Two Weeks On Kindle

                                                 Joan Miro - Still Life With Old Shoe

I have now had my two books available for Kindle for exactly two weeks. It has been unbelievably exciting to have my books available to such a large audience (getting them to read it is another matter though ;-)).

Here are some observations I have made:

- The feeling I got when I sold my first book was completely unexpected. The unabashed joy was a little disconcerting as I am not normally prone to bouts of giddy excitement, but it was certainly a pleasant feeling.

- Be wary of spending too much time promoting your book and not enough time writing your next project. There are so many ways to promote your book (Twitter, Facebook, a blog, numerous message boards etc.) that one can get lost in trying to promote one's books as often as possible.

Yes, it is important to establish an infrastructure whereby you can communicate with your readers, but this should not come at the expense of your actual writing. We live in an age of instant communication, but it is worth remembering that the best books are timeless. There is a reason that the best Victorian novels have never gone out of print.

Therefore, I would suggest the best form of marketing is to write a really good book. And once you have done that, write another one!

- Beware of trolls on certain message boards. Before jumping in the deep-end on some of the message boards I was recommended to check out, I decided to read some of the threads - and my word did I find some paranoid, rude and extremely hostile people lurking about. Therefore, I may avoid quite a few of the message-boards for now - there are almost as bad as the horrible comments you find under the most popular Youtube videos.

Having said that, there are some very nice people too who are playing a crucial role in spreading the word about books by indie authors. And one particular board, Amazon's own KDP board, is far and away the friendliest message board I have ever frequented. There is a small community of authors there who are all trying to help each other out and are happy to welcome all newcomers.

- My new addiction is checking my sales. Thanks to the wonders of technology, the sales update every hour. Which is terrible for someone who cannot help checking these figures every time he jumps on a computer! I am hoping the novelty of this wears off as it is fast becoming an all-consuming endeavour.

Speaking of sales, I am selling close to two books a day at the moment, which is very cool indeed. However, I have no idea if this is just friends and family picking up my books, so I will have to wait and see if I can sustain, or even increase, this amount of sales.

The Kindle Questions - How much should I charge for my e-book?

If uploading your e-book on to Kindle is relatively simple, deciding how much to charge for it is anything but. I have spent the last few days perusing the web for advice on the issue and much of it appears to be conflicting.

However, if we work through the issue methodically I think we will be able to untangle some of the key issues surrounding this question.

(Although I am writing in England I am going to use US Dollars instead of British Pounds for any numbers used below.)

How much money do I make for each book I sell on Kindle?

Amazon have two models for pricing structures.

Model 1:  35%

Under this model, the author has far more flexibility in terms of pricing. They can charge anywhere between $0.99 and $200.

Model 2: 70%

Under this alternative model, the author must set the price of the book between $2.99 and $9.99.

There is also a delivery charge under this second model, which reduces the amount earned per book to around 68%.

Which Model will allow me to generate greater sales?


Lets say that you were looking at making $10,000 a year from your writing so you can quit your day job and focus on becoming a full-time writer.

If you used Model 1 and charged $0.99 for your book you would make $0.35 cents for every book you sold. This means you would need to sell 28,571 books in a year to reach your target.

If instead you used Model 2 and charged $2.99 for your book you would make $2.10 for every book you sold. This means you would need to sell 4,762 books in a year to reach your target.

From this maths it would appear that Model 2 is the preferable choice; you sell your e-book at a price far cheaper than that of the average paperback and need to generate far fewer sales to reach your benchmark.

Unfortunately, the actual answer is far from clear-cut and will vary from author to author.

Before addressing this issue further, lets ask a more simple question?

Why shouldn't I charge the same amount as big publishers?


In many ways, it is the incompetence of the big publishers that is allowing self-published authors to flourish in the e-book marketplace.

Let me give you an example. I was about to purchase Tony Blair's autobiography for my younger brother a few months ago and felt the most convenient way to do so would be to buy a copy for his iPad. However, when I went on to the Amazon website, I was horrified to see that the e-book cost more than the hardback. Given how much cheaper the cost is for assembling an e-book compared to printing a book on hundreds of sheets of paper, this pricing decision was illogical. I was so annoyed I decided to buy neither version of the book.

