotion count the same as sales and are not segregated into a separate class, meaning these books can (and do) obtain the coveted #1 status in their categories.

Search Results: When you search for a book on Amazon, how does Amazon determine which books to show? Do they favor Amazon imprints? To what extent do they favor those who advertise? Do they look to maximize possible Amazon profit on a book sale?

For example, does Amazon use an algorithm that calculates their revenue for a book purchase, multiplied times the probability someone will purchase the book after seeing an ad + the profit earned from the ad itself?

Amazon does “manipulate” results to reflect its interests: recently some authors have entered their book’s name in Amazon’s search box and discovered the first page of results did not include any of their books. Most people don’t click past the first page, which means when that happens the affected author’s books become nearly invisible, even to people who specifically searched for the author.

Amazon tells authors to choose seven useful keywords to categorize their books to help readers find them when they search. Yet only Amazon knows how they use this information and what they combine it with when they deliver search results.

Amazon usually shows “Also Boughts” relative to each book. How are these determined? Is it a level playing field (i.e. do Amazon imprints get included more often as also boughts that other books?) Do books with ads automatically get different treatment?

When authors advertise on Amazon, the asymmetry becomes worse.

Only Amazon knows how it determines how much to charge for a click.

Only Amazon knows how it determines which ads it presents and where.

Amazon knows exactly who clicked on your book’s link—you don’t.

Similarly, Amazon knows which book everyone bought—you have no idea who buys your books.

What’s an author to do?

Knowledge and boycott are the primary tactics to counter asymmetric information. If you choose to self-publish, Amazon is too big a marketplace to boycott, leaving knowledge as your only choice. Knowledge takes two forms: First one should understand where asymmetric information exits (and hopefully this blog helped). Then, to the extent possible, learn strategies to counterbalance Amazon’s advantages.

It’s not just authors . . . readers, too!

Amazon’s asymmetric information advantage also affects us as readers. It knows what we read (if we use a Kindle or Kindle App, it even knows when we read). It knows what books you’ve searched for, what ads you click on, and which ad placements attract your attention.

Not that I want you to become paranoid about asymmetric information, but based on your purchases, Amazon might even know if you are naughty or nice–oh wait, that’s Santa Claus—and besides, you already know that about yourself.

* * * * *

James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. False Bottom, the sixth novel in the series—this one set in the Boston area—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 published on Writers Who Kill.

Second Edition - Chance for a do-over

This past Wednesday, all the rights to Bad Policy officially reverted from my publisher to me and the second edition went live using my publishing company, Wolf's Echo Press. I’ve already discussed the self-imposed angst I generated by reediting and reformatting the book. Today I want to talk about one of the things independent authors often say they most cherish, the ability to choose how to price and promote their books.

The print decisions were fairly easy to make because I’ve had practice when I developed the print edition of my Kindle Scout winner, Ant Farm. I use CreateSpace to prepare the print edition for sale on Amazon and IngramSpark for all other distribution. The reason for the two versions is the difference in royalties CreateSpace pays for Amazon and all others.

Here’s how royalty works at CreateSpace for Bad Policy:

The list price is $14.95, of which they take 40% off the top if the book is sold on Amazon or 60% if sold in “Expanded Distribution” (any Amazon competitor, whether online or bricks and mortar). That leaves $8.97 (Amazon) or $5.98 (Other). From that, CreateSpace deducts both a fixed charge per book ($0.85 for books with 110-828 pages) and a variable charge of $0.012/page (for Bad Policy this comes out to $3.19) for total per unit deductions of $4.04. My payment (combining my roles of publisher and author) is what remains, $4.93 if the book sells on Amazon and $1.94 elsewhere.

As an aside, note that even if we assume there is no profit for CreateSpace in the $4.04 fixed costs of producing a book, they and Amazon still make $5.98 (before shipping costs) per book sold on Amazon, compared to the publisher’s and author’s combined take of $4.93!

