Every Author Should Make This Resolution

One thing I know for sure is that today each of us is one day closer to taking our final breath than we were yesterday. When we take that final breath, we no longer can make life easier for our heirs.

As an author, you leave behind words. Thousands of words, maybe millions, collected in an assortment of books, stories, blogs, poems, articles, etc. Some you may have published. Others not. Yet copyright laws in most countries mean your words can still have value after you die.

If you’re thinking, oh criminy, my novel isn’t published, this doesn’t apply to me. Let me whisper John Kennedy Toole’s name in your ear. His mother found the manuscript Toole, which had desperately tried to get published, hidden in a drawer. She finally got Confederacy of Dunces published, and it won a Pulitzer. Unlikely? Sure, but hey, you never know.

These days a novel or memoir or non-fiction book is more likely to be on a computer hard drive than printed out sitting in a drawer. Would whoever takes care of your estate know where to find it?

Or if you are traditionally published, where are your contracts? Who gets continuing royalties? If you are self-published, where are your books published? Where are the most recent “final” manuscripts (which if you are like me, may not be the ones listed as “final” on your computer)?

Who is going to decide how (or if) to keep your author business going? Where are the passwords to your accounts?

I could go on, and for a class I’ll be teaching in March, I do go on. However, I’ve covered enough ground to give you the idea. Even if you have everything organized and know where it all is, good luck to the person who must find it and figure it out.

Which brings me back to the resolution all authors should make (and then follow). Create a detailed roadmap so the right people can easily find everything about your creative works they need.

Here’s my promise to my daughter (who will inherit my writing business, including copyrights): I will make it as easy for you as I can. I won’t try to accomplish this in one day or one week. But I will chip away at it day by day. And once I have it done, I’ll continue to maintain it.

That’s my resolution. How many of you authors are with me on this for 2023? (And if you’ve already done it, please crow about it 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. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

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.

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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. 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.

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

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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.

Why I Am All In with Amazon for Ebooks

Every Indy Author (a.k.a. Self-published Author) must make a fundamental decision about how to market their electronic books. Do they jump in bed solely with Amazon or play the field, allowing readers to purchase books from Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play and others?

Authors must evaluate many factors before coming to a decision about how to sell a particular book. The size and breadth of their following, including the percentage of readers in the U.S. compared to other parts of the world where Amazon is less dominant can impact their choices. The price of the book can also matter, since Amazon will only pay 70% royalties for ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99, inclusive.

Print editions have other considerations. Today I want to concentrate on electronic books.

A year ago I regained rights to Bad Policy from a small publishing company whose philosophy is to go wide, making ebooks available on every platform they could find. During the three years they controlled the distribution and pricing, 80.3% of electronic sales by both volume and royalties were through Amazon and 19.7% through other outlets. My second book, Cabin Fever, (currently, with nearly three years of sales data with the same small publisher) has Amazon at 81.9%, with 18.1% for all others.

For simplicity let’s round the split to 80/20. Choosing to become exclusive with Amazon for Bad Policy, I’d potentially give up 20% of my sales. What would I get from Amazon that could justify reducing revenue flows by 20%?

The main advantages of going exclusive with KDP (Amazon’s self-publishing platform) are (1) simplicity in the publishing process, (2) the use of a limited number of days to use countdown deals/and or give the work away for free, and (3) access to Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL).

Simplicity is nice, but not a very high hurdle. With a broad distribution, you can (with work) nearly duplicate the effect of Amazon’s countdown or free days. The difference-maker from my perspective is access to KU and KOLL.

Ant Farm, the first Seamus McCree novel, was published by Kindle Press (an Amazon imprint), so the ebook is Amazon-exclusive. KU and KOLL revenues for it represented 29.9% of revenue—greater than the 20% I was losing by cutting off alternative sales outlets.

Now, the first thing one must realize is that the extra 10% is not all additional revenue. Some people who read the book would have purchased it from Amazon had it not been available on KU. I cannot quantify that number, but my gut sense is that it is very small. In talking with people who subscribe to KU, they claim to rarely buy books, preferring to read exclusively those available through KU. Amazon probably knows for sure whether that is true, but it seems unlikely those people buy many books from non-Amazon sources—which is why Amazon pushes KU subscriptions.