Readers have picked up on this ludicrousness and our punishing any guilty books accordingly.

The more widespread problem that big publishers are having with their pricing is that their books are often three or four times more expensive than books offered by self-published authors. And what many readers are finding is that many of these self-published authors are just as talented as those writers who are considered to be 'professional writers'.

This presents a massive problem for the publishing industry because whereas with many other products a higher price normally equates better quality (e.g. people are willing to pay more for a BMW 7 Series than a Ford Focus because technically it is a better car). But if a book by Author X is just at spellbinding as something written by Published Author Y, that extra cost is no longer justifiable and will result in significantly lower sales for Published Author Y.

That is why I think it is essential that as self-published authors we keep our prices extremely competitive and distant from the prices of the big publishers. Therefore, I think self-published authors should charge between $0.99 and $3.99 for their books.

With this in mind, lets return to one of our earlier questions:

Which Model will allow me to generate greater sales?

Although the maths above suggests Model 2 is the better option, experience suggests otherwise.

The most famous Kindle alumni are Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking - both these authors have generated tens of thousands of sales and have done so by charging $0.99 for some of their books. 

The next post in this series will talk about marketing your book, but the price you give your book will have a massive impact on the audience you reach. I suspect that the best way to generate sales is to get a ton of good reviews. But in order to attract those initial readers, you may have to charge an introductory price of $0.99 to tempt readers into buying a book that they have never heard of before. 

However, once you charge $0.99 for a book will anyone be willing to pay $2.99 if you raise the price six months later? There is no obvious answer to this question - I guess that it is only through experience that I'll be able to provide you with a better answer. 

One of the great things about Kindle is that you can vary the price from week to week and see what generates the optimum sales. But at this point we don't know with Hocking and Konrath are outliers or a sign of things to come. However, a quick look at the top ten selling books on Amazon UK shows me that all the books fall under Model One. So despite the fact you need to sell almost six times as many books to generate the $10,000 target mentioned earlier, it appears to be an equally credible option.

How much are you planning to charge for your first books?

Over the next few weeks I will be releasing two books. The first is a semi-autobiographical novella I wrote seven years ago, while the second is a dystopian novel I finished a few months ago.

I am tempted to charge $0.99 for both; however, I would find it strange charging the same amount for a novella as a full length novel. So I plan to charge $2.99 for the novel and $0.99 for the novella. It will allow me to see the pros and cons of both models. I'll keep you updated as to how they both work out.

To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

Over the past eighteen months, I have been working on my first full length novel. A few weeks ago, I finished the penultimate draft and began to consider my publishing options. For many years, writers in my position would be forced down the arduous route of finding an agent who can find you a publisher who can market your book to a specific demographic.  

However, with the advent of the e-book and the rapid rise of the Kindle, the book industry appears to be undergoing a significant transformation. One that is similar to the sea change in the music industry brought about by the arrival of the iPod and iTunes ten years ago.

Therefore, the first post on this blog will involve me going through the strengths and weaknesses of the two distinctive routes to publishing and deciding which one to follow.

(A brief disclaimer – I am sure there are a great deal more pros and cons to both routes of getting published – please feel free to add any to this post – these are the ones that came to mind in specific relation to my current circumstances.)

       Route One: Finding a Literary Agent

       What does this involve: Sending a covering letter, synopsis and three chapters of your work to a     literary agent.

       Pros

-        An agent has invaluable contacts with publishers and other important people within the industry. If you can win one of them over, your book will have a far better chance of being succeeding.

-        They can help ensure you receive an advance for your work. For those of us who are working and struggle to find the time to write, such financial aid could prove to be invaluable in the long term.

-        Most importantly, they can help ensure that your book ends up in print. For all the talk of the e-book signalling the end of the paperback, I am convinced that the book will prove to have far more durability than the CD did. The latter was only around for a couple of decades, while the former has endured for centuries.

-        An agent can help secure interviews and various other forms of publicity that you will not be able to secure if you self publish.

Cons

-        All of the above strengths are dependent on the premise that you actually secure an agent. This process can be both arduous and time consuming.