At IngramSpark, the royalty calculations are a bit different because the publisher determines the wholesale discount. I set mine at 40%. My thinking is that bookstores will be ordering this book because of customer request, not to stock their shelves. Therefore, the standard discount makes sense. Starting with the same $14.95 with 40% wholesale discount, leaves $8.97. Ingram has a higher charge to print the book ($4.84), leaving $4.13 for the publisher and author.

That’s eighty cents lower than what CreateSpace pays for Amazon sales (so I use CreateSpace for that sales channel), but a whopping $2.19 higher than CreateSpace when it comes to any other sales channel. Another reason for using IngramSpark for bookstore sales is I have had bookstore owners tell me they will not carry or order a book published by CreateSpace because it is owned by Amazon, who they see as an unfair competitor.

Figuring out what to do with print was the easy part. How to price the ebook and where to sell it required (and will require in the future) considerable thought.

The original ebook price for Bad Policy was $5.95. Cabin Fever’s ebook still has a $5.95 price tag. Kindle Press priced Ant Farm at $3.49. Amazon, gorilla of the ebook market with a roughly 70% share in the U.S., pays royalties at a 70% rate for books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, provided the books comply with a few rules that are easy to follow. Prices outside that range qualify for a 35% royalty.

I like 70% better than 35%—about twice as much.

I did a scientific survey of 1 person (my life partner, Jan). She said to price it at $4.00. The marketer in me changed that to $3.99 and that is its price.

We now arrive at the decision point over which much ink has been spilled: go exclusive with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or sell across multiple platforms. There are excellent arguments for both sides. I looked at my past sales for guidance. Amazon has sold over 80% of the ebooks for Bad Policy and Cabin Fever even though the publisher made sure the books are available everywhere.

The KDP exclusivity period runs for ninety days, when it can be renewed for the next ninety days or not. The biggest advantage for going exclusive with Amazon is to have the book available in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and the Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL).

Thirty percent of Ant Farm ebook sales have come through the KU and KOLL programs. Yes, if a book is not available on KU and KOLL, some people will buy the books, but those folks have already had three years to purchase Bad Policy. Consequently, I decided to start Bad Policy’s rebirth by going exclusive and trumpeting to KU participants that for them the book was now free. Of course, they have to read the book before I see any royalties!

I’ll do the experiment for ninety days, evaluate it, and then decide what to do for the next ninety days. That’s life in the independent author lane. Oh, and here's the link to Amazon if you're interested in in the Seamus McCree novels.

~ Jim

This blog originally appeared on the Writers Who Kill Blog 4/17/16.

Kindle Press’s (Presumed) Long Tail

Earlier this month Kindle Press released Ant Farm into the electronic publishing world. To celebrate I held a virtual release party—a new experience for me. Unlike the physical release party I held for the publication of Bad Policy two years ago, this cost considerably less (the prizes were real, but the food was virtual and Facebook charged nothing for the “room” in which we held our conversations).

Also different: I sold no books during those two hours—although one ebook sold on Amazon shortly after we ended.

For traditionally published authors, presales and first week/month sales are absolutely crucial. Physical shelf space is a scarce commodity (scarcer as bookstores use more of their square footage for nonbook merchandise, coffee bars, and the like).

Only so many books can be featured in high sales locations (new releases, the bookstore’s staff “picks” on a table shoppers must pass). Make a big splash and your book continues to command prime store real estate. Make a moderate splash, and your book remains on the shelves. Not enough of a splash to scare a goldfish and your books are returned to sender, with negative consequences for future book sales by the same author.

This traditional approach is all about the head of the sales beast—the big rush at the beginning—and very little about the tail of the distribution.

Kindle Press with the Kindle Scout program takes a different approach: it gives away the head. [Skip the rest of this paragraph if you already know how the Kindle Scout nomination process works.] As part of how Kindle Press determines which books to publish in electronic format, each book is presented to the public for thirty days for people to nominate. If someone nominates a book that Kindle Press selects, then when the ebook is available for pre-sale, that person will get a free Kindle version of the book, with the expressed hope they will leave a review.

