Use the System: An Indie Author's Method

I promised in my last post, the one where I told everyone about my record-shattering sales in March, that my next piece would be about the methods I used to do it. I'm gonna throw in my disclaimer here so no one gives me shit or gets offended. 

DISCLAIMER: I am not better than you. I am not bragging. Every time I write anything about my book sales or try to give advice based on my own experience, I get at least one email blasting me as a small-timer with a big ego. As always, I'm just telling you what I've done and what works for me. Your methods might be better and more effective for you, and if so I think that's nifty. There are a lot of writers out there struggling just as I am, and I take a lot of advice from them. And from bigger-named writers than me (which is most of them), so relax. I'm telling you this because you might be irritated with your current sales, and maybe trying something different will help. 

Okay, we're on the same page now. 

April has been another good month for me. I thought at the beginning of it that I'd be lucky to make $800 or $900 in royalties, but I underestimated the aftereffects of my last promotion. You may remember me giving away most of my books last month for five days, all at once. During that time the four books I was giving away were downloaded about 4,000 times. That's an average of 1k each, obviously. Not bad, because one of the things I focus on is getting my name out there. Putting books in front of people. 

The advantage in selling eBooks is that the vitally important 'word of mouth' works electronically and automatically as well as between real, living people. Folks who like my books tell friends, and sometimes the friends buy them. But the reason I'm happy to give away thousands of copies is because doing so on Amazon (where I'm currently exclusive) means the metadata for those books gets a nice boost. 

If you're a writer who self-publishes, you need to know this stuff. You may not need all the technical jargon, but an understanding of how the system works means more aptly utilizing it. 

Go to any Amazon page for a kindle book and you'll see several places where suggested books appear. Metadata affects that. If you've just published a book and sold five copies, that field is going to be bare. Which means that your book isn't going to appear on many (if any) pages of similar titles. The best way I've found to populate those areas is giving away books. Don't think of the time your book is free as lost profit, but rather as a long-term investment in building a wide base of pages on which your book may appear. 

It all seems complex and abstract. That's because it is. Watching book trends, researching suggested sales, trying to grasp the hugely complicated system of sales interactions on Amazon is hard. It makes my brain hurt a lot and I've been studying it and learning it for more than two years. 

So that's the big one: give away your work. You can do this on your own if you don't want to get into the Select program on Amazon by simply giving it away on your website or blog. This may be helpful or not--I do it through Amazon because that method builds my potential audience on that platform. Doing it on your own can only indirectly affect your sales. For my money doing it through Amazon is faster, easier, and way more effective. 

The other things I do, let's see...

I watch my sales. A lot of other authors don't recommend doing this because it can make you anxious and maybe a little down. I know I get that way when my sales start to decline sometimes. I still check them often, because I want to get an idea when my best sales times are, know what days tend to be my strongest, and to observe long and short-term trends. This is another of those things you may not want to do, but it works for me. When I first got into the Select program, I used two of my free promotion days to give away a book during my two best sales days--Tuesday and Wednesday at the time--and saw immediate results. Sales of that book had been flat for months. I was selling maybe twenty or thirty copies. After those two days were up (600 free copies downloaded) I sold another twenty in about two days. Not a ton of money, but I doubled my income for the month. 

Paying attention to the prices of hot books is important as well. Ebook platforms had their flirtation with the 99 cent eBook craze, but for the most part the luster has worn off that fad. I've never had a lot of luck pricing my books that low, and instead of making up the income difference through volume, I just lost money compared to the prices I'd had them at before. Really, even the $2.99 pricepoint, once a standard on Amazon as it was the lowest price authors could make the 70% royalty rate at--is beginning to wear thin. A few months ago J.A. Konrath had a guest blogger on his site, and she gave very good reasons to price your books higher. Her name (which is the most awesome name EVER) is Elle Lothlorien, and she makes an excellent case for higher eBook prices in this post riiiiiight here.

That's pretty much how I operate. I'm obsessive about finding trends in my sales, understanding the machinery of how the rank system, suggested sales, and assorted pieces of the Amazon pie work, and I give away my stuff. Now, a few caveats. 