Offsetting that “double-counting” are people who prefer to read electronically using their Nook or Kobo, but have a Kindle reading app they use when that is their only choice.

I decided the gains would outweigh the losses, so when I reissued Bad Policy, I made the ebook exclusive to Amazon. It’s been less than a year since the reissue. During that time, KU has generated 30% of revenue—the same result I have had for Ant Farm, which has always been exclusive to Amazon.

When I published the fourth Seamus McCree novel, Doubtful Relations, in August 2016, my experiment with Bad Policy was already producing positive results. But I was reluctant to write off the 20% of my readers who were reading my books on non-Amazon platforms. I chose to go wide, using Draft2Digital to distribute to the other platforms. Instead of the expected 20% of sales from the other retailers. I earned less than 10%.

The reasons are not all that clear to me. Perhaps since Bad Policy’s original release in 2013, fewer people are reading on alternative platforms. (I know I initially preferred Nook, partially to help keep competitiveness in the ebook market, partially because I could turn my Nook into a tablet. I gave up on using my Nook as a tablet when much more powerful tablets became ubiquitous, and because it was so difficult to navigate B&N’s website and so easy to find what I wanted on Amazon.) Although I do enjoy detailed numerical analysis, I have not taken the time to do a month-by-month comparison to determine if the Amazon ratio had been increasing in the past year.

After three months with the same low rate of non-Amazon sales, I made Doubtful Relations exclusive to Amazon and enrolled it in KU. It’s too early to know for sure how that decision will play out, but in that partial first month, KU revenue was twice what I had earned from all other retailers in the previous three months.

This past Tuesday, LowcountryCrimes: Four Novellas made its debut. I polled the other three authors to determine if they had very strong readership on non-Amazon platforms. Everyone was noncommittal, so I went with my gut, which said KU readers would be willing to take a gamble on our four novellas. It only cost them reading time to try authors they might not know, and I (technically my publishing arm, Wolf’s Echo Press) made the ebook exclusive to Amazon.

But I also decided to publish each novella separately. And there I went wide! My thinking was that if you could get all four for free in KU, there was no advantage to having individual novellas enrolled in KU. If someone wanted to read (say) Tina Whittle’s “Trouble Like a Freight TrainComing” they could order up the entire anthology and read her story. Maybe they’d give the others a try. But, if Tina did have fans who read exclusively on Nook, I’d give them an opportunity to acquire her novella at B&N as well. Plus, I found a publisher (Pronoun) who pays 70% royalties on books priced less than $2.99, double Amazon’s policy of paying only 35%. The total anthology ebook is priced at $3.99; each novella at $1.99. (So you can purchase the entire anthology for the price of two separate novellas.)

That’s my current thinking. Will it change in the future? You betcha. The publishing industry remains in flux, and any business (and being an author is a business) needs to continue to keep on top of trends and experiment.

I’m curious, dear blog readers: has your way of reading changed over the last few years? Do you expect it to change in the future? Those of you who are authors, what are you finding with your sales?

~ Jim

This blog originally appeared on Writers Who Kill (2/12/17)

Five Lessons Learned as a Nano-Press

What is a nano-press? Small presses are often defined as with revenues of less than $50 million. Micro-press frequently refers to the physical size of the books (often pamphlets or comics). Wolf’s Echo Press revenues are WAY BELOW the $50 million mark, so I thought that I should come up with a distinguishing term, and nano-press sounded about right.

Last year, I decided to produce an anthology of novellas set in the lowcountry of the southeast U.S. I invited three author friends who knew the area well to participate with me. The result is Lowcountry Crime: Four Novellas. It’s on Kindle pre-order for only $2.99. Once it’s officially released the price jumps to $3.99. Hurry! Hurry!