These free copies of the Kindle book are a significant portion of what would have been the distribution beast’s head. Given the extensive campaign I undertook to make people aware of the Kindle Scout nomination process for Ant Farm, there are very few people I know who read electronically who will not already be receiving a free book. No one who came to the virtual release party needed to buy Ant Farm; they already had it.

For someone like me with a small following (although loyal, thank you readers), the only way Kindle Press will recoup its upfront costs is through their marketing of Ant Farm. Not that I can’t and won’t continue to promote the book, but the choir to which I can preach already know the hymn. It is up to Kindle Press to find new churches in which to sing Ant Farm’s praises.

Picture traditional publishing as a controlled flood (an oxymoron?) They hold back a reservoir of books until publication date, open the sluice gates, and in a massive rush the books pour out, hopefully to be purchased by the buying public. If not, then the detritus from the flood is cleared away in bargain bins, sold to remainder operations, or recycled.

Consider the Kindle Press experiment as akin to a leaky faucet. It steadily drip—drip—drips its way to success. Oh sure, from time to time someone opens the faucet and lets it run wide open for a while, but even when that gush of promotion turns off, we still hear the steady drip, drip, drip as a book here, a book there finds its way electronically onto someone’s reading device.

Some of the Kindle Press books have taken off from the start—the faucet is wide open. Many of the romances have done particularly well, rising into the top 1,000 ranking of Kindle books sold, meaning many people are buying the books daily. Others books, started with the drips, but with a blast of Amazon attention suddenly sell a bunch before returning to the drips as the promotion ends.

The Kindle Press advance is $1,500. They also have their time and money invested in each book (editing, layout, overhead, etc.) Let’s say that’s another $1,500 (they won’t say). Since royalties are mostly at the 50% rate, it takes selling roughly 1,000 books to cover the advance and the estimated internal costs. (It varies based on the book price, but Kindle books have been initially priced between $2.99 and $3.99, with the average currently at $3.45). Recently a number of the Kindle Press books entered a month-long $2.00 promotion and sales for those books increased significantly, but at a smaller profit.

The Kindle Press contract locks authors in for two years. To cover the $3,000 initial outlay they need to average selling a bit less than one and a half books a day. Drip, drip, drip. To continue to control the book for the next three years means Kindle Press needs to generate royalties of at least $500 a year. A book a day will accomplish that. Drip, drip, drip.

After five years the author can exit the contract if Kindle Press has not paid at least $25,000 in royalties. I predict many books will not reach that payout. Regardless, let’s assume all a book accomplishes is to make enough sales to keep the author in the contract for the five years. That will be a minimum of 2,000 sales over the five years.

Rounding liberally, that means that book has gross sales of $7,000. Royalties are a something over $3,000 (reflecting transaction fees); gross income is the same $3,000. Profit is $1,500, or 100% after 5 years. Not a bad return on investment. And remember, that’s on a drip, drip, drip of sales—just slightly more than one a day. When one of the Kindle Press books has the faucet wide open, the profit margins for Amazon are quite high.

It is easy to understand why Amazon would like the premise behind Kindle Press. What about an author’s perspective?

I have a series. People who read my books like them (average reader ratings are well over 4 out of 5), but not enough people know of the books because most people don’t like them so well that they buy them for other people or insist that their libraries stock them. In what I consider a worst-case scenario, if Amazon only sells 2,000 books – those are 2,000 new readers (remember my old readers received the book for free). Some percentage of these folks will buy other books in the series. That means the distribution of my sales tail is even fatter than Amazon’s!

And if Amazon works magic and Ant Farm becomes a big seller, it’s all to our mutual benefit. What that means is I am not stressing out that as I write this Ant Farm’s ranking is just around 100,000, It’s early days of a very long tail, and I am planning on enjoying the ride.

Oh yes, if you would like to add to my drip, drip, drip, here’s a purchase link for Ant Farm.

