So what am I doing wrong?
Wednesday Lee Goldberg (who I have mega admiration for) said: "any midlist author who signs another pissant three-book contract with a NY publisher (or any publisher) should check themselves into a mental institution right away."
Well, I just did sign such a contract--and for a nice chunk of change, too. Not nearly as much as Barry Eisler just turned down. (Did you hear, he turned down $500,000. YES, all those zeroes are correct.) The books I'm contracted for won't be available until 2013, 2014, and 2015. By then maybe I will have looked like a fool for signing, but I don't think so. Will the publishing world be drastically different in three years? There's a good possibility it will.
Lee also said: "It's actually possible for an author nobody heard of to become a millionaire within just a matter of months. I'm not exaggerating. Everyone talks about Amanda Hocking...but perhaps the most astonishing success story of all is John Locke. (*snip*) Locke earned $126,000 on 369,000 sales on Amazon in March alone. That's a huge uptick from the 75,000 he sold in January and the 1300 he sold in November. John Locke went from selling 1300 books to 369,000 in four months. Holy. Shit."
(You can find the whole blog post here.)
Lee has done very well with Kindle. He has a huge backlist and, despite a busy career as a TV and movie producer, he's also a prolific author.
Meanwhile, I have put up 7 short stories and 4 novels and I'm not seeing anything like the kinds of sales Lee is seeing. : (
Despite great reviews, and a very small but enthusiastic audience, my Jeff Resnick books have not taken off. Instead of hundreds of thousands of sales a month (per title) I'm not even seeing hundreds of sales per book.
Sour grapes?
Yes. Not so much for me, but for my series. If I hadn't believed in my characters, I wouldn't have written four books and (so-far) two short stories about them.
I've received reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, and have rave reviews from readers on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com.
I believed I could do better when it came to finding readers than my former (small) publisher, and so I followed in Lee's footprints and put them up on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords (for distribution to other e sellers). So far, success has eluded those books.
(Man, those grapes are really SOUR!)
In the last few weeks I've:
- sent out over 2000 postcards to readers and librarians
- sent an e newsletter to over 4500 readers (although only 1675 opened it)
- offered the first book in the series for 99¢ in hopes that it would find new readers (so far it has, but not all that many), and encourage people to go looking for the other three books.
Any ideas?
I've requested that lots more of your books be put into kindle format on amazon. Sadly I prefer to read series from the beginning and the beginning books aren't in e-book format yet. Tell'em to hurry up! :)
ReplyDeleteKathe, I'm confused. What books are you looking for that aren't in e format? All my books in all three series are available in all e formats.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any suggestions but I do want to congratulate you on your upcoming releases. More good reading coming along, yay!
ReplyDeleteWell, for one thing, his name is JOHN LOCKE. (Is that his real name?) Type in John Locke & you get 1.) The philosopher; 2.) LOST's character and 3.) This Louisville business man-thriller writer. HE GETS HITS ON HIS NAME. Search engines love anything that has lots of hits / a recognized name get hits. Bang! Cheap books, lots of hits = SALES.
ReplyDeleteOK, so what should you do? Some how get your name/books/prices on TWITTER. Get it on lots of times on various accounts & get readers to reTweet those postings. Have several accounts (if possible) of your own on TWITTER & POST. DAILY.
Get YOUR name out there in newspapers. (His name was one of the first names that came up on my Goggle when I searched for John Locke / News because the Wall Street Journal just did an article on him/e-books in their Technology Section.) Start making a list of paper & online newspapers, send them info on yourself, and make it plain you're up for interviews. Your new book contract, the new books, Malice Domestice, e-publishing, etc. (Yeah, I know, like you have SO much spare time on your hands.)
Dang. I can see why, with all your efforts, and his astonishing success, those grapes have such sour expressions. Can't blame you.
Keep on keeping on! There's a wide audience out there, I'm sure they will find you with all your loyal fans shouting about your books to the masses.
LOL--Laurie, you make it sound soooooo easy. I've been tweeting (with lots of RTs from my Backlist eBook pals), but I think we're just tweeting to each other. Very few readers seems to be following my tweets.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, if I could get the WSJ to interview me, I'd be in 7th heaven! First you have to make all those astounding sales, and THEN they contact you (or your people. The only people I have is my agent--and no one has contacted her yet).
Here is the url for the WSJ article on Locke: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703838004576274813963609784.html
ReplyDeleteGo read it, esp. where it says: "Mr. Locke has more than 20,000 Twitter followers, uses a blog to promote his books, and personally answers hundreds of emails each week. "It's all about marketing, but they have to like your stuff," he says.
Frankly, I'd suggest calling Mr. Locke and asking him just how he got that astounding number of TWITTER followers. He might just tell you. He comes from a business background, he must have found out how to use marketing to sell. Isn't there a couple of local colleges in your area? What about going to the business/marketing department & asking about mass marketing/social network marketing as if you are researching for one of your novels? (Hey, Tricia could use some marketing, couldn't she?) See what tips you might ferret out from them.
A couple of suggestions:
ReplyDeleteHave you tried using Goodreads? Or Scribd? (I've never used them, but I know others who have with good results.) How about Kindle Nation Daily? Kindle Nation has free advertising for 99 centers. (Couple of hoops to jump through, but minor hoops.)
Hope these might help!
Lorraine,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words!
I feel your pain. But there's a lot you can do to generate sales.
1) For one thing, you ought to have links to each of your ebooks on your blog. Why aren't the covers of those books, linked to Amazon, on the sidebar of your blog??
2) Create a Jeff Resnick facebook fan page and invite all of your friends to it.
3) create a twitter account just for the Resnick novels and follow lots of twitter users you admire or have audiences you covets...many will follow you, too. Send out regular tweets about the books.
4) Become active on the Kindleboards (www.kindleboards.com) and the Amazon Kindle discussion groups on Amazon US and Amazon UK.
Lee
Thanks for your comments, Lee. I do have the links on the typepad version of my blog, but you're right--I should have them here, too (and will before the end of the day, thanks!).
ReplyDeleteI do have a Twitter account for the Resnick books, but so far I only have about 300 followers. I'm lucky my friends at Backlist E books have given me lots of RTs, but I'm afraid we all seem to have other authors as our followers.
I have an FB page for my Resnick books. I think I have about 60 likes on it. : (
Becoming active on the Kindle boards has been one thing I haven't done--they scare the hell out of me. Also, it's a time suck.
Fiona, I'm on Goodreads, but have never quite gotten the hang of it. I took out a Kindle Nation ad back in February which gave me a nice boost for about a week, but that week ended and sales went back down.
I have a banner ad coming up in October--yes, that was the earliest I could book it. I'm still trying to decide which book in the series to push, but I've got months before I have to worry about it.
Great suggestions, thank you, guys.
In our haste to jump in and offer suggestions, I think we all forgot to say congrats on the contract (even if it does mean a short vacation in the "you know where" hotel).
ReplyDeleteVegetable soup with ham. My Mom's 'garbage soup' comprised of leftover vegs in ham broth but a more precise recipes --
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1648,146162-243197,00.html
or
http://skinnychef.com/recipes/hearty-soup