Tides Turning

I have always been the type of writer that worries I'm not managing my time well. That often boils down to feeling guilty for writing anything that doesn't have an immediate payout. Oh, how the tides have turned...

This week is all upside down. I've managed to find quite a few freelance projects, and guess what? For the first time in my writing life, as I was working on these projects, I feel guilty for not spending the time writing my creative stuff. When did all this change?! I guess it's keeping me balanced. I'm pretty sure the guilt comes from the fact that half of the freelance work is on spec, so no guarantee that it will sell, and the other half is relatively low paying with a lot of technical issues to navigate. But that project is one of those perfectly mindless jobs with no actual writing--a dream if I wasn't spending fifty percent of the time getting tasks kicked back for no reason.

I have managed to sneak in a few moments of creative writing anyway. I also had one of my books included in a giveaway through Prolific Works. As of writing this, there have been 105 downloads. I can't wait to see those 105 reviews start rolling in...

... 🤣
... 🤣
... 🤣

Okay, I think I'm done laughing hysterically. If I get one review out of it, I'll be ecstatic.

That's it for this week. NaNo's getting closer and I've got an outline to finish...

Goodreads Leaving a Bad Taste in the Mouths of Indie Authors

I thought I was just going to write a post about my 2018 writing goals this week (don't worry, that's still on the way), but it turns out Goodreads tried to slip some news past all of us during the holidays. Starting in January, Goodreads will introduce a new U.S. Giveaways program. You can read their blog post about it, but once you do, you'll find that comments are closed for this particular post. Hmm, wonder why?

Anyway, here are the highlights:

• No more listing giveaways for free (which hurts everyone, but particular indie authors with tiny marketing budgets)
• There are two package options with the cheapest costing over $100
• Yes, you can give away up to 100 books per giveaway, but if you want to give away less, you still pay the same price

For all of this hassle, the supposed benefits you get include:

• Forcing anyone who enters your giveaway to put your book on their Want To Read shelf. (I hate this as a reader because if I don't win the book, I don't want a ton of books I'll never go out and buy clogging my virtual bookshelves).
• Anyone already following you or your books gets a notification of a new giveaway (that's already been happening before this change)
• Followup emails are sent eight weeks after someone wins a giveaway, reminding (annoying?) them into leaving a review.
• The premium package ($600? Really?!) lets you pay to be listed ahead of all the other suckers who could only shell out $119 for the privilege of giving something away for free. This is the ONLY benefit above the standard package.

To be clear, there are no specifics on how the print giveaways work. Before, you had to purchase the copies and send them directly to the winners yourself. If this is still the case, you are basically paying $119 for NOTHING. If you are giving an ebook away, however, Amazon will take care of the distribution to winners for you except, you know, you have to have your book listed on Amazon, otherwise its not clear if a giveaway is even an option. This is how the ebook giveaways have been set up since they started offering them, even keeping a similar price.

It kind of makes you feel a little sick to see how Amazon is profiting off of buying Goodreads. I think we all knew this was coming, but it's still jarring to see it in print. I'm not like some of the authors who are considering saying goodbye to Goodreads all together because it is still a useful tool (until they start charging for more things--I wouldn't put it past them at this point). And of course, none of us can boycott Amazon because they've made it impossible to have any chance of a successful career without them pulling most of the strings.

You may even be saying, "But you can run giveaways anywhere!" Sure you can. I've used Rafflecopter to run giveaways for digital copies of my books instead of Goodreads. And you know what? I get anywhere from 0-7 entries with plenty of social media promotion for it. Since one person can enter multiple times, I only average about 2 people entering these giveaways. On Goodreads, I've never seen a giveaway with less than 150 individual entries, even books that look so bad you wouldn't want to waste your time on it. This matters. And yes, Goodreads/Amazon has realized they can profit from this.

The only solution to prove to Goodreads that this is a bad idea is not to use it. And I don't mean authors--if you have the money to waste, go ahead and do it. You'll look silly doing it since we all now know how much your paying to list it. When I say don't use it, I mean the readers. They have the power here. If you stop entering the giveaways, the price for authors and publishers will no longer be worth it. I know it can be fun (and a little addicting) to win Goodreads giveaways, but don't let this good time ruin the careers of some great writers who cannot afford this pay-to-play situation.