~ Jim

[An earlier version of this blog appeared on Writers Who Kill 6/21/15]

Kindle Scout and Me

Have you heard about the relatively new Kindle Scout program? If not, I’ll tell you about it in a minute. If so, I’ll tell you why I chose to try it.

But first, here’s how I came to my decision to try to qualify for this Amazon publishing venture and here is the link where you can nominate my book, Ant Farm.

The situation before Kindle Scout

The Seamus McCree series is published by Barking Rain Press (BRP), a small publisher. The books have generated positive reader reviews. The few professional reviews they have received have also been positive. But BRP does not have the resources for any kind of major publicity campaign. While I have done what I can to promote the books, one aspect I have not had any control over (nor would I in a traditional publishing contract) is the ability to aggressively price books to generate a larger reader base.

I have confidence that if I can get people to read a book in the series, they will want to read more about Seamus and friends and the scrapes they get into. If I were persistent and produced a book a year, by the time I had five or seven books in the series, I would have built a bigger following and the series might have traction. Was there a better way?

My electronic equivalent of the bottom drawer contained the first novel I wrote with Seamus McCree. I referred to it as my practice novel because, through its dozen drafts I learned how to write a mystery. It was good enough to garner an agent offer, but not strong enough to be published, and so six years ago, I put it aside. Last fall I reread it. Ant Farm had good bones, but needed major work to bring it up to my current standards. With effort, I could make it an excellent read.

If I self-published that reworked story, I could use it as a marketing device to help bring readers into the series. It could be a loss leader for the series. I could hook readers with Ant Farm and continue to provide good stories with Bad Policy, Cabin Fever, and Doubtful Relations (the manuscript I put aside to rework Ant Farm). Done correctly, I could build the Seamus McCree “franchise” more quickly.

After hemming and hawing at this change in plans from finishing Doubtful Relations first, I decided to tackle Ant Farm. I rewrote, re-edited, sent to beta readers, re-edited, proofread, and now it’s ready to go.

While I was revising, Amazon announced the Kindle Scout program. Briefly, it is a way for Amazon to get great content for their Kindle ebooks and Audible audio books based on reader nominations. An author submits a complete book in one of three genres, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance or Science Fiction/Fantasy.

Amazon staff reviews the submission, which includes a book cover, logline, blurb, author bio and some optional questions the author can answer. If they appear reasonable, within a couple of business days the book is listed and available for nomination. My direct link is https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3IATL9SA04ZS2

Disadvantages of Kindle Scout Program

Extra preparation

Submitting to the Kindle Scout program cost me no money and only a bit of time to jump through their hoops.

Unlike traditional publishing where the publisher produces the book cover, for Scout I had to submit one. Since I had planned to self-publish anyway, I already had a cover prepared. However, I had to develop a logline with a maximum of 45 characters, a short blurb (max 500 characters), cram my author bio into another 500-character limit, and choose three questions to answer, each in 300 characters.

I can use the logline for promotion, and the other stuff didn’t take too much time, and I had no extra cost, so the process was not much of a burden.

Loss of Pricing Control

Recall that one of my reasons for independently publishing Ant Farm was to maintain pricing control so I could generate free and reduced price opportunities to introduce people to the Seamus McCree series. Amazon, as the publisher, controls all pricing decisions. They will decide if the book is $2.99 or $5.99 or whatever. They’ll decide whether to provide free days.

Loss of Timing Control

If selected, Amazon determines when the ebook version of Ant Farm will be published. Had I not gone this route, I could have had the ebook available currently. That possibly cost a bit of revenue, but not much.

Kindle only

If accepted, my ebook will be available only in the Kindle format sold by Amazon or loaned through their Prime and Kindle Unlimited programs. No Barnes and Noble, no Kobo, no Scribd or Oyster. Amazon generates about 75% of my ebook sales. That means hooking my wagon to their horse gives up 25% of that potential revenue if all things are equal.

