Do It Yourself Publishing - 2017 Part 1

2009 Cover

My Road to DIY Publication

I often talk to Independent authors with newly-launched books. They all have the same questions, and I’m always glad to offer up my experience to help them on their way. I’ve been DIY publishing e-books and paperbacks since 2009 and I can tell you that this business changes every few months. I did well for a short time, a mere 10 weeks, but now I struggle like most other authors.

I’ve decided to put what I’ve learned into a short series of blog posts for my Kentuckiana Authors Association friends. I’ll try to keep these short, feel free to comment, by all means ask questions. I’ll put in links as I go. I might rearrange the links on my website to make it easier to find stuff.

I think it was in 2007 that I joined a local writer’s group called the Bard’s Corner. I learned how to outline, which made a big difference in my writing, but my work schedule kept me too busy to attend regularly. It was my first exposure to writing groups and peer review; it changed my paradigm on writing forever by opening my eyes to a larger world.

Once I learned to outline, I was able to finish my first novel “Let’s Do Lunch.” At that point (2008) I joined a couple of websites for writers so I could learn more. “Forward Motion” was the best of the writer’s websites – I don’t know if it is still around, I hope so, because it offered the first ever open peer review that I’d ever experienced. I got feedback by people who had skill-sets superior to mine and I learned a whole lot in a short period of time. I edited the manuscript using every bit of feedback that I could get.

2009 I entered Amazon’s Breakout Novel Award – I uploaded the manuscript during a horrendous ice storm via dial up because we had no electricity here at the house, but the phone still worked. My novel made two of three cuts, and garnered some feedback that has me rolling my eyes to this day. It was during that contest that I learned of a website run by Harper-Collins called Authonomy. I spent the next 4 years on that site, learning a lot, but none of my books ever got any traction on the contest to the Editor’s Desk.

I spent 2009 and most of 2010 watching the phenomena of the Amazon Kindle shake up the publishing industry and allow authors to upload their books to the new e-book format and get some readers, and get paid. I uploaded my e-books to Barnes & Noble’s Nook Press platform, Kobo Writing Life and Smashwords as well.

Those were heady days indeed.

My brief appearance on the Amazon best sellers list was 10 glorious weeks on the romantic suspense chart in the UK where Let’s Do Lunch hit #3 for a few hours and settled to #8 for several days. It then slid off the Top ten list into the top 25, then the Top 100 and then down into the mulch layer with about 50 million other e-books.

After that the sales trickled in, a handful a quarter but not enough to pay for the endless hours I spent marketing my e-books. I was obsessed, always a bad sign, and getting nowhere but discouraged. When ’50 Shades of Gray’ came out, my sales evaporated completely and I’ve struggled just to stay somewhat in the game ever since.

I hope this series of blogs will serve to open a dialog with my fellow writers.

Warning: This blog contains subject matter that other's might find offensive as well as blog posts that have snarky language. Feel free to roll you eyes and click away from posts that offend you. The opinions expressed here were only valid on the day of posting, after that I've probably forgotten what I posted. I think the eye-roll emoji is either ::-( or 88-(, I no doubt deserve it.

Advertising In The Age of Social Media - 10 Tips

This is not really a timely post. Facebook is about to change their rules for business pages, and I'm not sure what that means yet.

However, I want to go on the record for saying that my social media skills up until now, sucked. I found it tedious and not at all effective. But now that I've got at least a vague notion about how it should work, the rules are going to change.

Drat that!

However, I've managed to put together 10 tips for Facebook usage.

1) If you don’t have a Facebook for specifically for your author page – I recommend that you create a page. I’ll explain more as we go along.

You don’t need to open a new account. You can go over to the right and under ‘pages’ you can ‘create a page.’ There are a few things you need to tell Facebook about your business. What this does for you is simple, and powerful.

When you have an author page, you can like the pages of businesses and they can like your page back. Right now, Facebook allows the Icy Road Publishing page to ‘like’ a personal page. This might change on the first of year.

2) Visibility is the key to Facebook advertising. We ALL need people to find us, and the way to do that, without spending any money, is to network with local businesses. Yes, local to you, dear writer. Because local authors and their books are interesting to the people who live near us. I've seen this every time we do a local festival or on Second Saturday.

