Self-Publishing Archives - Page 5 of 12 - Writing As A Second Career

The Top 5 Reasons Your Friends Won’t Read Your Book And What You Can Do About It

Maybe you gave your friend a paperback of your first or latest novel. Or you emailed a link to download the e-book free or buy it for a low price.

Yet your friend hasn’t read it or reviewed it.

Or maybe, as several authors I’ve spoken to recently have done, you had a party where you gave away 25 paperback copies of your novel to your friends and colleagues and asked them to please read it and consider leaving a review.

No one did.

What can you do other than feeling disappointed?

Below are five main reasons your friends and acquaintances don’t buy or read your novels and what you can do in response.

Reason 1: They Don’t Like Reading

It seems shocking to those of us who love to read and write novels, but some people simply don’t like to read and/or they find it very difficult.

I recently heard a podcaster who believes that paperbacks and e-books alike will disappear entirely in favor of audio because reading is hard. While I like listening to audio while doing other tasks because it makes good use of my time, I can read much faster than a narrator can speak, so it’ll never replace reading for me.

Also, I love the experience of reading a book.

If your friends find it difficult, though, they may read if they have to for work, but the last thing they’ll do when it’s time to relax is read your novel or any book.

Solution:

If your friend is not a reader, pushing your book will do nothing but make that person feel bad.

If your friend is otherwise supportive of your career as an author and wants to help, ask your friend to pass your novel on (or recommend it if it’s an e-book) to someone who does love to read the type of book you’ve written.

Be clear about what type of reader that would be and about the genre of the book you’ve written. Don’t task your non-reading friend with figuring that out.

Reason 2: They Don’t Read Your Genre

Some people love to read but don’t happen to read what you like to write.

They may enjoy stories or narratives but prefer to read about real people, so they read biographies rather than novels.

Or they read novels but they love mysteries and you write westerns, or they love romance and you write horror.

It’s tempting to think that our friends should be willing to switch genres for us.

But if you think about what you love to read and don’t, it can be hard to switch to an entirely different genre.

I will cross over a little bit, but not that much. I don’t read a lot of science fiction, but if a friend who knows what I like recommends a sci-fi book I’ll check it out.

On the other hand, if my friend wrote a long literary novel about a highly dysfunctional multi-generational family where everyone behaves horribly to everyone else and is deeply depressed, I’d rather bang my head against the wall than read it.

And if I did read it, there would be almost no way I could honestly write a positive review or, even if I set honesty aside, that I would know what to say that would be positive.

I just deeply dislike that kind book, despite that many such books win prestigious literary awards.

Solution:

Despite that this type of friend loves to read, your solution is the same as for Number 1 above.

But there is good news. Because your friend overall likes to read, she’s more likely to know other readers or to understand who would be the best person to whom to give or recommend your book.

Reason 3: They Read An Average Number Of Books Per Year

Most of the research I did listed 12 books per year as the average number that people read.

Keep in mind, though, that this number is skewed by voracious readers. These are people who read anywhere from 2 to 5 books per week or more.

If we take out those people, most people read only 1 to 4 books per year.

If your friend falls into that category, it’s a big commitment to read your book. If the person already has a couple favorite authors, that fills the reading quotient for the year.

So this friend may in theory want to read your book and be excited about it but may simply not get to it for a long time.

Solution:

This friend may very well buy your book to be supportive, so go ahead and tell him about it or give your friend an autographed copy.

If your friend is really excited for you, ask if he will shelve the copy somewhere where other people might see it, maybe on a shelf above his desk at work, on a coffee table at home, or on a virtual shelf on Goodreads.

That way, your friend can help you even if there’s no time to read the book right away. The same friend might also be willing to post a picture of himself holding the book on social media with a note about how excited he is to have it.

As far as actually reading the book, don’t push. Putting on pressure makes it less likely your friend will want to read, as it will make it seem like a chore.

Give it a little time and back off and you may be surprised to find one day that you have a new diehard fan or a great review.

Reason 4: They Read A Lot More Than Average, But…

It can be especially upsetting if you have a friend who talks about books and seems to read a lot of fiction, but who doesn’t read your novel.

Because most people read only 1 to 4 books per year, though, a person can read much more or much more quickly than average and still not read a lot.

Someone who reads 12 books a year, for instance, is reading more than average. And if that person likes to read novels, she probably has a number of favorite authors who put out at least a book a year. Once that person reads each book by a favorite author, that leaves only a few slots left.

Also, how much people can read depends on what’s happening in their lives. If your friend just had a newborn or got a promotion or is caring for an aging parent, there simply may be almost no time to read.

Solution:

If your friend doesn’t read your genre, see Number 2 above.

If your friend does usually read the type of book you write, ask what format is the preferred one. If your book is only available as an e-book, and your friend only reads paperbacks, you may need to wait until you issue a paperback version of your book or offer to print a copy from your word processor for her.

Also try the approaches in Number 3 above.

In addition, because your friend is a bit more of a reader than those in previous categories, you can feel a little freer to let this friend know how much it would mean to you if she would read your book (and post an honest review if she’s comfortable doing that).

Finally, be sure to read Number 5 below, as if your friend is not reading your book, it may be the reason why.

Reason 5: They’re Afraid They Won’t Like It And Don’t Want To Have To Tell You

Your friend may love to read and may read in your genre and yet still hold off on reading your book.

That’s because it can be very awkward if you read your friend’s book and you really don’t like it. You are then in the position of needing to lie to your friend and/or, if you’re being pushed to write a review, to write something that will hurt your friend’s feelings or that you might not be comfortable writing.

Solution:

If you are giving the friend a copy unsolicited, make clear that you are not pressuring that person to read it. You can say something like, “I promise I won’t quiz you on it.”