Goodreads, Ebooks, and an Unexpected Price to Pay

If you are an author on Goodreads (or an extremely voracious reader like myself) you may have notice over the past couple days that ebook giveaways are starting to roll out. Goodreads giveaways have always been close to my heart--it's what got me started on the road to semi-pro book reviews (not totally pro--I still only get paid in free books). And I own a Kindle, so ebook giveaways just seem to fit perfectly.

Until it doesn't.

There are a lot of people that benefit from the new arrangement, most importantly the readers. The person that gets the short end of the bookmark? Writers. Specifically, independent writers who may have a small or nonexistent marketing budget for their book. Why am I talking about marketing budgets? Because Goodreads charges a flat $119 fee for listing an ebook giveaway for up to 100 copies (print giveaways are still free because the giveaway host has to purchase and ship the books themselves).

What do you get for this fee? The convenience of not having to deal with the whole giveaway thing once you pay up. You don't have to go into Amazon and gift the books, you don't have to do anything but flash the cash. Sounds like a sweet deal... if you have never bothered to do any marketing for your book before. What independent authors know is that this is just another exploitative fee: "Pay us and we'll do it all for you!" When in fact it would probably be easier to gift ebooks myself, if I chose to host a giveaway--and I wouldn't have to give away 100 copies just to get my money's worth.

But surely you get something more for $119, right? These 100 copies will show up as sales!
Uh... nope. Not going to happen.

Okay. Then at least if the giveaway winner reviews the book on Amazon, it will be marked as a verified review!
Again, probably not. If KOLL/KU reviews aren't marked as verified, these won't be either (and reviewers can turn this label off if they choose).

Normally I wouldn't be this outspoken about something like this, because if it isn't for me, I just wouldn't use it. But I want independent authors to be aware of what they are really getting for this fee. Take the case of my haiku collection Unfolding Life. I published it on Amazon and within the first 90 days hosted free days through Kindle Unlimited. Those first free days yielded around 90 downloads, and they counted as sales (only in the free store, but still...). I didn't have to spend time contacting each person to give them a copy, I didn't have to pay any money to promote it, and I was working only with social media promotion as a completely unknown writer. I'll tell you that subsequent free days for this book and my other works have not yielded this high of download numbers, but my point is that you don't need to, nor should you, pay someone to give away your work. Because let's be honest, how many of those 100 giveaway winners are really going to review your book on Goodreads and Amazon? I know I make an effort to read and review all the free books I get, but I am probably in the minority.

This new rollout isn't entirely without merit. It does give authors and readers another option for participating in book giveaways. But it's comparable to traditional publishing deals where authors get cents on the dollar in royalties for ebook sales when it costs the publisher practically nothing to produce and sell. It can get your book exposure, but it's not going to do any favors for your wallet.

These last couple weeks have sucked in general. And when I saw this, I thought I could have another tool to happily add to my marketing bag. Sadly, this news just sucks too. 

Win a Copy of Melody of Love #bookgiveaway

This week's blog post will be short and simple. I'm hard at work on the second round of revisions for the novel, which up until now has been known as my 2014 NaNoWriMo project. Today I can start calling it by its official title: Seeing What Develops. Lots of little details are being worked on too, such as the blurb, the cover and getting it all ready to be uploaded to WriteOn.

While all that is going on, I thought I would treat everyone to a chance at winning their very own ebook copy of Melody of Love. You can enter below. Good Luck!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Publishing Year One: The Dimming Spark

Now it’s time to get to the deep, painful truth about publishing. You’re not special. I’m not special. So if you think that you can get thousands of sales on Day One with your first published work, you have an overactive imagination. Or you forced your church group/college dorm-mates/professional organization to buy copies. Then maybe you can attain that goal. 

I didn’t expect more than ten or fifteen sales on the launch day of Unfolding Life. Heck, I wasn’t even expecting much more than that in the first week. I did, however, expect to see a steady one or two sales a week throughout the year. Didn’t quite work out that way. I did have a one-year sales goal and I’m so far off from it that I’m simply too embarrassed to give you the number. But we can totally talk in percentages to help me save face. 