But will they be equal? I don’t think so, which brings us to the advantages as I see them.

Advantages of Kindle Scout Program

Promotion

The primary reason I wanted to independently publish Ant Farm was to generate more readers for the Seamus McCree series. I believe (no facts on which to judge as the program is too new) that Amazon will want the early books to succeed. As of this writing, the Kindle Scout program has selected eight books in November, eight in December, and so far only one in January [update: three now selected].

If they choose my book, it will be one of the first published, and I believe they will make sure those books will do well. They will promote the heck out of them, and they can do that much better than I, because they have the platform for it.

Advance

The Kindle Scout program pays a $1,500 advance for books they publish. That advance would cover the editing and book cover costs I’ve incurred. Whatever royalties I earn would be profit.

Free Publicity

Participating in the Kindle Scout program provides 30 days of free publicity for Ant Farm and by extension the entire series. Even if not selected, at the end of the 30-day period those people who nominate the book receive an email from me thanking them for their interest and inviting them to keep in touch with an email address and link to my website.

Plus, during the nomination process I will use social media to generate interest in Ant Farm’s participation in the program. If others retweet and share Facebook posts, it provides additional content for new people to learn of the series.

As the saying goes, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” [Update: several people have told me they have purchased Bad Policy based on reading the selected chapters of Ant Farm.]

Exit Strategy

The initial contract with Kindle Scout is five years. However, if the ebook does not meet defined monetary goals, an author can cancel the contract in as few as two years. My contracts with Barking Rain Press have a three-year lock in. In reading Kindle Scout’s contract, it’s clear they intend the authors to be successful and if not, let them out of the program. So, if it is a bust, I can exit after two years, self-publish on all the platforms, and move on.

My conclusions

It comes down to giving up total control and ebook retailers to gain Amazon’s marketing power. Given my current level of sales, I think it provides a good risk/return tradeoff. Others may be in different places in their writing careers and could come to a different conclusion for them.

In case I haven’t been obvious. If you haven’t nominated Ant Farm yet, I hope you will. If you have, then thank you very much. I am offering extra praise for those who help publicize Ant Farm’s quest by letting others know.

It’s a good book, although I am a bit prejudiced.

~ Jim

[Update: This blog was originally published 2/1/15 on Writers Who Kill. As of this posting, Ant Farm has retained its "Hot" Label through the first seven days, thanks to all the people who have responded to my request to check the book out and nominate it if they like it. Thank you so much.]

The Effect of Amazon’s Subscription Service

Kindle Unlimited (KU) has interesting features for readers and authors. To summarize the basics of their subscription service:

• As a reader you have unlimited access to download and read (but not keep) any of their listed books (~700,000 available) for $9.99 per month.

• Amazon pays authors an unspecified amount each time a KU subscriber selects (and at least partially reads) one of their books.

Which Readers Will Choose KU?

Which readers will utilize this service? After the thirty-day free trial, only readers who expect to obtain greater value by purchasing the KU service than the $9.99 cost will continue in the program. That only makes sense. If the average Kindle book available for KU retails for $2.99, it only takes four books a month to be ahead of the game. Of course, if you select books listed for $0.99, it requires ten per month to be worthwhile.

Ah, but national bestsellers often cost more than $10.00. Just a single one would make it a valuable program. Problem: the big five publishers have chosen (correctly, from their standpoint) to withhold most of their titles from KU.

Regardless, let’s assume Ms. Reader pays Amazon her $9.99; how is her behavior likely to change?

(1) Any book not in KU has an added cost; any book in KU is free for the month. All other things equal, Ms. Reader chooses books in KU.

Author implication: Those who choose KU are less likely to buy books not part of KU.

(2) All things equal, we all like a bargain. That suggests Ms. Reader will choose more expensive books. She’ll “save” more. Free books are no longer as attractive—all KU books are the same “free.”
Author implication: The cachet of “free books,” already diminished in value by the sheer volume of available books and the large percentage of free books that are not worth reading because of inadequate editing and poor formatting, will further decrease. Why read a free book when I can read one that costs $2.99? Why try a new author when I can read all the backlist of an author I know and like?