I read obsessively. J.A. Konrath's blog is a damn fine resource for writers trying to make a living through self-publishing. Most of what I've learned has been from him, and he's the best kind of teacher: one who experiments constantly himself, gives other authors a platform to share what works for them, and understands that what works for one may not work for another. 

I gave away my novel Beautiful for five days recently. Almost 900 downloads while it was free, but virtually no sales since then. Which is strange, because the last time I gave it away sales jumped up pretty fast and high. Nothing is guaranteed in this business, we all know that. We work our asses off to succeed, but the truth is that we have to keep at it, keep innovating where we can. Slackers need not apply. 

I think a major factor in the sales bump I've had since my last giveaway has to do with the fact that all the books I gave away were in a series. All of them were close to each other in rank on the various top 100 lists on the kindle store, and that stands out to people. The covers are all similarly themed. I have to imagine that a lot of people saw books one, two, and three and said to themselves, "Hey, all three of these are in the top 15 on the free Contemporary Fantasy top 100 list. Maybe there's something good here."

Having a series helps a lot from what I've gathered through observation. It may be different for you. 

I can't give much more advice than that. Write well, get a good cover, and always learn everything you can. Konrath isn't the only indi author out there who has great insight and experience. Find other authors, get their take on the process as well as the nuts and bolts of how it all works. It may not help your sales to change things up (through giveaways or whatever) but I'm damn sure it won't hurt. 

Don't hold me to that, though. I don't want to get mobbed if I'm totally wrong there. 

Record-Breaking

As of February of this year, my best month on record for sales was March of 2011. In that month I released book 2 of Living With the Dead (The Bitter Seasons) as well as the Year One compilation, which contained the first two books as well as five short stories, a novella, and some behind-the-scenes notes from me on the origin of the story.

That month I made just over $1,100 dollars in royalties. My mom hates the idea that I'm sharing income like this, but we live in a different world than the one she started out in professionally. Google can give us the income numbers for a lot of professions, but writing is very much one of the last closed doors for income reports. I'm going to tell you not because I want to brag, though I am proud of what I've accomplished, but to give some perspective and maybe some hope to other writers out there.

I'm not special. I don't have a lot of name recognition. Like a many of you, I write because I love it, I put in my hours on social networks trying to expand my fan base. I work a full-time job. I've put in hard work and love, and I've made a habit of watching sales trends and working out ways to utilize them to my advantage.

Also, I got lucky. Plain and simple.

In March of this year, I broke my personal record for royalties. If the exchange rate with the British Pound remains around where it is right now, I'll have made right around $2,150. That's not overall sales, that's the royalty amount I'll get in my checking account at the end of May.

Let me say: WOOHOO!

This is great! I'm not saying that only because it's proof of concept that a person with no fan base (most of us Indie writers when we start out) can build a small and loyal one and make some real money. I'm excited because while I'm aware that this level of sales isn't yet sustainable for me, that's a nice big chunk of change I can use for things like fixing my roof and putting money away for retirement.

I'm not going to go into detail as to how I leveraged the Select Program to manage this (that's my next post) because I know many of you other writers out there have done the same. Some of you have had vastly superior results, and I'm happy for you. Some of you haven't had as much luck, which is why I'm writing this post to begin with.

Do. Not. Give. Up.

I've written before that I've come across some rough times with sales, bad reviews, and all the pitfalls that come with putting your work out there for anyone to critique. I fully expect to see a drop off in sales over the next several months, because I'm using 2011 as a model for my expectations. You and I both know how rough and disappointing this job can be, but because so many of you as fellow writers, fans, friends, and family stuck by me when I whined and supported me, I had a record-breaking month.

If you're an author that hasn't had as much success as you'd like (and I think all of us are secretly hoping for Stephen King money in the parts of our brains we don't talk about in public) then take this post as a reason to keep on trying. Not to keep writing--I doubt most of you would stop doing that, as we're all addicts and slaves to the words--but trying new things. I was skeptical of the Select program at first, but it's turned out to be a godsend. Maybe you've tried it and haven't had any luck. That's okay. There are other options, a ton of them for us.

This is a hugely exciting time for authors. I imagine when sales start to slump and I'm between book releases I'll probably start to get cranky again. I hope that when or if that happens, I look back and read this post and decide to try some new promotion or idea.