You can also say something like, “If you love it or hate it, I hope you’ll post a review, because having more reviews, even if they’re not all 5 stars, helps a book sell.” (Which is true.)

That way, your friend knows that you understand that you may not love the same types of books. Also, it’s unlikely your friend is going to post a truly bad review. If she or he doesn’t like the book, either there will be no review or you’ll get a neutral review.

You can also tell your friend that if she fears she doesn’t have time to read it, it would be helpful to do the things suggested in Number 3. That way if your friend doesn’t like the book, she can avoid mentioning it but still be supportive in other ways.

One Last Category

There are acquaintances and friends who simply will never buy or read your book and it has nothing to do with whether they are readers or not.

You may have referred clients to them, donated to their political campaigns, or given gifts at baby showers, christenings, and birthdays for each of their children, but even if you directly asked them to, they won’t get around to spending a few dollars on your book or reading it if you give it to them.

Often these are people who don’t understand how important writing is to you, particularly if you have another career.

Regardless what you say, they’ll see it as a hobby that there’s no reason to get excited about or support.

Or these friends may simply not be very supportive people. Presumably they have other great qualities about them that you value and that’s why you’re friends.

Appreciate those qualities and let go of your hope that they’ll read your books or be encouraging about your author career.

Hopefully, though, most of your friends don’t fall into this category!

If they do, you may want to make an effort to add some more positive, supportive friends to your circle.

That’s all for this week.

Until next Friday —

L. M. Lilly

Earnings From Traditional v. Indie-Published Books

I get a lot of questions about whether a writer can earn more with a traditional publishing deal or by publishing indie.

That depends on a lot of factors, as I wrote about in Do You Need A Publisher, Part 3: Money, but this week a great opportunity presented itself for a concrete comparison.

On the Sell More Books show Jim Kukral talked about his book contract with traditional publisher Wiley and posted a link to it in the show notes.

The contract was for his non-fiction book Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue, but the terms are similar to contracts for fiction.

For comparison, I’ll share the 2017 numbers for the third book in my Awakening series, The Conflagration. I published it in May 2016, so it’s fairly recent and was available all of 2017.

While I’ll talk about my personal impressions of Jim’s contract and views, this article is not legal or financial advice. If you need legal or financial advice, you should consult a professional about your own particular situation.

The Traditional Publishing Contract

In the contract, the publisher agrees to pay a $15,000 advance against royalties. An advance means that until the advance is earned back through royalties, no additional amounts are paid to the author.

Royalties vary by type of publication and number of copies.

Mass market paperbacks have a 7.5% royalty. Hardcovers have a 15% royalty for the first 10,000 copies, 17.5% for the next 10,000, and 20% after that.

The royalty is based not on the price the consumer pays but on the publisher’s “dollar receipts,” which are defined as the U.S. dollars the publisher earns less any discounts, bad debts, book returns, or other credits.

Even before discounts or returns, the publisher doesn’t receive the price the consumer pays but rather receives whatever the retailer (such as Amazon or a local bookstore) pays the publisher.

What does this mean in actual dollars?

Most books don’t earn enough to cover the advance, so it’s likely that from August 2010, when the hardback was released, through now the $15,000 was the total paid to the author. (For more on the royalty calculations, read on.)

That’s an average of about $2,000 per year.

Self-Publishing Dollars

Now to The Conflagration (Book 3 in The Awakening Series) which I published myself.

In 2017, I earned about $2,600.00 in royalties, the bulk of that from e-books, but some from paperback and audiobook. If you multiply that by 7.5 years, about the amount of time Attention! has been out, it looks like I earned more: $19,500.

But I spent money on a cover and on having the book converted to e-book format (something I now do myself on Vellum), and on advertising. Also, though sales of the series have been pretty steady, there’s no guarantee The Conflagration will earn the same amount each year.

Taking off $700 the first year for costs and assuming a more conservative $1800 a year to account for a possible drop in sales and future advertising, my total for 7.5 years would be $13,600.

From a pure royalty and cost perspective it’s a toss up which approach is better financially, but there are a few other factors to consider.

Beyond The Royalties

When the author gets paid

The Kukral/Wiley contract provides an advance on royalties, so even if the dollars came out the same overall, having the first $15,000 up front is better than spread out over 7.5 years.

On the other hand, beyond the first $15,000, the publisher is only required to pay royalties every 6 months, with amounts under $100 held until the next period.

Most platforms through which I published pay 60 days after the royalties are earned and there’s no minimum (or a $10 one).

Transparency

The publisher sends a statement every six months showing royalties, but many traditionally-published authors have told me it doesn’t seem to them the publisher figures match up with their books’ ranks or what they believe was sold.

The sales figures I see are almost in real time or at most a day or two behind.

Occasionally there are system glitches, but I more or less feel I’ve got a pretty good sense that what I’m getting paid matches actual sales.

Marketing And Advertising

In the Attention! contract, the publisher has the right to both set the price of the book and market or advertise it as it deems appropriate.

Most traditionally-published authors find that they must do most of the marketing themselves, just as I do, yet they are unable to offer limited price discounts that might jumpstart sales the way that indie-authors can. (I had my best sales numbers ever for The Awakening Series and doubled my earnings when I made the e-book editions of the first book free, yet that’s not something you’ll see a traditional publisher doing.)

On the other hand, for those books the traditional publishers truly get behind, such as The Girl On The Train, it’s hard to argue the author would have been better off being able to discount.

Future Sales

This factor is where it gets interesting.

Jim Kukral is on a quest to get his rights to his book back, suggesting he’s not expecting a lot of future sales and believes he can do more with it than the publisher can or will.