Now, the lessons:

1. Deadlines are there for a reason.

Authors are busy people. They often have multiple current writing projects, need to do their own marketing, and many have jobs in addition to their writing. For this anthology to succeed, I set target dates for each major step in the process for both the authors and the publisher: the initial submission from the authors, the first round of edits back to the authors, the second and final revisions, when the publisher owed proof copies to the authors, and when they had to give their okay.

2. Everything takes longer than expected.

I was dealing with three pros, and my first inclination was to develop a nice tight timeframe to move the project from conception to completion. The sooner revenue began coming in from book sales, the quicker authors could earn out their advances.

And then I reflected on my corporate life when I managed people. I had learned through experience that each of us has built-in biases when we estimate how long something will take. A manager’s job is to adjust the estimate for each person’s bias. Some people pad their estimates. Whatever they say can be shortened by some percent. Others assume everything will go perfectly; their estimates must be lengthened to reflect reality.

I know how long something should take, and that’s how long I want it to take. Of course, it takes longer because stuff does happen. Because I know my tendencies, I took my original timeframe and added significant “extra” time. Sure enough, we needed most of that slack.

3. The last 20% takes 80% of the resources.

Getting something close to correct takes considerable effort, but if you want to get it right, it takes a lot more effort. I didn’t measure the specific time each task took, but I suspect a version of the 80/20 rule is applicable to the effort of producing a book for publication.

I know that perfection in an 85,000-word document is impossible. However, the quality of this book reflects directly on me. Not only did I write one of the novellas in the anthology, I helped edit the others, and a quality product may lead others to want to work with me in the future on projects—or if I screw it up, convince them not to work with Wolf’s Echo Press. You can only make a first impression once!

Which means that I spent considerable time trying to ensure we had no typos (I suspect at least one is still hiding. Please let me know when you find it.) Laying out the manuscript for print meant looking at each page, finding ways to eliminate orphans, making adjustments such as inserting soft-hyphens when justified lines spaced too broadly.

And then there was all the time spent in setting up the distribution process. Choosing appropriate meta data, keywords, developing the description readers will see when they look for the book.

Etcetera. Etcetera. Thank goodness I knew my tendencies and set the timeline with “room to spare.”

4. Order Matters.

Consider this nightmare scenario: despite sign off from the publisher’s proofreader and the author, you discover a homonym somewhere in the book. My experience is that readers will tolerate a typo or two, but if they find a homonym or a character whose name changes, it pulls them right out of the story. They read it twice and then discount the author’s intelligence, the publisher’s quality standards, mentally mark down the number of stars they will give the book in their review, start looking for other errors. Not good; not good at all. We want entertainment on every page, not scrutiny of every page.

Fortunately, most homonyms have about the same number of letters as the correct word. But, let’s say it’s a name change. If this error were caught anywhere early in the process, it would be a small matter to make the fix. Late in the process, it requires change to both the print version(s) and the electronic version(s). And in the print version, if you are unlucky (I was), the change from (say) Jennifer to (say) Jess, shortens the text enough to cause one fewer line, which in turn leads to an orphan on some later page.

Decision time. Let the layout go with the orphan, or change the initial document, the print layout, and the file transferred to the distributor(s)? Of course I changed it, but it was all extra work caused by timing.

When I looked at the print proof version of the book, I discovered a major (to my mind) issue. No one—author, proofreaders, publisher (that would be me)—had noticed that one of the novellas used straight quotes (mostly) instead of curly quotes. As I paged through the paperback proof looking for anything that might be a problem, the $%^&* things jumped off the page and smacked me in the nose.

I immediately knew what had caused the problem (the author had returned edits using a program that did not recognize curly quotes) and how to fix it. However, not only did I need to fix both print versions of the book, I had to fix the two electronic versions as well—and do it in a manner that didn’t screw up the direction of the curly quote in, for example, ’cause. [Checking for the straight quote issue is now part of my processing checklist when I go from document to print layout.]

5. The mystery community is generous.

Unlike much in life, the mystery community does not consider writing and reading to be a zero-sum game. One person’s success does not take away from anyone else. We root for each other and help each other along the way.