The more local Facebook pages I connect with, the more people see my posts. The people who ‘like’ our posts show our posts and pages on their newsfeeds. So their friends see us, our page, and you, and your page. We're looking for READERS, after all, so start with the library closest to you and branch out from there.

3) Taking advantage of extended “reach” by posting or commenting on that page’s posts. This will make your author page show up on the timeline of that page. “Likes” on posts don’t have the same impact, but they get counted in the overall statistics for your page.

4) Cooperation is the key to success. Once you "like" a local business, comment and "like" their posts. Your activity will show up on the business pages, making it likely they comment and like the posts you publish.

5) Measuring progress. When you have an author page, you also have access to a page called “Insights” that will show you how your page is doing over time. This will also give you an idea of which posts and photos are working the best for you. 

6) What to post? This can take some thought and planning. At work we get the most activity on photos of merchandise. This generated more page “likes” which extended the reach of our page a little bit more.

7) How does this help everyone? Facebook is a powerful tool for promoting your business. The more networked you are to your community, the more people will be aware of your work. We’ve all heard that word-of-mouth is the best advertising. Currently Facebook is one way to get people aware of your existence, and ours, without paying thousands of dollars for advertising. Hopefully this won't change.

8) Facebook ads. For those who do have even a modest budget for advertising, Facebook can promote individual posts or ads. You can spend as little as $5 to promote one of your posts for up to 3 days. However, the number of people who will see the ad is limited by the number of people you can “reach.” So unless you can “reach” several thousand people, it is not in your best interest to pay to promote your posts. You will be better served by ‘liking,’ ‘commenting’ and ‘sharing’ the posts of other people as your author page for free.

9) Keep pages active with posts and ‘Likes’ for best results. This doesn’t mean you have to spend all your time on Facebook. I know you have better things to do, so I recommend scheduling posts. This is a function Facebook provides on all pages.

Take a few minutes to scan your author page newsfeed every other day if possible.  Share anything that catches your eye. Like posts or comments that amuse you. Comment or reply to any posts that interest you.

Once a week, sit down to write a few brief posts concerning your business. Is there a new project you can photograph? Did something great happen that you want your business to share? Do you have a pet that likes to watch you work? Don’t stress out if you can only think of one or two posts for the week. Type them up, upload any photos and schedule the post for later in the week.

Check the Insights tab on your page to see what activity your page has generated. Which posts generated the most activity? How many overall ‘likes’ has your page generated? How many people follow your page? Can you tell where  the most activity came from?

10) Don’t stress over the daily numbers. Activity will rise and fall during the day, and over the course of the month. You are looking for TRENDS over a MONTH of activity. Modest changes of less than 1% are common on a weekly basis, which is what Facebook looks at. A 0.1% rise in a week is a 0.5% rise over the course of a month. This is a respectable increase in the world of Facebook.

I'm sure there are plenty of authors who do this already. However, are they targeting other authors, or targeting your local community?

I've spent four years targeting other authors. The results have been...zero. It wasn't until I started doing this for a local business that I got it. One of the first pages I had my work page "Like" was my author page as an experiment. The numbers didn't rise by much, but my author page got a few more hits the first week and every week thereafter. Just a couple, but a couple more than before.

Meanwhile, the reach of my work page nearly exploded.

That's when the light dawned. I can do the same thing.

Stay tuned, we'll see how well it works.

Trade vs Self-Publishing -> Real Data

The last few weeks have seen a great deal of chest-beating by members of the Trade Publishing Industry. There were some references made to 'cattle,' 'culling herds' and 'easy pickings' that nearly had me foaming at the mouth.

Since I felt so strongly about it, I didn't post anything here. I was too outraged for words...which takes quite a bit of outrage.

I feel that Joe Konrath wrote a great reply. Joe is one of those people who doesn't mince words. It makes him come off hot-headed, but this time, he hit one out of the park.

Then, Dean Westly Smith chimed in, with his learned opinion.

Even the well-mannered and witty crowd at the Passive Voice was fuming. The blog was awash in cow jokes.

However, I'm all a twitter -- with good reason. Huge Howey and an unknown Data Cruncher have sent out a spider to mine the web of TRUE SALE'S DATA.

