Announcing: Book Stop Central

Got A Newsletter?

No? Join Our Newsletter Co-op

As writers, we're told that we need a mailing list with at least 1000 fans in order to be successful. Then we're told we need to send that newsletter out monthly or even (gasp!) weekly.

But most of us are woefully short of time and short of the magic number of fans for our list.

HOWEVER -- if enough authors band together and pool our precious mailing lists, we CAN produce a monthly newsletter than can be sent to enough people to make a difference for all of us.

THEREFORE - We at Icy Road Publishing are inviting you to join our co-op list. 

HOW IT WORKS
Your book(s) will be added to our newsletter "Book Stop Central' for 3 months.

Each ad will require: 

• $10 set up fee per book
• your email addresses
• a copy of the book's cover in JPEG format
• the blurb for the book 
• the vendor website links you want included in your ad

The $10 will cover the creation of the ad, adding the cover, text and links you send us. If your book is available as a paperback, provide us with that link, or the website of the books store where the book is available.

At the end of 3 months, you have the option of leaving our list, or you can sign up for 3 more months.

WHAT'S THE CATCH?
 You will be required to add 10 emails to our list each quarter. You're welcome to keep copies of the addresses you collect. The success of this venture will depend on the number of email addresses we get. We need the addresses of readers, people who will want to buy our books. Random addresses are not going to give us the same results.

We ask each author contribute email addresses from your readers. Most of us don't collect email addresses because we don't have a newsletter. Remember, this is your newsletter, to your fans, let them know about it.

Feel free to forward this message to anyone who would be interested in joining us as a reader or a writer. 

GOT A RELEASE COMING?
If you would like us to send out a special Newsletter, we can do that if you send us the information, cover art and links. The price will reflect the time required to produce your press release: starting at $10.

If you provide services to authors, or run a bookstore, you can join us as well. We'll be sending out a quarterly newsletter to authors and will advertise your services.

READERS: To join our newsletter, just fill out the form to the left of this page.

WRITERS: If you want to join the newsletter co-op contact us at:
IcyRoadPublishing@gmail.com

Draft 2 Digital - Update

I'm pleased to say that I'm getting some results from Draft 2 Digital.

I've had books on the site for two years now, and had ZERO sales. But I'm a bit more than frustrated with Smashwords. Half of my frustration is their content, every pornographer in the world uses them, the other half is the fact they hold earnings for 3 months before they pay.

So I switched over to D2D. They post faster, and the books appear to have better visibility. (They aren't being filtered for content, which helps.)

The results are encouraging.

My B&N downloads of free books are double what they were from Smashwords. Or at least the reporting is twice as fast. On Smashwords I get one or two d/l of Impressive Bravado a day, but The Emissary might as well be invisible.

On D2D, I've already had 20 d/l of The Emissary this month.

Why the difference?

Content filtering, is my guess. As Smashwords panders to the pornographic, B&N is forced to blanket filter their content - it all goes into the mulch layer and stays there. They don't have time to sort it, so it all gets about 10k 'points' added to the rank to keep it from dominating the charts.

Since D2D doesn't carry that content, the files have an even chance of being seen, which is a BIG boost to a small-fry like myself.

Why do I say this? Impressive Bravado (via Smashwords) has been a steady give-away on B&N for 3 years, it has a rank of 113k. The Emissary, Smashwords version, is invisible. I can't find it with a simple search. However, the D2D version is sitting pretty with a rank of 101k.

My work has always sold better on B&N than on Amazon. Smaller venue, better chance to be seen. But the NookPress website offers no advantage, and is being curated by Author Solutions; of all the drek vanity publishers in the world, Author Solutions, under all it's aliases, is the worst.

Unfortunately, I can't close the NookPress account, just like with KoboWritingLife, there's no way to close the account as an author and no way to get your money out if you have them do it. (Both sites have owed me $9 for years, I'll never see that money.)

In case you are curious, I'll clarify my methods. I uploaded all my short fiction to D2D two years ago, where it did nothing. I've been getting a smattering of d/ls of freebies on Smashwords, but only about $10 of sales per year. (Most of those were Sony Sales.) This February I uploaded Mom's short stories to D2D, made a couple of hers free and one of mine (Impressive Bravado) her's started to get some action when I re-did the covers.

