I’ve spend the entire week formatting the paperback ARC of Riding Fear Free, and that has made me a bit giddy. So when it came time for me to write my monthly post for Indie Jane, I just went with my zany mood and wrote about booksellers’ algorithms. What does this have to do with Better off Ted? Find out.
On Monday, I received an email response from Smashwords regarding the fact that three of my books were placed on sale at Sony even though they had been unpublished in late 2011. The email indicated that Smashwords “cannot guarantee that errors will never occur as the take-down itself is in the retailer’s hands.” This would be a reasonable response if MONTHS had not passed between my taking them off sale and the retailer selling them again. In addition, this was the second time it had happened, and different retailers were involved both times. And there was no apology for my inconvenience, by the way.
As I said, I wasn’t expecting them to send flowers, but I have always appreciated their customer service in the past, so I was expecting something more than being told that accidents happen.
I had planned to delete my account, but I’ll give them one more strike before taking my business elsewhere.
Thank you to Smashwords for removing my books from unauthorized sale sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. I appreciate that the correction was made within 48 hours of my original request.
However, I’m not fully pleased with the situation. I received no email response from either of the two people at Smashwords to whom I sent my complaint. I also checked their “Site Updates” page and their blog to see if they issued a general statement to others who might have experienced this problem: nothing. So far, I have heard no explanation for how my unpublished books were put on sale, and I also did not receive any acknowledgment of my request to close my Smashwords account after my final payment is sent.
I’m not expecting to receive flowers or anything, but this problem has happened to me twice, and I believe some explanation is due to all Smashwords’ customers. After all, how can any of their customers trust that their books are being distributed properly? If my experience tells me anything, it’s that files from as far back as six months could be being sent to retailers, and that means that the old book files may be going out to readers even though a more recent edition has been uploaded by the author. Or worse, books that authors have taken off the market may still be sold.
So thank you, Smashwords, for your prompt response, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Not so much.
Until December 2011, I published my books at four main venues: Amazon, BN, CreateSpace, and Smashwords, and I have recommended them all to my friends and fellow indie authors as good business partners. I’ve extolled the virtues of Smashwords’ Style Guide and their customer service, and until recently, my only real complaint with them has been slow reporting and payment.
But when I chose to enter my ebooks temporarily in the Kindle Select program, I was required to remove my ebooks from all other sales venues. Therefore, I took them out of all Smashwords’ distribution channels and also unpublished my books there completely. This should have been the end of the matter.
But that’s when my problems began. Continue reading
Entertainment is important; why else would people spend so much money on it?
I write novels that are meant to entertain.
There. I said it.
Actually, I’ve said something similar before in my post about comedies versus tragedies and their perceived merits in the literary world, and this entry is tangentially related. As part of researching various book markets, I read a lot of reviews on Amazon and BN, and I’ve noticed something that I find odd: many reviewers of entertainment-type novels feel the need to state that a particular book is meant for entertainment and then they write as if they feel guilty for liking it. They might write something like, “This book wasn’t a great literary work and was really just brain candy, but it totally sucked me in.”
Why do people feel compelled to write that? Continue reading
I’m over at Indie Jane today blogging about the current state of the book world, including fun and fascinating discussion of business practices, agency vs wholesale model pricing, and lawsuits. Fun, fun, fun!
Last week, I had the privilege of posting on Nancy Kelley’s blog about How to Write Heroines. I got to unleash a bit about one of my biggest writing pet peeves: out of context historical characters.
Nothing ruins a historical novel for me quicker than a character who is so far ahead of her time that she is more representative of modern thought than a product of her actual context.
Please stop by Nancy’s blog and share your thoughts on the matter!
So this is proof that Kevin Manus-Pennings, author of the excellent fantasy novel A Shore Too Far (Daughters of Damendine)
How much do I love this video? Let me count the ways. First of all, it begins all artsy. The photography is lovely, and I wouldn’t mind if my hair looked like that. Nice song too. And then wham! Surprise!
And then there’s a complete shift in attitude, which I totally dig.
I adore discovering videos, books, TV shows, or movies that lead the viewer or reader in one direction and then divert them from the expected outcome, but in an understandable, logical way. (I hate movies that pull surprise endings completely out of nowhere.) If you know of any books or whatnot that use this technique successfully, send them on.
Enjoy!
My friend Nancy Kelley’s book, His Good Opinion: A Mr. Darcy Novel, is free today on Amazon. Go download a copy and enjoy!
Tell her I sent you.
Some ideas about sales are as realistic as this.
Reviews
For a while, I thought it was mainly positive reviews that created buzz and spurred sales. Now, I’m not discounting reviews as a very important factor in the success of a book, but I don’t think they’re the only factor. I’ve watched dozens of books take off up the sales charts with mediocre to poor reviews, and I’ve also heard reports of books experiencing a sales spike after they receive negative reviews. And I’ve watched well-reviewed books lose momentum. Don’t get me wrong: I want people to enjoy my books. That’s why I write them. I want to entertain. But one bad review isn’t going to kill a book. However, an accumulation of reviews that are critical of the same thing–especially poor editing–will do real damage.
Visibility
People can’t buy books they can’t find, and it breaks my heart to see good books, especially those by my friends, languishing because of lack of marketing. Amazon is good, but you can’t just upload a book and hope it sells. Experimentation is required in marketing in order to find what works best for you at the moment. That may mean ads, sponsorships, genre bestseller lists, book review blogs, or giveaways, but it’s got to be out there. People have to be able to see it in order to buy it.
Sales Fluctuation
For a long time, I believed that once a book fell in the ranks, it was all over. I don’t know if that was a hold over from the traditional publishing days when you had one month to make a book into a hit, or if it was just based on my fear of failure. But based on what I’ve observed, the idea that a book cannot recover if it slips in sales is untrue. I’ve watched lots of books go up and down over the past year. Sales fluctuate, and now I have actual numerical proof. All of my books has slipped and then recovered later. Sales fluctuate.
Kindle Select
I’ve given away all my books as free promotions on Kindle Select, and I’ve had fantastic results. In March, I experienced record sales income, which is truly staggering to me, and grown my Facebook page rather significantly. In contrast, I’ve watched other free promotions that did not result in the same sales. I’m not sure why. Maybe the markets for those books were smaller, or Amazon was slow that day. I don’t know. But I’m starting to think that the more books you give away on the free day, the better the bounce later. That could be a natural result of larger markets or more attractive books, or it could be something built into the algorithm. Not sure.
So how to wrap up? Well, I guess my message with this blog is that none of us really have book sales figured out, and because of the rate of change in the indie pubbing industry, we will probably always be riding sales fluctuations and doing major marketing experiments. All I know for sure is that I appreciate everyone who has read one of my books. I love being able to share them–especially now that I can give them away for free so easily–with other people, and I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
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