The results are stunning, beyond stunning - they're... atomic. I have no idea what (beyond a horrendous sh!t storm) will come of these revelations. One website has already 'poo-pooed' the numbers as 'bad math' and locked the thread down.

Of all the graphs - I chose this one because it shows that those who say that e-books are a mere 30% of Amazon genre fiction sales are ever so very wrong.

IMO - there is going to be conciderable backlash from the Publishing Industry. This shows that Indie authors are making more money and selling more books than anyone on the Trade side ever suspected.

With contracts being so one-sided, it appears this report is going to make a lot of authors think twice before they offer up their work to the Publishing Industry. Not all of them, of course, because so many will never give up the dream of that (godawful) Publishing Contract.

Bless them, they don't know what they're up against.

Take a look, this will blow your mind.

The Elephant in the Room

Looking at the recent dust up with Sue Grafton and taking part in the discussion on "The Passive Voice" I was struck by something Camille LaGuire said that gave me food for thought. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) She is speaking about the difference between Trade Publishing and DIY Publishing cultures - using a very interesting analogy.

I have been in both (traditional publishing and DIY publishing) cultures for quite a while, and I honestly think that there is a major cultural gulf, particularly in the area of shared experience. Because of this, indies take offense at a perceived subtext that isn’t there… or they miss a subtext that IS there that they would otherwise agree with.

It reminds me of this comment a friend made about his experiences in France. He was upper class, from Boston, where, apparently, you don’t talk about food. At most you thank the host or hostess or cook for a lovely meal. He experience great culture shock in France, where he discovered that everybody talks constantly about food. Not just talk about it, they critique it. Before, during and after the meal. They talk about the appearance, the aroma, how well cooked or not, are things sliced evenly.

He was horrified. Not only did he think it was crude, he thought they were being extremely rude to he host or cook. Except… the host or cook was right the in the conversation critiquing the meal too! “Yes, I did leave it in a little long, but I like the way the flavor turned out, even though it’s tough.”

And everybody would agree about the flavor, and discuss ways to get the flavor without risking the toughness.

The two of us who were talking with this guy, both looked at each other in shock at what he was saying. (She was Creole, I’m of French Canadian extraction.) And we both said: “You mean there are places where you DON’T critique the meal as you eat it?”

The idea of not discussing the food in depth as you ate was unimaginable to both of us.

And I feel that kind of difference when I go into places with a heavy Indie presence. People take offense at things which aren’t even insulting. Honestly, it’s not even a matter of being tough or sensitive. It’s just not negative to someone who has been knocking around traditional publishing.

I have to agree with her - we as Indies don't talk about 'QUALITY WRITING' and how to improve the quality of our writing. Instead, we bitch when people point out the amount of crap writing we see out there.

And I think the nature of DIY publishing is partially to blame for the fact that QUALITY has become the 'elephant in the room' of our industry.

Most of us are laboring away, diligently, at the individual work in progress (WIP), struggling to do our best. How often does the writer get feedback?

Usually, not until the writer thinks the work is finished. Then it might get a read-through or two and a trip to the copy editor. That really isn't time for in depth editorial feedback.

I know what I do - I take my WIP to Authonomy and get a few readers. Some will read for pleasure - others will nit-pick plot, others nit-pick sentence structure. I adore people who care enough to nit-pick. I seek them out and request their opinions because I know they are worth their weight in gold. I also have a very good friend who isn't afraid to ask me questions and make notes on my manuscripts.

These are all ways to correct my problems, but they don't address the collective DIY Publishing Industry quality problem!

Now we are looking at the elephant in the room!

So - where does one go to LEARN to write better?

Writer's Bistro http://writersbistro.proboards.com has "Mike's School of Writing" which I enjoy very much. In fact, I don't spend enough time there.

Forward Motion www.fmwriters.com has a 'How to Write A Novel' course that is highly recommended. I haven't take it - I keep telling myself I will sign up for the next one. (Procrastination, anyone?)

I know there are other schools out there.

Does anyone have a name and a site to share?

A Look at Publishing 2010, Sites of Interest

As I travel over the interwebs, looking for the right niche to publish my first novel, I've hit a few interesting sites along the way.

