more on isbn’s

It’s too hot to really think clearly (current temps: 101*F) so I’ll elaborate next week, but it would appear Lulu has made a few changes since I started using them this year.

Right now, if you wanted an ISBN for your book, and didn’t care if you own it or Lulu owns it – they’re free.  You can create your title at Lulu, pick “Published by Lulu” as an option, and they’ll assign an ISBN number AND bar code, then make your title available via Ingrams to any bookstore and all online shops such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

This isn’t bookstore shelf space, mind, but it does provide your readers more options when it comes to a company where they don’t mind using a credit card online to buy your book.

If you’d rather go it completely solo, you can purchase a single ISBN via Lulu and be registered as the Publisher of Record.  Lulu will produce your book and list it via Ingrams, yada yada, but YOU will be the Publisher, not Lulu.  These are $99.95 each, sold one at a time, and you still have to figure out the bar code – purchase one or make it yourself.

More on this subject later, when the ice age returns and my brain works again.  Also coming up, I’d like to discuss Respecting yourself and your readers – Cover art for the do-it-yourselfer – approaching an Indie bookstore owner – and more.

Power to the People!

Make Love, not War!

Does the thermometer even GO that high?

not dead!

I haven’t stopped my Indie publishing series – I’m just swealtering in a nasty, evil heatwave-from-hell.  I’ll resume posting next week, when the temps come down from the triple digits.

Gah!

two thumbs up?

So now that you have that novel written, edited, polished and printed – you’ve gone out and found yourself an ISBN, maybe a bar code too – and while you realize your pretty new novel isn’t going to sit neatly on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, it’s really only lacking one thing you’ve always wanted to have.

A review.

Well first, give up any hope of regular channels reviewing your work. Those sites you visit all the time that feature book reviews and opinions on the newest title to hit the shelves isn’t going to touch your book with a ten foot pole. You’ve seen them post reviews of every genre you can imagine, and read their write-ups of even the most obscure titles around, but read their guidelines and you’ll find a special spot in the Delete file is reserved for any author of a self published work who dares approach them with a copy.

They’ll couch it with something benign, like “If we did it for one of you, we’d be flooded with requests and wouldn’t have time for the real ones.”

It’s okay, we know by now we belong to a group called “one of you.” We picked this alley to walk down, remember? We knew all along this wasn’t the popular or safe route, but we knew it was the way we wanted to use to get there.

Does that mean we can’t get reviewed? Does it mean no one will read our novel with an intelligent, thoughtful eye and respond in kind? No, it doesn’t.
It just means we have to be more innovative, and use our brains, drive and determination a tad more than our traditional cousins. There are people and places out there who welcome self published novels and non-fiction works, and will give your work a review. All you have to do is find them, read their guidelines, and in most cases simply jot off a polite email asking if they’d be interested, and wait for a response.

People like: Pod People

Or Self Publishing Review

Or maybe llbook review

Head over to mickrooney.blogspot.com and scroll down the left side, you’ll find a host of sites willing and able to read and review your self published book.

Keep in mind – a review is just that, and can be good or bad. Just because they look kindly on “one of you” doesn’t mean they’re automatically in love with what you’ve written. Like any review, their opinions may vary, and will definitely be based on their own personal preference. If you don’t have a firm grasp of storytelling, grammar, syntax or style, expect to hear about it. If your characters fall flat, your dialog is stiff and unrealistic, or your plot is wildly unbelievable, don’t assume they’ll gloss over the realities and give you two thumbs up. Do, however, give them credit where credit is due. They’re intelligent people, who love reading books – so much so, they’ll give any new novel a try. If you’re good, they’ll gladly tell the world. Entertain them, and they’ll thank you for it.

And the next time you hear someone say “Ninety-nine percent of all self published novels are utter drek.” Be impressed. Be very impressed, because you’ve just met someone who had the time, and the wherewithal, to read ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of every self publishing effort there ever was, to date! Imagine the dedication, the love of reading they must possess to have read that many novels. To have had the time, and good eyesight, to read every book ever written, in order to make that bold statement, is a thing to be admired.

Applaud them, for theirs is a task that will never be complete.

Power to the People!

Make Love, not War!

Do I smell cookies?

commercial break

One of the biggest hurdles facing anyone self publishing or trying to make it in the Independent world is reaching the public. Letting readers, potential readers, buyers, and creepy stalkers know you have a book out there. Finding ways to bring eyeballs to your website or storefront.

In a word: Advertising

Your book isn’t sitting on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, and there’s no big fancy poster hanging in the window (guess what: the same is true for over 90 percent of books out there). The ugly truth is that traditional publishers aren’t spending ad dollars on your average mid-list author, let alone the newbie’s debut novel. They’re spending what few advertising dollars they have these days on the breakout hits, the sure-fire returns, the blockbusters.