The Emissary started getting hits on B&N via D2D with the new cover. I couldn't even FIND the Smashwords version on B&N, so I pulled it. They report 2 months in arrears on Smashwords, while D2D has promised to report daily starting yesterday.

Oh, what a difference a day made.

I'm showing 11 d/ls of The Emissary in May and 10 for June. The Emissary has FINALLY been discovered on B&N!

I'm handling the switch-over very carefully. First, I've raised all Smashwords prices to $.99. I'm handling all the freebies via D2D. Then I started pulling all the Smashwords files from vendors who have hooked up with both companies.

The wild card is Apple, currently my best vendor for Impressive Bravado. Switching over to Apple has proven trickier. First off, they require ISBNs from Smashwords. However, they do not appear to require ISBNs from D2D.

I may not switch over on Apple. Upsetting the Apple-cart is not in my best interest. We'll see what happens with freebies vs dollar-dreadful on Apple.

If I can start making money on Apple, I'll leave Smashwords alone.

IMO Kobo is a black-hole. Kobo is a black-hole even if you have an account in Writing Life. I've found it impossible to get any ACCURATE sales information out of them since Day 1. (Shrug) They never update covers, or files, or prices and they never pay.

Meanwhile, I earn a dollar or two from Amazon each month.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to make this announcement: I'm pulling out of the e-book business at the end of 2015. 

I had two books hit the Best Seller's List - it was fantastic - but it didn't last. Since 2012 my best month was $14 last year. I can't justify all the time I spend online for zero return.

I'm going to finish up all the current projects in time for the Winter Reading Season, in my spare time. I'm pulling e-books from every market that has zero return at the end of 2015.

I intend to get rid of The Hoard, get Talbot Hill sold and get a Real Life.

Using Scrivener To Manage A Series

An ongoing series is a massive creature that takes on a life of it's own. It requires an expanding cast, villages, farmers, mad men, villains and more supporting cast than this aging brain can hold.

So I'm using Scrivener's Research folder to hold and track the expanding cast.

I started with a single folder of notes. Names, ages and a few details of the inhabitants of Fort Chatten and Dunvegan. That was enough for the first two books.

But Homebound presented a problem: The people squatting in StoreMore, a 3 acre storage yard. I needed names, ages and a few words of description.

Then a series of fires burned people from their homes. They needed shelter...and names, ages and a few details.

This is what I'm going to do -- the details are going to change with the books. I'm going to need to expand my universe, but until I do, the individual book files can contain what I need for that book. Which character are where and what they are doing, for that book. Then, since I rename a file when I'm starting a new book and remove the old information, I have all the information I need for the next book.

So far, I've expanded from a single file to a folder under "Manuscripts" named "Horse Women" that contains a folder for the new manuscripts. I've got "McLeod 1 - 2" "McLeod 3" "McLeod 4 - The Healer" and "McLeod 5" each file has it's own copy of the world to that date.

Under 'Research' in each Scrivener file, there is a folder for 'People,' the characters most used in that book, 'Places,' the fort, the castle and the villages,  and 'Things' my general information on the Zombies, rate of travel for horses, food requirements and links to information that I need most.

Zack and Hector are at Fort Chatten in book 2. All their character information for that time and place are listed under Fort Chatten.

They are on the road in Book 3. Their information is stored under "People" in that file. I have a list of what gear they are carrying while on the road.

In Book 4, they are in Dunvegan and so is their information. But I've got the active characters in the 'People' folder.

It becomes easier for me to track characters.

I just need a similar system for dates.

Is this ideal? No - eventually I'll need a separate Scrivener file for the world. It will have to be on one monitor while the main story I'm working on is on another monitor.

Did I ever post that I use two monitors while I'm writing? 

My laptop monitor has a browser open so I can research, and the secondary monitor has my current story up. If this series and it's system expands any more, I'll need to have the World file open on the laptop at all times. 