It's hard to stay dedicated sometimes, but here's your proof of concept. Regular guy like me did it, at least for that one month. Lots of other authors have done a lot more. Konrath and others are telling the truth: writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Let this post be the glass of water that refreshes you a bit as you trot along.

Guts

So, I intended to make my next post about the results I had from my big book giveaway last month. I'm still going to do that when I get my sales report on the fifteenth, but a very interesting experience came my way a few days ago, and I want to talk about it.

My appendix decided to part ways with me. It was not an amicable split.

I'd been feeling crappy for about a week before Saturday morning. I called into work during that time, which I very rarely do--that was the previous Sunday, I think. When I woke up Friday night I felt a little off. By the morning I knew something was very wrong. My wife and I went to the hospital around noon.

Following some bloodwork, a battery of tests on my urine, and a deeply personal physical examination, I got my first CAT scan. If you've never had the pleasure, let me assure you it's an...interesting experience. The scan plus the contrast material they injected into me made my body heat up by about twenty degrees for a few seconds. I was told that's a normal thing.

Not for me.

My appendix, the scan showed, was so inflamed that it actually started to curl around on itself. I'm not a doctor, but that sounds pretty terrible. So, off to surgery I went. The delay between being told I was going to surgery and it actually happening was less than half an hour. The people at my local hospital were on the ball, not wanting my useless little appendix to rupture and cause all manner of problems.

I didn't really have time to get worried or scared before the Nurse Anesthetist said, "You're going to sleep now," and I did. Not before throwing my eyes open in defiance of that statement, to which he commented that I was "a funny kid." Then, darkness.

Lemme tell ya, waking up from that surgery sucked worse than anything in my life. I felt god-freaking-awful. When the nurse asked if I was in any pain, I mumbled yes, and she said the best five words in the English language: Let's get you some medicine.

Honestly, I didn't have much of an opinion about the surgery. Once the necessity of the thing became clear I just went with the flow. It was afterward, when I was admitted to the hospital and knew I would have to stay there alone, that I began to feel off. My wife Jess and my best friend Patrick were there when I got out of recovery, but I told them to go home and get some rest when I realized how deeply I was about to sleep.

Next morning, I found out my second round of labs were still bad and I had to stay another day to get my white count up. The infection in my appendix had been pretty hardy, and probably had spread. Jess was there by the time I heard that news, and she spent the morning with me. She had to leave to get sleep for work around noon, and I was left alone.

Except for you guys.

Many fans and friends (and some of you are both) sent me messages and well-wishes on Facebook. I spent several hours chatting and commenting back and forth with people, and it was really awesome. I mean that word in its original sense. You filled me with awe. As an adult, I've only had oral surgery before, nothing this big. I've never been in a situation where I had no control. I was in that room, private and nice as it was, and I was poked with needles, trailing an IV, feeling so out of my element that I was sort of lost.

Which is ironic, since full-time job is working in a nursing home. Other side of the coin and all that.

Patrick ended up coming to the hospital that afternoon and hanging out with me, but during the early hours of the morning and in the empty spaces between, I realized how lucky I am to have you. My family, my friends, my digital companions on various social networks, and my fans (who exist among all those groups). You kept me from thinking about the pain in my stomach, the worries over how much all this is going to cost me, and how bad the complications could be if something went wrong.

I don't know if I'm coming across as overly emotional here, but it was really a humbling experience for me. I'm so glad to be home, and I'll be off work for at least another week, so I'll be writing in that time. As thanks for everyone's support, I'm going to do a piece or two of short fiction while I'm off and give it away on this blog. It's not much, but I hope you enjoy it. You all did what you could to keep me sane while I was in the hospital, the least I can do in return is try to entertain you for a while.

It may not seem to you that you did much, but believe me, you did. I'm a creature of habit. When I'm thrown out of my routine I go crazy. I get stressed out, my blood pressure goes up, I can't sleep or relax. It's a serious problem for me. Imagine my surprise that while I read your messages and made snarky comments with many of you, I felt better. And not just felt it--I was measurably better. My blood pressure, along with my anxiety, dropped significantly while I chatted with all of you. I felt at ease during a time that should have nearly driven me insane.

So, I guess what I'm saying is thanks. Thank you for being a friend.

Yeah, I just quoted the Golden Girls theme song at you. You're gonna have to deal with that.