So often times you’ll find your “traditionally published” cousin completely ignoring this aspect of their writing lives, resting assured in the belief their publisher is going to see to it their titles are heard about, seen and purchased. Plenty of them, however, are hip to what we already know.

You gotta advertise.

Loads of the traditionally published realize the best use of their advance is in PR and Advertising. We have it doubly-hard in that our books aren’t in Barnes & Noble, so our ad savvy has to be spread further and wider and with more hard-earned thought. No one’s gonna buy your book if they have no idea it’s there. Those who do see it are less likely to run around spreading the word than you might think. To rely solely on word-of-mouth will take a lot longer than if you were to spread it with a butter knife instead.

Maybe you’ve looked around a bit, maybe you haven’t yet. Maybe you’ve got your eyes on some web sites you’d love to see YOUR ad sittin’ pretty on, but you haven’t gone so far as to figure out how to do it.

Here’s a warning: It’s not cheap.

The more popular the website, the more expensive it is to advertise with them. And most of your extremely popular sites use professional services that, frankly, are priced so far out of your league you can’t even find a parking place near the ballpark’s service entrance.

But we have to advertise. We really do. Which is what led me to start wandering around, and pester my friends for advice. One site I found, thanks to some advice, is Project Wonderful. They place ads on popular sites in all sorts of categories, blogs and web pages that receive varying numbers of hits per day, all of which is right there for you to examine.

Project Wonderful isn’t your mother’s advertising agent. There’s no set price for placing an ad somewhere. Instead, they use what they call a proxy bidding system which at first glance sent my head spinning right off my shoulders and onto the floor where it rolled under the desk and collected some dust bunnies !

But I book marked it, and went back a few days later and started to read up on how these bids and auctions work After about an hour reading their examples, my head remained on my shoulders, but I was dizzy. It seemed like a good idea, but to me it looked too open-ended. As if I could make a bid and then, before I knew it, find myself a month later in some serious debt.

But this week I took a chill-pill and sat down again and REALLY examined how this site works, and I’ve come to the conclusion it’s pretty damn spiffy. I’ll only have to pay for the ads when they actually run, and not only can I set my minimum and maximum price for each day’s bid, I can also set limits for the month or week or day – so that no matter what happens, by the end of, say, one month I won’t owe any more than what I said I wanted to spend.

The ad sizes vary, and the sites vary. They have a massive list of participating sites, in multiple categories, and each site’s views-per-day are listed, so you can find only the ones with enough views to be worth your while. So what I’ve done is taken down their template specs, and begun building some ads. This weekend, I’ll sign up and get serious about finding sites I’d like to bid for, and actually start placing some bids and getting some ads out there.

Another avenue useful to Self Pub’s and Indies are friends with blogs, acquaintances with web sites, people willing to share space – perhaps trade links. I’ve started to toy with the idea of offering up free copies of my as-yet-unreleased Military SF to site owners willing to post a banner or leaderboard ad for a month. I’m also going to load various sized ads onto my own web page and offer them as links for visitors to use.

Reviews are another good form of advertising – and before you say “But no one out there will review a book not traditionally published by the big names”, you’re wrong. We’ll talk about that next week.

You can advertise using the popular social medias such as Twitter or Facebook, utilize a blog to your best advantage, network on forums you participate in, talk yourself up.

It’s not enough to think outside the box – we have to think beyond it.

Power to the People!

Make Love, Not War!

Do these jeans make my butt look big?

isbn addendum

I’ve just stumbled into something that might allow the purchase of a single ISBN for a cost of $125.00 without requiring enrollment into any sort of service while keeping myself (yourself) listed as Publisher of Record. (power to the people!)  With optional barcode purchase for another $25.00 (still, ouch).

The reason a single purchase looks so good to me right now is the idea of using one novel, with an ISBN, as a test-run to see if purchasing these really makes a difference in sales/marketing or just the Ego.

So I shall investigate and report further . . . in the meantime, on Friday we’ll talk about the all important demon known as Advertising!

to isbn or not to isbn

Okay, so I’m struggling with this question myself right now, and I thought it might help to talk it out, hopefully inform everyone else out there still trying to figure it all out.

The ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, can be found on every published book. It’s the identifier that lists the title and the publisher to the rest of the world. The numbers are actually assigned to the publisher, not the author, and are owned by the publisher, not the author. After writing a novel, and selling said novel to a publisher, the author retains copyright (typically) but sells the publishing rights – foreign, domestic, electronic, audio – to the publisher they’ve signed a contract with. The Publisher of Record owns the ISBN number that will be used to identify the book(s) and track them as they pass through the Retailer (bookstore).