I wonder how George R. R. Martin tracks the Game of Thrones? That feels like a nightmare task to me.

Author Earnings 1st Quarter 2015

Huge Howey is not only a best-selling author, he is also a prominent figure in the Great Publishing Market Disruption. He came to prominence via the Author Earnings Report published quarterly.

I've been silent on this subject for several reasons, most of them are family issues. But also because others have said it better. I enjoy blogging, and I enjoy charts, so I'm going to say a few words about the chart at the top of the page.

There is a trend, a very interesting trend, as shown in this chart. The purple line is the money earned by authors published by the Trade Publishing Industry, or the Big Five. The blue line under it is the earnings of Indie Authors. Notice where the two lines cross? That shows the extent of the (continuing) loss of earnings for authors who are Trade Published.

The marketing techniques that worked in 2010 with little effort are now an 80 hour a week, soul-sucking black hole. I gave it up and refuse to go back to it. But that doesn't mean I don't care what happens to others.

In brief: The Big Five fought with Amazon last year in order to stop Amazon from discounting the prices on their e-books. Amazon wants e-book prices to hover in the $2.99 to $9.99 sweet spot, so they discounted e-book prices at their own expense. The Big Five want to raise prices on e-books to discourage sales, with the idea that it's better to sell paper at brick-and-mortar stores, like they always have. This is known as 'the agency pricing model.'

As the Big Five raise prices under the "agency model" they have suppressed sales, their sales. So they trumpet that e-book sales (as a whole) have fallen by 8% and it's no longer The Growing Market.

Which is true, they've lost 8% of their market $ share to Indie Authors, plus their gross unit sales have slid a whopping 17%. I think a some of this is the fact that everyone who wants a copy of '50 Shades of Twilight' has one.

Now, if the gold diggers continue to drop out of the Indie Book Biz, micro-selling authors like myself might see a few more dollars come our way. We aren't going to see  big bucks, because the Tsunami of Mommy Porn isn't going away any time soon.

Mommy Porn sells. '50 Shades of Twilight' made enough money to give the janitors of the Randy Penguin a $5k Christmas Bonus. But the Next Hot Book (of any genre) has yet to be found.

If there is to be any hope for micro-sellers, this is it. We need to get our Works In Progress finished and ready to go by fall. January is peak of the Reading Season, if your e-book is to have more than a snow-flake's chance in Hell, get it published in the fall of 2015.

I'm going to spend this summer selling paperbacks at every book-signing I can get to. My personal best month is August, which is the best time for me to launch a new book. This year, I hope to have 'The Emissary' trilogy finished and in paperback by October's Zombie Walk, here in E'town.

Wish me luck!

Covers, Covers and More Covers

 

 

Here are six of the new covers.

I've found a photo site I can afford, so I've redone all the old covers and am uploading them to Amazon, Draft2Digital and Smashwords.

I have to say, this is the first time that Smashwords has allowed me to upload new covers without having to upload the entire work.

I'm very pleased with the new covers.

I should thank Bradley Wind for chiding me about the old covers. (He's a cover artist and author I met during my days at Authonomy.)

Daniel Roberts for posting a website with photos that I can afford.

And Andre Jute for his lesson's in cover creation that I was finally able to put to use.

Paring Down Moves to Cyber Space

A few weeks ago I was ranting about the way things had taken over my life. (See Things That Take Over Our Lives) I was very frustrated because there was so much stuff - mine, my parents and my husbands - that I wasn't enjoying my life at all.

That put me in the mood to purge, and man, I purged the entire house. There are just two closets to go, the rest of the stuff is gone. Furniture, electronics, books, clothing, things small and large were taken out of my house. Last to go was the fish tank I've had for almost 30 years.

Yeah, it was a huge undertaking.

Now I'm struggling with the hoarding gene again. It wants me to fill my house back up. My husband isn't helping - he's gone on a buying binge that's filled his office with enough rockets to have his own Star Fleet. But I degress - this blog isn't about him and his stuff.

The next step was to pare down my social media sites. Three blogs, five Facebook pages, three twitter accounts and a half-dozen email addresses. I've deleted and unpublished and abandoned nearly all of them.