Other nano-publishers were generous in sharing their experiences in publishing anthologies. Some people generously offered to proofread the manuscript for the thrill of finding errors and because it allowed them to read the stories first. Thank you for your eagle eyes.

I’ve had the chance to work closely with three fine authors on this project (Polly Iyer, Jonathan M. Bryant and WWK’s own Tina Whittle) and see how they each crafted stories using the lowcountry setting and instructions that the novellas were to be “north of cozy and south of noir.”

Lastly, I do want to thank readers who take the time to leave honest online reviews. I think I speak for all authors and publishers when I say we couldn’t do what we do without you, and we appreciate the reviews you write to help others know of our work.

This blog originally posted on Writers Who Kill 1/29/17

Introducing Megan McCree

On February 7, 2017, I’ll be introducing a new member of the Seamus McCree extended family to the reading world. Her creation did not come easily, and I worried whether I was doing her justice. Let me explain.

Megan first entered my consciousness four years ago. I wrote the first 40,000 words of a novel set in the future. The YA main character had an older sister, a real tomboy. I thought the kids would be Seamus McCree’s distant descendants (just to keep it all in the fictional family). As I worked through the story, the sister role faded out and the first sparks of this female character were extinguished.

Then I decided to bring the story closer to the present and made Seamus McCree’s son, Paddy, a very old man—well over a hundred (medical improvements and an organic vegetarian diet worked). But Paddy at 140 was still too close to the present. That’s when I decided to utilize Paddy’s child, Seamus’s grandchild, the very old person. As I considered what internal forces would drive this character, I decided she should be female. Eventually, that project faltered and still awaits future attention. And so this as yet unnamed Seamus McCree granddaughter faded into the background.

When I started writing Empty Promises, the fifth in the series, hopefully coming out later this year, I recalled my vision of the ancient woman, and decided to bring Megan McCree to the stage. I wanted to show in this girl the seeds of the woman who in the very distant future would became a marvelous “ancient.” Because of the planned time gap between Doubtful Relations and Empty Promises, Megan will then be age three and a half.

I worried about what I knew about three-and-a-half-year-old girls. My daughter had been that age in the mid-1980s. Even my granddaughters are now preteens and teens. Could I carry off developing this short person in a way that was realistic?

When I sent a draft of Empty Promises to my developmental editor, I specifically asked for a critique of Megan, and then I held my breath. The editor had lots of suggestions, but none of them related to Megan as a character. Whew!

While continuing to work on Empty Promises, another opportunity for Seamus and family arose: a novella set in Georgia’s Lowcountry. What could be better than to bring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and Megan to Tybee Island, Georgia—the barrier island near Savannah—for vacation and havoc? But for this vacation to make sense in Seamus McCree’s overall arc, this story takes place several years after Empty Promises. Megan is a shade over six.

More worries for me. Could an old guy depict a six-year-old girl that mothers would accept? (Fathers accept any daughter, right dads?) Again, my development editor had no issues with Megan. I polished the novella and recently sent it to two terrific beta readers. Both know the Seamus McCree series and have an eye for errant homonyms, misspellings, misplaced modifiers, and the like. Again, I held my breath. These folks had never heard of Megan. Would they accept her?

Beta reader one gave me her corrections. She loved the story, and particularly loved Seamus’s mother. I broke down and asked if I had drawn Megan realistically. “Oh yes, she was fine,” she said. “But I really like Mom—probably because of my age.” Her grandchildren are older than mine, all out of high school. I didn’t take that as a vote of confidence on Megan.

Just this past week I received corrections from reader number two. She started her note with, “I just now finished the book and thoroughly enjoyed it! I fell madly in love with Megan.”

I think I’ve been holding my breath for four years—a long gestation period even for a fictional character. It’s nice to breathe naturally again.

You can meet Megan in the novella titled “Low Tide at Tybee” in Lowcountry Crime: Four Novellas to be released in print and Kindle editions on February 7, 2017.

~ Jim

This blog originally appeared on the Writers Who Kill blog 1/15/17.

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.