Forward Motion is the best site for beginning or fantasy writers! The support a newbie receives here is unparalleled in my (limited) experience. You have the option of open forums, closed forums, joining a critique circle or taking classes. The site is famous for the "Two-year Novel" course, where the writer learns to build worlds and craft out a novel in two years. New classes begin in January.

Created by Holly Lisle, owned by Lazette Gifford, this site is a great resource. FM was where I discovered the "Writing Breakout Novel" books by Donald Maas, and where "Let's Do Lunch" was beaten into shape.

Authonomy, a primarily British site, is Harper Collins' combination of slush pile and "Survivor." This site promised a lot when it went live, in the way of five books reviewed each month and publishing contracts. While the monthly reviews of the 'Editor's Desk' top five books do occur, they usually aren't worth the six months of read/backing swaps required to get them.

When I joined, in 2009, it was a great place to get feedback from other writers. Now it has devolved into an addicting, frustrating 'time suck' of epic proportions. Your writing career has an equal chance of taking off and vanishing down a black hole.

Harper Collins allows the site to run wild, so the crazies have run off a lot of the serious writers. There are a dozen or so books published as a result of the site, though none of the books that have made the "Editor's Desk" to date have been published by Harper Collins.

Avoid the Forums at all costs…well, visit at your own risk…expect rampant egos, literary and class snobbery, flame wars, racism, sexism, petty deal making, read/backing swap whores, trolls and sock-puppets.

On the lighter side, drunk Brits are pretty darn funny…if you have a twisted sense of humor, and no life, hang out on a Friday or Saturday night. Beware of minors, not everyone is over 18.

Insider's Tip: The ranking system is skewed towards new books. If you upload 10k words and take the book public you will rise fast for the first few weeks. Once the book reaches the top 100 be prepared to live and breathe the site. The longer a book is on the site the harder it is to rise in the rankings. Editors, agents and other publishing insiders troll the top 100 books.

Litopia is another British site but with more of an international flavor.

The podcast, billed as "a Literary Salon," was in two parts, Litopia Daily and Litopia After Dark. Litopia Daily has (sadly) ceased to exist, but Litopia After Dark is still kicking. Litopia podcasts are a great(!!) resource into the confusing and frustrating world of publishing.

I think that Litopia's Writer's Colony is very good, and the forums are very interesting. Somebody running that site doesn't take any crap from the crazies or the trolls.

The downside is both membership and site are a complex series of levels. I haven't been on it enough to understand how you get to post your work for feedback or post a blog.

Authors on Show is a new writer's networking site. A lot of the Authonomy crowd has come here to show case their work and hang out. I'm not active on the site, but I'm backing them as a good solid writer's network.

However, I'm confused by complex interaction of the Authors on Show blog and the dot com site of the same name. The above link is to the dot com. I get the impression that Lorraine's blog evolved into the dot com site and that both are currently active. The dot com site went live only a week or so ago, so I'm sure the confusion will be cleared up in a short time.

New and Interesting Sites:

Writer's Latte is a nice looking beta writer's networking site that could use some support. I like the look and the feel, however there isn't much action as yet. I've got an account and drop in once a week.

Indie Lit Worldwide is an e-publishing co-op site for readers and writers. This is a site to watch as publishing co-ops look to be the wave of the future. As a market, Indie offers to format a POLISHED manuscript into various e-formats and offer the formats for sale.

Only up a month, this is e-publishing site supports various genre and offers a 50% share of sales to writers. This is a ground floor opportunity with only three books currently posted, but a dozen readers are signed up.

I have an account there, and am reading one of the books for review.

LIWW is currently offering to re-format a manuscript into various formats, including Kindle, for free, upon acceptance. Don't assume that a manuscript is automatically accepted. As always, read the contract carefully before you agree to post anything.

This is it for now. I'm going to get back to work on other projects.

A Wealth of Opinions - Where Are the Facts?

As I have broadened my research into Self-Publishing I find  more and more debate on the subject. But not enough cold, hard facts. As the saying goes we all have opinions. (G)

I found this the other day on Forward Motion: "Forward Motion's core purpose is to help writers become professionally published. We welcome serious writing hobbyists as well, but our purpose and goals are geared toward professional careers. We do not allow fanfiction posts and we don't promote self-publishing."