The truth is that 22% of my yearly sales happened in the first five days after the book launch. And of the 22%, I bought 6% of the books sold (promotional giveaways). Unfortunately, after the first week of sales, they slacked off. Oh… who are we kidding? They stopped altogether. I kept up my promotional efforts, but I just couldn’t close the deal. 

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Give it Away

So I decided to utilize the tools provided to me by Kindle Select. About a month after publishing, I created a free day to get some book sales, even if they didn’t make any money. For most authors, this tactic is used to boost after-promotion sales. This is the day where I sold the bulk of my yearly sales. The upside of this is that for at least a few hours, my book was listed as the #1 selling book in the haiku category. Three days later, the book slid back into ranking obscurity. 

The downside, aside from the lack of money coming in, was that I used this promotion to boost the number of ever-important book reviews. When I give books away for free, whether through a promotion like this or individually to reviewers, I don’t expect to get 100% of the reviews. I really only aim for a 20% review rate. At this point in the process, I still only have about an 8% review rate—and I’m really lucky to have that. 

Tsk, Tsk Amazon

Although I would rather forget about it, we have to talk about Amazon’s horrible return policy when it comes to ebooks. Amazon has the nerve to let someone return an ebook for a full refund up to seven days after purchase. Um, what? No, Amazon! My book is only 60 pages long cover to cover and the fact that anyone can buy it, consume it, then say they didn’t like and get their money back is just plain stupid. Restaurants may have to do that when you hate your food, but something like a book shouldn’t be given that much time to say, “Oh, nevermind.” Anyone heard of buyer’s remorse? You bought a book you didn’t like. Just suck it up and move on! I have a closet full of terrible books that I purchased. I don’t whine to get my money back. 

This whole thing may make me a little angry, but in reality self-published authors deal with this all the time. My only post-promotion sale ended up being a return. Not only that, it was a return from the person who decided to leave the less-than-stellar review. Now, I think you should be kind enough to choose one or the other. You didn’t like the book? Fine. Either take the $2.99 hit and leave a bad review, or return the book and keep your mouth shut. It’s just plain mean to do both, especially since your review is one of the factors contributing to lack of sales from then on. (*Note: I was a good little author and didn’t engage in a spat over a negative review, especially since it was well written and made valid points. But I did do my research on the reviewer. This person was both a chronic returner AND hated everything they ever read. So there.)

Summer Slump

Then summer came and went. I distracted myself with other projects and didn’t promote Unfolding Life very much. After the free day and the return, I didn’t sell another book all summer. I was a little disappointed because I knew it meant I would never meet my yearly sales goal, even if a miracle occurred. And let’s not waste a good miracle on book sales when I’m still single. ;-)

The only thing I could do was to keep getting the word out. Around Christmas, the opportunity to include the book (as a $0.99 countdown deal) in the Read Tuesday catalog seemed like the perfect way to get holiday sales. I did the countdown deal for the maximum time allowed.  

Not. One. Sale. 

At this point, I was not surprised. Not one bit. Unfolding Life had unfolded, and it lived a very short life.

Absent Stacks of Paperbacks

The one aspect of this process I still haven’t mentioned is the paperback version of the book. I was first confused about KDP Select’s exclusivity rules and thought I couldn’t publish another version for 90 days (turns out it only pertains to ebook versions with other retailers). So I did create a paperback version and put it up for sale on Createspace and through Amazon. I didn’t promote it as hard as the ebook version, and because I didn’t want to have a bunch of copies coming to my door where my family would find out I published something, I didn’t buy any copies to give out or create a Goodreads giveaway with. Yes, they know I’m a writer—but there’s no need for them to read anything I write! I have issues, I know. I still haven’t sold a single paperback copy. Not even to myself.

(*Note: Since originally writing this post at the beginning of March, I have made paperback sales--a nice surprise!)

This was certainly an eye-opener. Tomorrow I’m going to talk about those pesky things I should have done, but didn’t.