As an indie, I keep all the rights and, as noted, I can try whatever marketing and advertising I like. Unlike traditionally-published books that publishers usually ignore after the initial sales push, I’ll keep promoting the series.

While there’s no guarantee The Conflagration will continue to earn as it has, there’s also a decent possibility it could or might earn more.

Why?

For each e-book I sell at $3.99, my royalty averages $2.60.

In contrast, traditional publishers typically focus on paperback, not e-book. Under the Wiley/Kukral contract, the trade paperback royalty for the first 10,000 copies is 10% of what the publisher receives.

So if the retail price is $9.99 and the publisher gets $6.99 from the bookstore, that’s $0.69 per book.

Not only are the earnings for the indie author nearly $2.00 more per sale, it’s easier for a relatively unknown author to sell an e-book at $3.99 than a paperback at $9.99.

Long-term v. Short-term

The clearest conclusion here is that, for most authors, publishing is a long-term effort.

Because of that, if you have one book on a topic about which you care deeply, if you can get a traditional deal, from a financial perspective it might be the better way to go.

You’d get money up front and be free to move on and focus on other things in life.

On the other hand, if you don’t absolutely need the money up front, you might rather retain control so you can keep promoting your book and getting it into other people’s hands from now through infinity.

A Career v. A Book

If you hope to make a career at writing, there are no easy answers.

When I looked at the numbers, realizing it would take 7.5 years for one of my books to earn what Jim was paid up front for Attention! was a little discouraging.

But I reminded myself that I never expected to earn a living with one book, which is why I’ve published a four-book supernatural thriller series, am launching a new mystery series this year, and also publish non-fiction.

Right now, I have many streams of income that range from minimal (my first $2.55 from a Kobo subscription service just this month) to smallish (about $9,000 from Amazon last year).

Also, last year my writing gross income was about double the previous year. If I could do that every year for the next five years, I’d be turning cartwheels. Even every other year would reach six figures in six years.

I hope this comparison was useful.

We all owe Jim Kukral a debt for sharing his contract. If you get a chance, check out Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue.

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

3 Ways To Create And Distribute Your Audiobook

One of my goals this year is to release my non-fiction books on writing in audiobook editions.

I created and released my Awakening Series through ACX, an Amazon-related company. I used the royalty-share option, which means all four books are exclusive to ACX for 7 years, and I split a 40% royalty for each book with the narrator/producer.

Now I feel less sure about committing to 7 years with my audiobooks distributed only through ACX.

Audiobooks are growing in popularity due in part to how many people now have devices like the Amazon Echo that will play audiobooks at home. Also, more vehicles now incorporate technology that will play books and other content.

These changes mean more potential income from audiobooks, so I see a greater possible downside to an exclusive deal.

Below is what I learned based on reviewing the websites of three companies:

A few things to keep in mind (a/k/a disclaimers):

I’ve only worked through ACX before, and I have no direct experience with the other two.
You should read the sites and information yourself, as I’m not perfect (though I wish I were!). Also, I’ve focused on what’s most relevant to me. You may have other interests or concerns.
The narrator typically produces the audiobook. When I refer to “narrator” below, I mean a narrator/producer.
When I refer to “author” below, I’m assuming you as the author hold the rights to your own book. Most of the information below technically refers to the “rights holder,” not the author.

Producing/Creating The Audiobook

Author’s Republic is a distributor, so it helps you distribute an audiobook that’s already produced.

But if you don’t already have a finished audiobook, and most of us don’t, its website offers a lot of information on how to produce an audiobook, as well as resources to find producers and narrators.

Author’s Republic’s website indicates it accepts audiobook submissions from authors and publishers in all countries.

Findaway Voices will help you produce your audiobook.

You can work with a narrator you suggest, if the narrator is willing, or Findaway Voices will help you find a narrator. Findaway Voices is also available to authors and publishers in all countries.

ACX provides an exchange through which you can find a narrator. The narrator produces and uploads the audio.

Note, however, that on one of its help pages, ACX indicates it is only “currently open to residents of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Ireland who have a mailing address, valid local Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and banking details for” one of those countries.

Paying For Your Audiobook Production

There are three ways to pay a producer/narrator to create your audiobook:

Paying the narrator up front
Sharing royalties when the book sells, or
A hybrid deal of the first two options

Because Author’s Republic is a distributor, the cost will depend upon what deal you work out with your narrator or producer.

If you pay up front rather than by sharing royalties, you typically pay a narrator per finished hour of the audiobook. 9,000 words of text usually comes out to one hour of finished audio. (For more on costs generally see The Cost To Create An Audiobook Edition Of Your Book.)

If you produce and narrate yourself, you obviously won’t need to pay a narrator, but you will need to pay for recording time and expertise if you don’t have your own studio and lack production skills.

When working through Findaway Voices, the author pays the narrator/producer up front per finished hour.

Findaway Voices says the range is typically $150-$400 per finished hour of audio.

Further, according to the site, “Findaway Voices charges a $49.00 fee to cover project management and ongoing administration.”

On ACX, you can pay your narrator through a royalty share, by paying up front per finished hour, or through a hybrid of the two.

ACX also offers narrators (not authors) a stipend–an additional payment above the royalty share–to produce certain books. Presumably these audiobooks are ones that ACX believes will sell well enough to earn back the stipend and then some.

How You Earn Money

The Author’s Republic website says the author receives 70% of what the “audiobook earns across over 30 channels, including all major distributors such as Audible, Audiobooks.com, and iTunes.”

My understanding of this term as to Audible, for instance, is you as the author would get 70% of whatever Audible would pay the author. So if on an Audible book created through ACX you’d get 25% of the retail price for a non-exclusive deal, you’d be getting 70% of that 25%.

Through Findaway Voices, the author keeps “80% of all royalties Findaway Voices receives, which varies by distribution partner, channel, and business model.”