I have the greatest respect for Forward Motion ,what I learned there, in a scant year, was tremendously helpful. I'm glad to see that they have taken the effort to put their stand upfront.

What does this tell me? The Self-Publishing debate has gone deep into the writers communities. It is not a new issue. The majority of the bloggings I've seen are a year or more old. If the attitude towards self-publishing has changed in the past year, I can't yet tell. I do know that more people are taking this route all the time, and a few of them appear to be doing well with it.

Bottom line - it is much more work that most people realize.

A few links to give you an idea of what's out there:

Podio Books  you can give away free audio versions of your indie book. Each podcast is a chapter. Some are read by the author, others are dramatized. They had their one millionth download the first year. Think about that for a moment.

Self Publishing - 25 Things You Need to Know. This is where I started looking. I'm still following links off this one. There is some great stuff here.

April L Hamilton wrote a Guide for Independent Authors - I'm currently reading it. The edition I have is from 2008 - and a year is a long time when Technology and Creativity merge.  

In case you are wondering I've posted these links - without much in the way of commentary - because I think that each author has the right to make up their own mind about what's right for them. I'm not coping out, I'm still looking into this. But I know that I'm not the last word on the subject. Just another blogger taking up space.

Hopefully these links will prove as helpful to you as they have to me.

The Company We Keep

I had one of those "Oh Shit" moments at the library the other day. I ran across a Holly Lisle book in the romance section.

I was surprised.

I didn't know that she had anything in print. I read the novel, and found it to be a nice tense romantic suspence.

When I looked I was able to find four titles with her by line. The one that gave me the "Oh Shit" moment was the one co-written with Zimmer-Bradley. To say I was taken aback would be an understatement. The mental dominoes fell and a pattern was revealed, Forward Motion is a direct offshoot of the Darkover fan fiction "fanomina."

Which explains many things. I understand the 'whys' of the site. Why the majority of the writers are fantasy writers. Why the site was put up in the first place.

My hat is off to the departed great lady for the opportunities she had provided, and the 'pay it forward' legacy that still exists.

I will forever see Forward Motion in a different light.

A Momentous Discovery

I was an avid reader of Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery as it was called in my youth. I was a rabid fan of Lovecraft, Poe, Tolkien, Norton, Zimmer-Bradley and McCaffery. (May they all rest in peace.)

I've been trying to read Fantasy, mostly because the majority of people on Forward Motion seem to be writing and referencing Fantasy stories. But I have yet to read anything that I like. Nothing grabs me, and the very fact that some of these novels made it to print dismays me. One novel actually changed so drastically in mid-plot that I believe the original author died and the novel was passed on to someone else. Someone with a drastically different style!

I have hesitated to rant against against other authors. Since I'm a wannabe romance writer, I've got no room to bitch when somebody else makes good. I posted one rant on vampires, then took it down when the movie came out.

My hat's off to her, she's making a killing writing syrup and sparkle instead of blood and darkness.

Today, however, I am presenting this address as the answer to all my prayers: Somebody who is still reading and ranting about a genre I gave up on, for the very reasons that I gave up on it.

Behold, a reader who thinks: http://limyaael.livejournal.com/559559.html#cutid1

Whoever this person is, they have nailed it. Every rant has me nodding my head and saying 'oh yeah! Tell 'em, baby, tell 'em straight.'

This is a sample quote from some old "Live Journal" rants:

"3) There doesn't have to be a typical Quest Object. As Tolkien's characters themselves note, the Ring is a rather odd Quest Object. The journey in LOTR isn't actually about finding the Ring, but returning it to the place it came from and destroying it. The fantasy Quests that spring from bastardized versions of Tolkien ignore this, however. The Quest Object is just about always beneficent (in fact, some of them can't be used by evil guys at all) and far away, so that the point is getting there and using it. The idea of destroying it even if it's dangerous rarely, if ever, occurs to your typical fantasy moron hero."

Whoever is writing under 'Arin i Asolde' has taken the words in my heart and put them on the web. I have no need to comment further.

We live in an age where the suspension of dis-belief is not a good trait. We need to be critical readers, and thinkers. The world is full of bullshit, and if we can't tell gold from compost, we will always have a handful of compost.

I have a compost pile.

I want to write gold.