-        A good number of agents will insist that you send your work to their agency on an exclusive basis. Given that an agency’s response time can vary from anywhere between four weeks to three months, this could involve a drawn out process that could end up taking years (by which time you may already end up working on other projects).

-        The chances of securing an agent are incredibly slim. I have attended several talks where agents make it clear that there are large ‘slush piles’ where many manuscripts end up and that it is incredibly hard to gain the attention of an agent and his readers. 

     One suggested sending in presents which announce the manuscript’s impending arrival in order to drum up excitement within a particular agent’s office. No thanks.

-        No matter how standardised, it is hard to quantify one’s response to rejection. Hopefully as writers we have the self-awareness to know if our work is sub-standard (a category the majority of my teenage writing falls into); but no matter how much we believe we have penned a noteworthy endeavour, the arrival of a letter of rejection can have tumultuous effects.

Given that most agents do not provide feedback as to why they rejected your manuscript, this can often increase our sense of despondency and affect both our desire to continue the search for an agent and dampen our confidence in writing new work.                                           

Route Two: Self Publish on Kindle

What does this involve: Creating a book cover, formatting your book and then uploading it to the Kindle store.

 Pros

-        Instant access to a market of 12 million readers as of January this year and conservative estimates suggest this will grow to 35 million by the end of 2013. This number does not include the numerous iPad and PC owners who have downloaded Kindle software for their devices. 

     This is a huge marketplace that you can have instant access to once you have completed your book.

-        By far the most attractive prospect of self-publishing on the Kindle is the autonomy this grants the writer. The caveat to this point is that it is crucial that you have a small group of friends who will edit your work thoroughly and impartially (I am blessed to have two such friends who are the most brilliant editors I could hope for).

How many published writers must have dreamed of having the autonomy to have their work unfiltered by editors whose primary motivation may be ensuring their work is marketable rather than brilliant?

-        One of the most exciting possibilities of the Kindle and e-readers is the flexibility they provide the author with. The very nature of the book necessitates that a fiction writer must publish novel after novel, and perhaps after a decade or so release a collection of short stories and other writing (of course, other such work can appear in magazines and newspapers, but it is not quite the same).

The e-book allows the writer to release whichever form of writing he prefers in any particular order. So after finishing a novel, a writer may decide to write a political pamphlet, a couple of short stories and a collection of poetry. Once a final draft of each of these works has been completed, the author will be able to provide his readers with instant access to his art.

-        For the prolific writer, it ensures that he is not at the whims of a publisher’s print cycles. The e-book provides the author with flexibility to share his work with his audience as soon as it is ready.

Cons

-        The e-book’s accessibility is also its greatest weakness. The market is bound to be saturated by tens of thousands of authors who will publish books which would not normally be allowed into the marketplace. If these increase exponentially, they may give ‘indie authors’ a poor reputation and put readers off from purchasing books from self published authors.

-        The only quantifiable way for a reader to judge you work (apart from reading a sample that Kindle provides) is the reviews of other readers. If your book attracts a few negative reviews, this alone could significantly damage your book’s reputation.

It would be extremely helpful if Amazon could develop a third party review system which ensured the system could not be abused, but given the sheer number of books that are published daily, this may prove to be an impossible task.

-        The writer must also become his own publicist. There are few ways of promoting your book on Kindle so you have to rely solely on word of mouth and good reviews. While there will be success stories, many authors will find they are unable to shift many copies of their work.

Conclusion

Despite its potential pitfalls, I am going to pursue self publishing my book through Kindle.

I have made a detailed list of which agents I should target as well extensively researching how best to get an agent’s attention. But I fear that the time one must spend on putting together a proposal would be better spent on writing more books and do not wish spend countless months trying to sweet talk a literary agent.

The ability to publish my work with complete autonomy as well the freedom to publish whenever I like is too appealing to resist. There is a significant risk that this route will yield poor sales but that is not my primary motivation (although I wouldn’t complain if my writing started selling well!).

This blog will chart both the progress of my writing and my efforts in publishing and promoting myself via the Kindle store. I will try to be as open as possible in regards to the strategies employ and the sales I generate.

I hope this blog can prove helpful for other writers at a similar crossroads.

Let the fun begin!