Findaway Voices indicates royalties from its partners vary, but are usually within the range of 25% to 50% of the list prices.

Through ACX, if you (1) do a royalty-share deal with your narrator and (2) your audiobook is exclusively distributed through ACX, you’ll be paid 20% of the retail price (another 20% goes to the narrator).

If you (1) paid the producer up front and (2) your audiobook is exclusively distributed through ACX, you earn 40% of the retail sales price.

If you (1) paid the producer up front and (2) your deal is non-exclusive, meaning other companies can distribute your audiobook, you earn 25% of the retail sales price.

ACX also offers a $50 bounty (to be split with the narrator if you have a royalty-share deal) if yours is first audiobook an Audible Listener purchases.

Who Sets The Retail Price

For Author’s Republic and Findaway Voices the author sets the retail price (though there’s no guarantee all distributors will agree to sell the book if you set the price too low or too high).

Being able to set your own price can be an advantage because if you have control, you can run and promote sales or adjust your regular price based on the length of the book or how well it’s selling (or not).

On ACX, ACX sets the price, and that price may vary over time depending upon several factors, including whether the buyer already owns your ebook and whether the book is bought with an Audible credit.

Exclusivity

If your audiobook is exclusive, it means you can only distribute it through that company.

Author’s Republic: No exclusivity requirement.

Findaway Voices: No exclusivity requirement.

ACX: Your choice.

If you do an exclusive deal with ACX, right now you’ll earn 40% (split with the narrator if you do a royalty share deal).

If you choose a non-exclusive deal, you’ll earn 25% (but will need to pay your narrator up front).

If you have an exclusive deal, you agree that for 7 years your audiobook will only be distributed through Audible. (If non-exclusive, you still need to keep the book on Audible for 7 years, but you can distribute it through other companies.)

Distribution

Author’s Republic states it allows you to sell “your audiobook through over 30 major retailers, library providers and distributors, with new channels added monthly.”

According to its website, Findaway Voices has “the world’s largest distribution network — reaching customers in more than 170 countries.”

ACX distributes through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

It’ll be fascinating to see how the audiobook world changes over the next few years. At the moment, I’m leaning toward using ACX again but choosing a non-exclusive deal. While that means paying a narrator up front and potentially earning less, I like the flexibility to try distributing through additional channels.

If you have experience with any of the audiobook companies, please share in the comments.

Until next Friday, when I’ll write about Using Discovery To Make Your Novel More Layered (And To Write It Faster)—

L.M. Lilly

P.S. Producer/narrator Shiromi Arserio (who narrated Books 2-4 in my Awakening Series) tells me Spoken Realms is another audiobook production option. I have not yet had a chance to research that company, but it’s another one you can check out, particularly if you live in a country where ACX is not an option.

Create Your Own BookBub

As I noted in The Worst Ways To Spend Money On Book Promotion and Experimenting With First In Series Free the best e-newsletter I’ve found for generating sales of ebooks is a featured deal on BookBub (which often boosts audiobook sales as well).

It has a huge subscriber list and is very selective about the books it lists as featured deals.

BookBub, though, rejects most applications for featured deals, so that’s not always an option.

If you can’t get a BookBub deal when you want one (or at all) I found the next most effective technique is to schedule a series of ads in similar e-newsletters around the same time.

Cost vs. Benefit Comparison

For Supernatural Suspense, the genre in which I usually advertise Book 1 in my Awakening Series, BookBub charges $224 to advertise the book as a featured deal if the book is free.

My other ebooks in the series are priced at $3.99, and I make an average royalty of $2.65 for each sale. That means I need to sell at least 84 ebooks to break even.

The last time I had a BookBub deal like that, on the first day I sold 140 ebooks (of later books in the series) and 231 audiobooks.

That means on the first day I earned money on the BookBub even if you assume 20% or 30% of the sales would have happened without it. (That’s why BookBub is able to charge so much.)

Most other e-newsletters haven’t made back the money the first day and some don’t earn back the dollars spent at all. The best ones usually generate enough sales, though, that over the following 1-3 weeks I come out ahead.

This February I’m running a series of 5 e-newsletter ads. The total cost is $170.

At that price, I need to sell 65 ebooks to break even. I’m hopeful that will happen within the first couple days and that I will see increased sales for at least a month or two afterwards. (I’ll do results post a few weeks after the last listing runs.)

Making The Submission Process Easier

Scheduling multiple e-newsletter ads means filling out multiple forms, which is time-consuming.

To make this process simpler, I keep a list of product links and product ID numbers (such as the Amazon ASIN) that I can easily copy and paste into the forms. The ID numbers matter because some forms ask for those numbers rather than product links.

Here’s how my list for The Awakening looks:

I also keep a variety of descriptions saved.

That’s because some e-newsletters ask for longer descriptions, others limit you to 50 words or a certain number of characters. In addition, you may want to appeal to slightly different audiences, as not all e-newsletters will offer the same genres.

Below are a few of my descriptions for The Awakening, which are all a lot shorter than what appears on its product pages on sites like Kobo:

Though you’ll use them over and over, be sure to review the descriptions before you submit them each time.

You’ll catch typos you may have missed before. Also, once in a while I have come up with much improved ways to describe my story or my characters.

Tracking Your Schedule And Results

It’s important to track which e-newsletters you scheduled, how much each one cost, when each listing will run, and what genre you chose. You may think you’ll remember all of this, but when the dates roll around you probably won’t.

I use an Excel spreadsheet.

Once the ads run, I also keep track of how many free downloads and sales I have of each book each day by platform. That’s how I’m able to determine later which e-newsletters are most effective for my books and for particular sites. (For example, some are more apt to generate Kobo or Nook sales than others.)