This is the only blog - there is the Icy Road Publishing Facebook page, twitter account @IcyRoadPubs, and it's email list. All the rest is gone.

Oddly enough, that's made it easier to start posting again because my energy is now focused on a smaller number of projects.

Who'd have thunk it?

So, the mailing list is going to become the next priority. I'm going to need to tweak it, because I've got Mom's short stories and my books all lumped together. But that is still easier than scattering my energy all over the internet.

Yahoo! Let's see if we get anywhere with a better focus.

You can sign up for our Newsletter here.

'Tales From The Leeward Lounge'

Irene at 77 years old

'Tales From The Leeward Lounge' (US) is the first collection of my mother's short stories. I've had a dozen titles over the last few years, but this one is the one that seems to define my mother's life the best.

There's many, many more short stories where these came from, hundreds in fact. I'm working on another collection, and I'm just debating how many of these I should publish as singles then collect into a single volume.

In 'Tales of the Leeward Lounge' (UK) Volume I:

• Digging Out (UK)
• Turned Out (UK)
• Death of a Family (UK)
• Trapped (UK)
• Turnabout
• Dumped 
• Beware Marjorie

Volume Two is in the works and these three are on deck.

• Character Flaw (Published)
• Kick in the Face
• The Courtship of Millie

A word of explanation is required as to why I've published the collection via Amazon. Especially as the Traditionally Published Villagers of Hachett are out with pitchforks and torches.

Since Sony closed down the doors to it's e-book store, my primary market is Amazon, as is true for hundreds of other Indie writers. The best way to get a book noticed, as I found out with 'The Emissary - Journey' and proved true again with 'The Emissary - Arrival' is to launch it with KDP Select, upfront.

That's right - I proved it again with 'Tales From The Leeward Lounge' the best way to launch a book is to let it 'simmer' a week in Select to make sure it gets to all the Amazon sites, then to burn those 5 free days.

The pre-order process didn't do a thing for 'The Emissary - Arrival' on Smashwords. The only pre-order was my own on Barnes and Nobel. On Amazon, there were three, none of them mine.

The pattern is clear:

1. Publish to Amazon first
2. Use KDP Select for the first 90 days.
3. Wait 5 days.
4. Blow all 5 free days, starting on a Tuesday or Wednesday.
5. Email newsletter to Mailing List for the first free day.
6. Spend up to $10 on Face book ad.
7. Breaking up days will yield less than 30 sales.

I'm going to check to see if I can use the Smashwords pre-order for something already on KDP. That way KDP can act like the advertising for the Smashwords edition.

I don't know what I did wrong, but I can't use KDP pre-orders for a year. I think I got confused about how to mark the 'hot' copy and missed the deadline. Frankly, I don't think it helped a bit.

So this is my new business plan for 'Tales From The Leeward Lounge, Volume 2."

Wish me luck. 

Setting Up Shop

People change. It can be for the better or for the worst. I've moved and my life is about to change, I hope this will be for the best. 

The new farm, which is currently known as Talbot Hill is my Dad's place. I could change the name, going to blog over at Mom's blog "Icy Road." Or I can just start over. 

There are so really great perks about the new farm. For one thing there are three more acres of land and an orchard. There's an office/studio in a huge garage. There are wings to the garage for the animals, and there's a spring at the bottom of the hill. 

I'll take over Mother's studio, and continue to publish her stories from there. Just got to get it cleaned up and painted.

This isn't really a farm, yet. There's a garage, but no barn for the animals. There aren't any critters here, just me and the mice. 

Mailing List and Paperbacks

I've been struggling with the email list - I've been told, over and over, that it's the one tool I need to really sell books.

I'm not convinced.

First it was a blog, then it was MySpace, Facebook, Twitter...Twitter...Twitter and more Twitter. While sending out a tweet will get hits to Smashwords, sales are another story. As far as getting thousands of people signed up for a mailing list...somehow I just don't see it coming.

However, there HAS been enough local interest in my paperbacks to make me want to publish 'The Emissary' to paperback.