Authors will need to evaluate whether maintaining the first in their series as a “perma-free” book is still the best strategy. Will it be better to price that book at (say) $2.99, but periodically have advertised promotions to provide free books to those not participating in KU?

Amazon’s Author Payment Mechanism

Amazon pays authors for loans from KU from a pool it sets up. What is the size of the pool? Here’s a quote from Amazon’s Q&A: 

We review the size of the KDP Select Global Fund each month, in order to make it compelling for authors to enroll their books in KDP Select.

I read this statement as “We’ll find the lowest possible payment that keeps authors in the program.” Each author receives a proportionate share of the fund based on loans of their books once the reader has completed 10% of the book (first time only). I know Amazon supporters will consider that a jaded statement. The proof will ultimately be in what happens to the level of per loan payment after Amazon has fully marketed the KU program.

Author implication: The Amazon formula does not consider book price; therefore, on relatively high-priced books the author will lose money compared to an equivalent sale. For lower-priced books the opposite is true. Of course, that assumes a book loaned through KU has reduced books sold one-for-one. Early anecdotal evidence was that more books were loaned than were lost in sales. More recent anecdotal evidence is that total author income has decreased.

Bonuses for Top-selling Authors

Amazon also pays top-selling KU authors a bonus. Whether Amazon pays the bonus out of a separate fund or the same “global fund” is immaterial. Money is fungible and Amazon is the only one who decides the size of the global fund, so it is only a question of pulling the money from their right pocket or left pocket.

In business a useful rule of thumb is the “80/20” rule. For example, many businesses find that 80% of profits arise from 20% of their customers. I am guessing Amazon finds that roughly 20% of its authors account for roughly 80% of revenue. Keeping these 20% happy is much more important than keeping the folks who sell a few books a month.

The bonus program is a way to entice those authors into the program.
Author implication: Two major decisions an author must make are traditional publishing or indie publishing, and if indie publishing, whether or not to go exclusive with Amazon for ebooks. (I can see no compelling reason to be exclusive with any other retailer; Amazon has approximately 70% ebook market share.)

Since the bonus program is determined monthly, the group of “hot” authors will rotate. However, it will always favor those with large lists in the KU program over newer authors with a small number of titles.

Writing more and faster is a winning strategy for authors if they can keep the quality of their product high.

Other Predicted Effects on the Publishing Market

Assuming Amazon can retain popular indie authors for KU, I anticipate more readers will decide $120 a year is a good deal even if books by the major publishers are not available. The three most popular genres for ebooks are Romance, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, and Science fiction/Fantasy.
Younger adults are accustomed to subscription services for audio and video, and also more accepting of new technologies. This combination makes them receptive to subscription services for ebooks. I expect people who heavily read indie published authors will rapidly gravitate to the subscription service.

Readers will join a subscription service for only three reasons: (1) it is the only way to receive the goods (not applicable for books) or (2) it saves them money or (3) the convenience is worth the extra cost. Amazon has made it so easy to download an ebook onto a Kindle or app, there is very little additional convenience to be had. Therefore, Amazon’s subscription service will survive because it saves customers money.

If readers are saving money, it means authors will earn less.

This may not happen immediately; Amazon has shown that it is willing to invest to gain market share before reaping profits. But Amazon did not introduce KU to lose money long term. By the end of 2015, I predict those who exclusively rely upon Amazon will earn less than they would have before the introduction to KU.

That said, it does not mean those authors will be economically better off leaving Amazon’s exclusive products in order to sell across multiple platforms. Remaining solely under Amazon’s banner with its additional benefits may still be the best decision, but by the end of 2015 significantly more of the publication profits will flow to Amazon than to the author.

~ Jim

[This blog originally published on Writers Who Kill 1/2/2015]