While you can research the results that other authors get, what works best for your books will not necessarily be the same.

There are e-newsletters that other authors rave about that generate few sales for my Awakening Series. Similarly, I’ve had great results with e-newsletters that others find to be a waste of money.

Paying For The Ads

I personally like to pay with PayPal. That way I’m not giving my card number to an online vendor.

Even if I trust an e-newsletter, I find PayPal quicker and easier. I don’t need to reenter my credit card information and I can easily sign on and look at my payment history. (You can also input your credit card into PayPal if you prefer that to having money withdrawn from your checking account.)

As always, though, you should do your own due diligence regarding which sites you trust or don’t, including Paypal.

Before You Start

Before you spend anything on advertising, though, you should make sure you have a strong cover that fits your genre, a solid sales blurb, and good opening pages, as readers often check those before buying.

If you’re missing any of those things, you will probably be throwing advertising dollars away.

If you think you have all those elements but haven’t tried advertising in e-newsletters yet, try one or two of the less expensive ones. If the results are pretty good, then try scheduling a batch of ads.

It’s also important to try e-newsletters one at a time first so you can get a better sense of which ones work best for your books.

Keep in mind also that e-newsletter advertising is most cost-effective when you have at least three books to sell.

If you only have one or two, you may still want to advertise, but it’s less likely to pay for itself even in the long run. (What it can do is help you get some initial sales so that people start reviewing your book. You also may want to include incentives for readers to sign up to your email list within your book.)

If you try scheduling a batch of ads, good luck, and please let me know how it goes!

Until next Friday, when I’ll write about 3 Ways To Create And Distribute Your Audiobook —

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If you want to increase your chances of getting a BookBub featured deal, check out this Kobo Writing Life Podcast episode interviewing Carlyn Robertson of BookBub about exactly that.

Reaching More Readers

This Friday, I recommend checking out PublishDrive if you’re selling your books in ebook format or plan to.

Part of my PublishDrive dashboard after uploading The Awakening books.

Selling In Multiple Stores And Countries

PublishDrive offers a way to upload an ebook once and sell it in over 400 stores worldwide.

The stores includes ones you’ve likely heard of, like Apple iBooks, Kobo, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and also hundreds of others.

What I like about PublishDrive is that chance to reach readers–many outside the U.S. and Canada–who might not have access to Amazon, Kobo, or other well-known companies, and to do it without needing to upload separately in hundreds of stores.

Books Already Published Elsewhere

If you’ve already published your books on other platforms, you can still use PublishDrive.

I recently listed all four books in my Awakening supernatural thriller series. Because those are already available on Kobo and other platforms, I simply unchecked those boxes, targeting only stores I hadn’t already published in.

I don’t know how much I’ll get in sales as I haven’t yet figured out how to advertise for all the stores, but I didn’t see any downside to making the books available through more sites.

The Price

There were no upfront costs to publish. As of right now (January 2018), PublishDrive gets 10% of the digital list price.

Again, this seems like a no-brainer. If there are zero sales, it costs me no money out of pocket. I spent time setting up the books to publish, which is a cost, but it was only a few hours. That seems worth it for the chance of future sales.

Caveat – Book Descriptions

I hope to write more about PublishDrive down the road once I’ve had my books published there for some time.

So far I’ve found one downside.

The book description section appears to allow using basic html codes (such as for bold, italics, headlines, etc.) to make the description look appealing, which I wrote more about here.

At least one platform, though, dropped all formatting, including headers and paragraph spacing, resulting in this run-together, awkward-looking sales copy:

To deal with this, I revamped all my descriptions into simple paragraphs that I feel more confident will be readable on all platforms.

And now a word about Writing As A Second Career:

A Change Going Forward

Last Sunday I wrote an article More Than Writing a/k/a Goals For The New Year.

After writing it, I created my author business goals and started scheduling the next few months’ time to pursue them. In the process, I discovered I have far less time than tasks to do.

One of my major goals is to write a series of articles on my author website answering questions about what is truth and what is fiction in the background mythology of my Awakening series. Ultimately, I hope to compile the articles with additional material into a Readers’ Guide.

Going forward, to make room in my schedule to do that, I’ll be skipping Sundays and limiting my writing on this site to every Friday.

I hope you’ll stay with me!

If there area any particular topics you’d like me to address please post them in the comments or email me [email protected].

Until next Friday–

L.M. Lilly

More Than Writing a/k/a Goals For The New Year

Each year around this time (it’s New Year’s Eve as I write this), I think about the different areas of my life and set goals following 3 guidelines:

Aim High
Be Flexible
Life Is About More Than Writing

Whether or not you’re a list-maker or goal-setter, I hope my thoughts on goals will help you get excited about the coming year.

The 3 Guidelines

High goals are great because most of us rarely exceed our goals, so setting them high ensures the best results.

Also, as the above graphic (a modified quote from Robert Browning) suggests, higher goals are more inspiring and exciting. “Outline my first novel” is a lot less motivating than “Finish and publish my first novel.”

One caveat: setting all your goals too high can lead to feeling discouraged if none of them are met.

That’s where flexibility comes in. I set a few goals that will be tough to reach and others that I’m confident I can achieve if I work hard.

I also set ranges.

So my goal might be writing 3-6 short stories in a year. That leaves me room to write fewer of them if I take on other unplanned projects or more if I get very focused on producing short pieces.

As to (3) on my list above, there’s more to life than writing, I love writing so much, it’d be easy for me to focus on nothing but.

Adding other goals reminds me that the point is not be a successful but unhappy writer, it’s to be a happy person who spends the bulk of my work time writing.

Areas Of Life

Below are the areas of life I focus on when setting goals. Feel free to borrow these or to choose your own.

