Basics of Selling Your Best

The bullet points for this post are completely borrowed from David Gaughran's post, Why Is My Book Not Selling? Go ahead and visit David's site for an expanded discussion, but for now, read the summary below and let me know if we've missed anthing.

(These points, btw, have been borrowed in one form or another from other successful writers. Feel free to rework them for your own purposes and spread the word to emerging writers everywhere who will benefit by these basic principles of indie publishing.)

So, what does it take to find and keep an audience for your stories? Here's a 2 minute bootcamp (we might call it Publishing 101):

• Write a compelling story. Find your voice and use it. Readers will discover your unique storytelling style if you write enough material and make it available. Get some beta readers to proof and edit even if you're good at this yourself. 
• Create or purchase great cover art. Catch your potential readers' interest with professional artwork that works as a paperback cover and as an icon for online browsing (ie, it has easy to read titles and byline).
• Write a fantastic blurb. Typically the blurb introduces the reader to the main character, hints at the story's crisis, and hooks the reader with your creative voice. Entice, don't explain.
• Price your story right. You may need to experiment here, but the current shake down seems to indicate that short stories sell for 99 cents to $1.50; short collections of stories and novellas run from $1.99 to $3.99; longer collections and novels start at $4.99 and go up from there. Test it and see.
• Provide a free sample. Called try before you buy. Be sure to make 10% to 20% of your story available for preview or free download. Also, if you post a free short story (called a loss leader) include a sample of your longer work along with a link for easy purchase.
• Format properly. Experiment with Smashword's meat grinder until you get it right. Then take what you've learned and upload your Kindle version. Make it available as a paperback POD as well. Hit all the outlets you can...which is really part of the last bullet...
• Learn to market - but not at the expense of writing your next story. Download Gaughran's PDF version of Let's Get Digital for free. It's a great summary of "how to self-publish and why you should."  

So. Are those all the basics you've heard of? I can probably come up with a few more that may form the basis of Indie Publishing 102. But this will get us started for now. Feel free to add your two cents. And let's begin selling our best.

Best Seller or Selling Your Best?

Becoming a Best Seller. Hot topic lately at the blogs I read.

Joe Konrath busts The Myth of the Best Seller by reminding us that this revolution in publishing isn't primarily about the rise of successful indie published writers like John Locke and Amanda Hocking.

Although it's a sign of the times that indie writers are breaking into the various best seller lists, the revolution of digital publishing is really about the opportunity for the majority of us to find readers without asking permission from the big publishing houses.

Says Konrath:
The self-publishing revolution is about authors--all authors--being able to make money on their work without having to jump through gatekeeping hoops. ... The real story is about the midlist, and how many writers can get paid. And right now, more writers are getting paid for their writing than at any other point in history.

This should be an encouraging word to any writer who can tell a good story. You don't have to worry about being a "best selling author" - which is really a misdirected goal to rest on one's laurels (see Dean Wesley Smith's blog post on Writer vs. Author to find out the difference). All we need to focus on is writing and publishing great stories - and the fans of our particular style of writing will find us. When that happens, we'll move from dreaming of "breaking into this business" to actually being in it.

In other words, is our true desire to be best sellers or writers who sell our best? The latter's the direction I want to head.

The Rise (Again) of Serial Novellas

Episodic, or serial, novellas are nothing new. But with the tidal wave rise of electronic publishing and the exponentially increasing sales of e-readers, series of shorter novels are seeing a resurgence.

Hugh Howey, for example, is having great success with his run of interrelated stories called Wool. The first book, a 60+ page read, has made the Top 5 Kindle sales for Science Fiction and garnered nearly 100 5 Star reviews at Amazon. This is really quite amazing given that the story is 99 cents and many "bargain" shoppers (this is my bias speaking) don't appreciate a bargain read.

Some have mentioned that Howey's "books" are quite short. Well, of course, they are novellas. If you read the story description of Wool 1, 2, 3, and 4, you'll note that these are self-contained stories that happen to follow a natural story arc. Granted, most end with a cliff-hanger that almost forces you to buy the next in the series. But as Howey points out on his blog, if you spend $3.96 on all four books you'll have purchased the equivalent of a 100,000 word novel. A bargain by any standard.

Evidently, Howey's fans are happy with the agreement as they are clamoring for a fifth story in the series (which is clocking in at the short novel length of just under 60,000 words). According to Howey, this book will be priced higher, and rightly so. Price points are still in flux out here in the wild, wild west of indie publishing, but there is a general sense that short stories start at 99 cents, novellas are $2.99 or so, and full length novels begin at $4.99 and go up from there. Time will tell if these price points remain.

Howey isn't the only one tapping into readers' desires for an ongoing series of well told tales. Grafton will have 26 of them soon enough. Evanovich has no end in sight. These are full blown novels, of course, but the principle applies. In this new digital era I believe that shorter novels (and serial novellas) will become common once again (as they were during the Golden Age of SF).

But every era has examples of this trend. In 1996 Stephen King released six 100 page stories that together were titled The Green Mile. Charles Dickens (a few years before King ;) wrote most of his epics as episodic tales that appeared in the magazines of his day. You get the picture. It will be fun to see what actually pans out this time around. But for what it's worth, my take is that we're at the beginning of another resurgence and, as a writer, I'm looking forward to going along for the ride.