Paperback sales ARE up - thanks to Second Saturday where we've been hawking books for the last 3 years. We've been joined by two other authors - D. A. Lawson who wrote 'Always' and a children's author who's name escapes me at the moment. (I hate it when that happens.)

Going to Create Space is a super, super easy choice. I've had nothing but good luck with them. It's my formatting skills that I'm not so thrilled with.

These are novels of the Zombie Apocalypse, not High Art Literary works.

Actually, this could be great fun.

I need some fun.

Icy Road Publishing

I think this is the next logical step - to create a publishing 'brand' via Smashwords instead of pushing each book on it's own. So I've dusted off 'Icy Road' for the purpose of making the new 'system' work for me.

After yesterday's bad case of the Jitters my visit with my Dad went pretty well. He's in good hands, and I don't have to worry about him.

So I'm taking this time to set up Icy Road Publishing on Smashwords. I may have already made a mistake in the way I set it up. I sure hope not.

In a nutshell - this what I'm doing:

Sales of my ebooks have been dismal at best. Mostly because of the turmoil in my life over the last four years - unemployment, family illness, moved parents in, Mom's passing, the grieving period, more illness, more illness, more illness and now - a few days of peace before Dad returns from Rehab.

In a week of relative calm, I've finished 'The Emissary - Arrival,' sent it out to the copy editor and speculated about how to launch it.

Pre-Orders appear to be the best way to go - Apple, B&N and Kobo support pre-orders (as well as freebies) via Smaswords. I can't get that on my own.

For whatever reason, my ebooks don't sell via NookPress and WritingLife - but they DO sell through Smashwords. So I'm slowly removing them from publication on those two sites because I get paid that way.

Apple is my 'money market' so I'm working them as a catalyst. You'd have to either read, or listen to, Mark Coker talk about Pre-Orders and catalysts to under stand them. I fell asleep during Mark's talk, now it's imprinted in my brain. I suspect my Id and my Ego had a fight and Mark won.

The game-changer has been getting acurate sales data from Apple and B&N in a timely manner. Instead of 90 days after the fact...there's a chart that shows daily data.

This way, if something happens on Apple or B&N - like when my e-books go free - I've at least got a chance to make it work out in my favor. That will keep me from second guessing myself five or six times in a month.

Scrivener - Making Order Out of Chaos

I've written about Scrivener before. You can get it at Literature and Latte a UK site for writers and this marvelous software.

 Scrivener isn't just a word processor. It's a document database - an organizer for the flotsam and jetsam of the mind. I've got 30 odd years of flotsam, all over the place.

We're talking 5 or 6 copies of different directories and umpteen copies of some things I'll never use again, in software that couldn't be translated by a modern computer.

I bought Scrivener just to put my fragmented story files into some kind of order.

It works!

A week ago, I started over with some my mother's short stories. As I loaded in previously published stories, I realized that a few small changes would make publishing easier.

If I made a folder for each story, I could mark that story "To Do," "First Draft," "Revised," or even "Finished."

Since the bio and back matter would all be the same, I put those in their own folder, instead of in every story. That way I could use it over and over.

It now looks like this:

Irene's Volumn One
    Story Folder
       Story 1
          Copyright Page
          Short Story 1
   Back Matter Folder
       Author Bio
       Editor Bio
       Other Works

This has tamed the nightmare of files on my hard drive AND I can compile to an epub file and load it all directly on to the vendor sites. The investment of setup time has paid off in frustration.

Each volumn of short stories will have it's own folder - and I can update the backmatter of all of them in just a few minutes, not running through 20 stories. One update and compile - upload - done.

Wow! This is more like it.

Now, if I could just get 358 e-book covers!

Quickie

I started working on my mother's stories.

I have decided that for her 88th birthday, I'm going to get a collection together and published to Amazon.com

She's got 18 volumes of short stories, so I'm going to give this my best shot.

If you would like to read one of her stories - "Turned Out" is on Smashwords (where it is free), B&N and Amazon where it is $.99.

She gets a quarter for each sale - it's a running joke. I've got a roll of quarters with her name on them.