Writing

Here I decide on my writing projects, not sales or publication goals. I’ll share my 2017 goals as an example, but I won’t do that with each category as everyone’s goals will differ.

For 2017, I aimed to:

Revise and finalize the fourth and last book in my Awakening series, The Illumination
Build this website as a resource for other writers
Write, revise, and finalize the first book in my new mystery series

I reached (1) and (2).

As to (3), I’m on page 110 of 389 in my revisions to The Worried Man and once I’m done I’ll send it to beta readers.

I didn’t finish on schedule because I took a detour, or several, by writing nonfiction books that weren’t on my goal list. But I’m happy with those, so overall I feel pretty good about this set of goals.

If you’re writing while still working significant hours at another job, you may want to choose one major writing project, such as a first draft of novel or a non-fiction book, for the year rather than three. Or you may want to choose three smaller projects–three short stories, blog posts, or articles.

Writing Business

In this category, I set goals for publications, royalties, sales, and related items.

If you’re starting out, you might aim to publish your first book. If you’ve released one or two already, your goal may be to try out new advertising platforms, figure out ways to get publicity, or create or update your marketing plan.

Your goal also could be to learn as much as you can about self-publishing or about following the traditional route of seeking an agent or publisher.

Your Non-Writing Profession Or Job

The goals for my day-to-day job or career evolved over time and usually dovetailed with writing. At some points in life, my job goals were to work as little as possible so I could have time to write.

When I became a lawyer, though, I focused on developing skills and achieving “firsts” (such as first appellate argument). Later I focused on building client relationships and then building my own law firm. Still later I aimed to slow down my law practice to write more.

Your annual goals will depend on your long-term plan.

If you hope to write full time eventually or you want more time to write as you continue your current job, you might look at how you can work less and earn more at your non-writing career. If you want to keep doing both, your goals might be more focused on advancing your career and you might build more flexibility into your writing goals.

Other Income/Investments

Whatever your overall professional goals, having other sources of income or investments can make your life better and less stressful.

The economy, business, and the political world all change rapidly. The more ways you earn your living, the easier it will be to adjust to whatever comes next.

If you’re not sure how to do this, your goal for the year could be to read one or two books on the topic (the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series is a great start) or to read articles or talk to people who have multiple streams of income.

Also, it’s okay to start small.

Joanna Penn tells a great story about how her first affiliate income check (income from recommending a product or service) was something like $5. Now, though, she says affiliate income is a significant percentage of what she makes every year. This is a great example of starting small.

Relationships

There is something about setting relationship goals that seems a little too analytical. After all, relationships are about feelings and what’s in your heart, not your head.

But for most of us it can be easy to take the people around us for granted, and making a point to have better relationships helps ensure that doesn’t happen.

I find it especially helpful to set specific goals here. “Have better relationships” doesn’t give you a plan for what to do to achieve that.

Everyone will have different goals on this front, but a few examples are visiting family or friends who are out of state several times a year, talking on the phone (rather than using only texting or social media) with a good friend regularly, or meeting someone you don’t see often enough for dinner once a month.

Interests/Fun

Yes, I include this on my goal list!

I started adding this category when I was working full-time and going to law school at night because for the first semester or two there was almost no time for anything else. I realized that I couldn’t continue another three years that way. Even if “Interests/Fun” only got an hour every couple weeks, it was important to make space for it.

You might include setting aside time for hobbies or sports, vacations, taking walks, seeing plays, reading, or whatever else you love that does not involve working.

Community

For me, contributing to the community helps me feel better about life, myself, and the world. It’s also a great way to meet positive people and to get perspective on my own challenges.

Goals here can include donating, volunteering, attending or planning fundraisers or other events, or simply learning more about different organizations you want to support in the future.

Health And Fitness

It’s hard to enjoy life and do our best if we’re not feeling well. Also, if you write a lot, you may start experiencing strain injuries or aches and pains associated with being at the keyboard.

That’s why I set big picture goals as well as day-to-day ones.

One of mine last year was to eat about 10% more vegetables. That goal pushed me to find a few more vegetables I could tolerate eating (asparagus and raw spinach—still can’t eat cooked spinach, no offense to Popeye). I also make a point to include some vegetables in at least two meals a day.

If you’re a vegetable-lover (I’ve heard there are such people), that may not sound like much, but it’s a big step forward for me.

Unless you’re by nature into health and exercise, it’s probably best in this category in particular to pick just a couple goals and really focus on them rather than creating a long list that quickly feels overwhelming.

What are your goals or aspirations for the coming year?

Feel free to share them in the comments or email me ([email protected]) with thoughts or questions.

Best wishes for a happy, peaceful, and productive new year!

Until Friday–

L. M. Lilly

P.S. If one of your goals this coming year is to write a novel, you might find The One-Year Novelist helpful. You can download the free template for it here if you’d like to explore before buying the book.

Using An EBook Formatting Service

A couple weeks ago I wrote about using Vellum as a self-publishing tool. It allows you to pretty easily convert your word processing files to ebook and print formats.

A lot of writers, though, have asked me about using a service to do this instead.

Up until this year, that’s what I did with each of my novels. It’s a good option for many writers who self-publish.

You can also check out the free formatting option at Draft2Digital. I haven’t used it myself, so I won’t comment on it.

When Should You Pay Someone Else To Format Your Book?

In my opinion, contracting out the formatting of your book makes a lot of sense if:

You don’t like working with software

If using new (or any) software makes you want to tear out your hair, it may be worth paying a service. While I find Vellum is pretty user-friendly, as with any software, it takes some effort to learn its quirks and ins and outs.

Also, user-friendly is a relative term.

I’ve used computer programs for over thirty years, so a lot of things that seem obvious to me could be challenging to understand if it’s your first attempt to use a program beyond a word processor.

You need or want to minimize the amount of computer work you do

Many writers, including me, struggle with neck strain or back strain from typing a lot. Other issues from laptop and computer use include eye strain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and prolonged inactivity.

You may prefer to pay someone else to do the technical work so you can reserve your computer time for writing. This can be especially important if your day-to-day career also requires a lot of typing.

When I worked a lot of hours as a lawyer, I spent much of my day in front of my keyboard, as I wrote a lot of legal briefs, corresponded with clients mainly by email, and kept my books on my laptop. Whatever computer work I could outsource for my self-publishing, I did.

Your time is limited and you can afford to pay a service

Sending your word processing file to a service can also save you time.

There are a few caveats, though.

You will still need to review the finished product and flag any conversion errors. This takes time in itself. With Vellum, I find I integrate this into the formatting.

Also, correcting errors directly in the Vellum file generally doesn’t take any more time than sending notes on the errors to a service.

Despite that, overall, having a service format your book is usually quicker.

All of the above, of course, assumes you can afford to pay a service. To give you an idea of cost, before I started using Vellum, I sent my files to 52novels.

Here are the prices from its website as of December 29, 2017, when I’m writing this:

Formatting manuscript into an ebook format from Word, WordPerfect, RTF, or another “readily workable native text format”:

Under 15,000 words: $125
15,001 to 40,000 words: $150
40,001 to 100,000 words: $200
More than 100,001 words: Quote, with $225 minimum

Keep in mind that if you ask for too many follow up corrections due to your own errors in the manuscript, you’ll also need to pay per-correction fee.

Print conversion has additional fees. (See the pricing page here.)

You’re not sure if you’ll write or publish another book

If you’re not sure if you’ll write or publish another book, it probably makes more sense to pay a service for formatting.

It’ll probably be cheaper than the cost of Vellum or a similar program. Even if it’s not, you won’t need to spend time learning a new program that you may never use again.

Tips On Working With A Formatting Service

Based on my own experience, there are some things you can do to make working with a service go more smoothly.

Get A Recommendation

You can do an Internet search and find plenty of ebook and print formatters.

It’s best to get a recommendation, though, from another writer.

Ask about how reliable the service is, whether there are hidden costs, whether the service keeps to the promised schedule, and if there are any reasons the writer would not recommend the service.

Plan Ahead

As with any business, there are busy and slow times for ebook formatters. It’s best to contact a service well in advance to find out what the waiting time is before your book can be started and how long the conversion process takes.

Be sure to check the schedule before you announce a release date for your book or, worse, set it for preorder.

That way, if the timeframe is longer than you’d expected, you can push back your dates or shop around for another service.

I’ve waited as short a time as 2 weeks and as long as 6 weeks. I’ve gotten files back sometimes in days and sometimes weeks. So far, happily, the times have always conformed with the estimates I was given or been shorter.

Finalize And Proofread Your File, Including Back Matter

As noted above, if you need to make too many changes after conversion, you’ll need to pay extra.

If you carefully proof your file and have someone else proof it as well before you send it, you’ll be much less likely to need a lot of changes.

Also, don’t forget to add any back matter, such as an Author Biography and/or an Also By page and provide links to your other works, your website, your social media platforms, or anything else you want your readers to find.

It’s easy to forget about those pages in your rush to get your story polished.

If you create those back matter pages quickly when the service reminds you (as some formatters do), you’re more apt to make errors that require corrections later. (At least, I’m more apt to make errors, as exactly that happened with When Darkness Falls, the last book I had formatted for Kindle.)

Proofread And Eyeball The Formatted Files

Carefully check the files you get back.

Doing so will help you spot proofreading errors you missed. It’s also vital for spotting conversion errors.

Glitches can happen with any conversion, and you don’t want to find out after you’ve started selling your book that certain letters were replaced with odd-looking characters or the paragraphs are running together.

The latter point is why I mentioned “eyeball” above.

It’s important not only to look at words and paragraphs but to scroll through the pages to see that chapter headings, chapter endings, and back matter all look right.

You’ll also want to check the links in the Table of Contents and in your back matter.

I hope you found the above useful!

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Promoting Your Audiobook

It’s not easy to promote audiobooks, at least those done through Audible/ACX. You can’t run a sale because you have no control over the price.

I just listed The Illumination with Audiobook Boom.

One thing you can do to help get reviews is to request free promo codes from ACX.

You will almost always be able to get 25 for a new book, and sometimes I’ve gotten additional codes down the road.

You can then submit your book to Audiobook Boom.

For $10, Audiobook Boom (if it accepts your book), sends a listing about your audiobook to its list of almost 5,000 subscribers.

How Audiobook Boom Works

Those who are interested in listening to and reviewing your audiobook request it. You are not required to send any of them a promo code, though.

Audiobook Boom sends you each requester’s name, email address, and review profile on Audible (or sometimes Goodreads). You then look at the profile and decide if you want to give that person a promo code to use to download your audiobook for free.

I just did this for the fourth (and last) book in my Awakening supernatural thriller series, The Illumination.

When I checked profiles, I looked for people who either (a) had reviewed a lot of books (many had reviewed hundreds) or (b) had reviewed at least 6 or 7 audiobooks that fell within the supernatural thriller, suspense, horror, or occult genres within the last year or so.

One person had reviewed 5 audiobooks but judging from the bare man-chests on 4 out of 5 of the covers, they all had a strong romance component.

My Awakening series has an occasional sub-plot involving a romantic relationship between characters, but it’s minimal and, for one couple, occurs entirely off-screen. So I didn’t send that person a code.

If a person uses the code to download your book, you do get some credit on your Audible sales dashboard.

It’s hard to say exactly what that translates to in dollars, but I’m pretty sure every time I’ve used Audiobook Boom it has paid for itself.

Potential Drawbacks

There are possible downsides.

(1) There’s no guarantee that your audiobook will be requested. I’ve always had at least 10-20 people request each book in my series. But even if no one does, you’ve only lost $10, so I think it’s worth a shot.

(2) Not all requesters actually leave reviews.

That being said, Audiobook Boom does ask that you report if people don’t leave reviews, and that eventually may take them off the subscriber list.

(3) Audible has changed its practices. You used to be able to use the promo code yourself to send your book as a gift to the requester. Now instead you send the person the code with instructions on how to download your book. There is nothing, though, to stop the person from using the code for a different book entirely.

(4) Finally, there is the obvious possible drawback–people are not obligated to leave a positive review.

For the most part, though, if your blurb and cover accurately signal the genre and your audiobook is of reasonable quality, most people will be fair. At worst, if they don’t like something, they’ll say why, and you may learn something for your next book.

Let me know if you try it out.

(For more on creating audiobooks see 3 Ways To Create And Distribute Your Audiobook and The Cost To Create An Audiobook Edition Of Your Book.)

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If, like me, you are posting an audiobook that is not the first in the series, you may want to make sure you have codes for previous books available as well. I’d rather give someone an extra code to try the earlier book first than to have them try to listen from the middle and not understand what’s happening.

Making Your Book Description Look Pretty On Amazon

If you’re pretty new to self-publishing or you’re planning to publish soon, you may not know that you can customize how your book description looks on Amazon.

Compare These Descriptions

Here’s a description of a Vampire Queen Saga boxset (which I haven’t read, I picked this for the typeface) that uses different type sizes, boldface, italics, and paragraph spacing.

This approach highlights the tag lines, italicizes titles, and makes the entire description appear easy to read.

The description below is from an Anne Rice book.

It includes boldface, but the paragraph of description is not broken up at all, making it a little less inviting.

Changing The Appearance Of Your Book Description

You can customize your text in your KDP Dashboard. Choose Edit Book Details for your published book.

In the description box (shown below), you’ll add some codes, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Click Save at the bottom and the next screen until you scroll down to Publish. You’ll need to republish for your changes to appear.

Adding Codes

You don’t need to know coding already or be a programmer or website developer to customize your text.

To see some of the basic codes that can be easily added, I use this blurb preview page. It lists “Allowed Tags,” such as <b>, which turns on boldface, and </b>, which turns off boldface. The <h1>, <h2>, etc., are headers.

For example, the <h4> in my Super Simple Story Structure description above makes the first two lines larger and boldfaced and adds an extra blank line after them. The </h4> turns off the header setting so the next lines are in regular text:

In the blurb previewer, you can type or paste your description into the Input box, experiment with adding codes, and see (roughly) how they will look in the Output box below.

Caveat:

The Output display you’ll see is not always perfectly accurate. After you change your description in the KDP Dashboard, watch for the description to update on the book’s sales page and check it so you can quickly modify it if something doesn’t look quite how you expected.

Experimenting with the codes and how they look is a great way to spend an hour on a gloomy winter day.

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

Using Vellum To Create eBooks And Paperbacks (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 3)

If you self-publish your work or plan to, Vellum is a valuable tool that can make your life easier.

I used to pay services to convert my Word files to ebook and print formats, but now I do it myself. (For more on using a conversion service, see Using An eBook Formatting Service .) Doing it yourself is less expensive and it takes only a little more time than it used to take me to send in edits to files the services created for me.

It’s also is far less expensive (considering both time and money) to do updates, such as when I want to add a book to About the Author and Also By pages.

Right now, Vellum works on Mac, which is how I use it, and not for PCs.

I have heard, though, that you can use Mac in Cloud to run Vellum. (I have not tried that myself.)

Create Publishing Files Easily

Originally, Vellum created ebook files (including mobi for Kindle and epub files for other platforms like Kobo and iBooks) from your word processing files, but not print books.

Now you can create paperback editions with Vellum as well.

Here’s a screen shot of the page where I added title information yesterday for my latest book The One-Year Novelist.

Screen Shot from The One-Year Novelist Title Section on Vellum

Favorite Features

Vellum creates that column on the left automatically, listing your chapters. (For this book, I used Weeks instead.)

It also creates a Table of Contents for you.

One of Vellum’s many wonderful features is that you can drag your word processing file into Vellum, format it quickly, and generate all the types of files you need in one step.

For print, Vellum generates a PDF you can upload to whatever print platform you’re using (such as CreateSpace). It automatically inserts headers with the book title and author, allows you to choose trim size, and sets the pages with the correct gutters.

How It Looks

There are different options for how your chapter headers look.

Below is what I used in The One-Year Novelist, where I titled each section by Week rather than Chapter. I’m hoping to finalize the print edition over the weekend and have the paperback available by the end of next week.

If you want to customize your print edition, you can use the Duplicate feature to create a new copy of your book and edit that version for print.

Cost And Ease Of Use

You can download Vellum for free and see how you like using it, which is what I did at first.

If you want to generate files to publish, then you need to purchase. You can buy a license to publish only ebooks, ebooks and print, to publish a limited number of books, or to publish an unlimited number.

Buying the unlimited license with print and ebook cost me under $300, which is about the same as I paid to have a service convert two novels to ebook formats only, so for me that was the best deal.

If you are pretty comfortable using word processing programs, I think you’ll find Vellum user-friendly. Most features are easily findable and, if not, a quick Internet or Help search usually reveals the answers.

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For more on tools of the writing trade see Scrivener (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 1) for writing software and Canva (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 2) for creating graphics.