When you go the “traditional” route of agent/publisher/bookstore shelves, the ISBN is just part of the deal. You don’t have to give it a second thought.

When you go it alone, it’s something you need to consider.

Your first consideration is: Do I need one? Answer: No. You don’t need an ISBN in order to produce a book at, say, Lulu and put it up for sale. Your book isn’t being listed in the Books in Print database, it’s not being displayed on the shelves of any brick-and-mortar bookstore, and no one’s gonna wander in to Barnes & Noble and ask the nice clerk behind the counter to order it for them. So you can, going this route, publish your book absolutely free, at no expense to you, and be offered up for sale, and you don’t have to fuss about any of the added extras Lulu and other sites offer.

Your second consideration is: Do I want one? Answer: Maybe. You will need an ISBN if you want your book listed in the Books in Print database. You’ll need an ISBN if you want someone to wander in to Barnes & Noble and ask the nice clerk behind the counter to order a copy for them. And you’ll need an ISBN if you, somehow, manage to talk a bookstore into carrying a few copies for sale (it can happen, but it’s another blog post). You’ll also need an ISBN if you want people to search Amazon and buy your novel. Right now, Lulu’s titles are searchable at Amazon, and folk can buy them there – but they’re technically still buying them FROM Lulu, not Amazon.

If you’ve decided your answer is Yes, there are more things to consider, and this is where the waters muddy up for me, so let’s talk it out.

If, for example because it’s the example I’m familiar with, you are using Lulu, and you decide you’d love to get an ISBN for your shiny new novel – you can buy one for $99.00. It’s real, and official, and will list Lulu as your publisher in every book database on God’s greenish blue earth. People can order you from Barnes & Noble, or go to Amazon and look you up. Your book will look and be official and all that hullabaloo, and where other books might show ACE or Tor, yours will say Lulu. While you retain all rights and ownership at Lulu, they will actually own that number.

Now, if I don’t want that — if I truly want to be an Indie artist — I have to own and control everything. And that means, I have to own my ISBN’s. And I can, so can you, by purchasing them directly in blocks of 10, 100 or 1,000. To do that, you fill out a form that lists YOU as the publisher, you pay them, and they send you a block of numbers that are uniquely your own, registered to you, listing you as the Publisher of Record. Then when you produce a title and assign one of your numbers, they list your book, your number, and you the publisher in the Books in Print database, and you become available to the whole wide world. Bookstores can order your title for a customer, or even for their shelves (don’t hold your breath, seriously, we’ll discuss that later).

And let’s not fool ourselves, there’s also a slight component of ego involved. Having an ISBN makes your book “complete”, and might even be a source of status in your mind.

So what’s the catch? Why haven’t I purchased the numbers already and what am I still debating?

Well, they’re not cheap. A block of ten will set you back $275.00, a block of 100 will cost you $995.00 and if you’re feeling ambitious, 1,000 come to a whopping $1,750.00. Now you can, officially, buy them one at a time for $110.00, but you’re directed away from the official site and sent to a broker who requires you “enroll” in a service in order to purchase the ISBN, and you must remain enrolled in their program, at a cost.

So a block of 10 it is. And when you think of it logically, it makes sense. Buying 10 ISBN’s brings the individual cost down to $27.50 each. Now you’ll need a number for your print novel, and a number for your eBook. You can’t use the same number, even on the same novel. Each variant – eBook, print, Audio, etc – requires it’s own number. And if you ever revise or alter that novel, you’ll need a whole new number. So they’re not to be used lightly.

Let’s say you have a novel, and it’ll be available in print and as an eBook. You’ll need two ISBN’s for that title. If you bought a block of 10, you’ll use 2 for this one novel, at a cost to you of $55.00 out of your $275.00. That’ll leave you 6 numbers, and if you keep this up – eBook and print – you’ll have enough for 4 more titles.

It’s not hard at all to fill out the paperwork and order a block of 10 ISBN’s as a publisher. The paperwork is pretty minimal. Your name and address, the company name you’re using as Publisher, a contact name and phone number for Rights & Permissions and a few other very simple, minor details. You’ll also have the opportunity to purchase an EAN Bar Code at the same time – what a Bar Code does for you is allows a bookstore to carry your title on their shelves, and sell/track it. We know the chances of that happening, and they cost $25.00 EACH, so we don’t bother (well, I don’t bother, your mileage may vary).

Let’s just say, 10 ISBN’s and 10 Bar Codes will come to $525.00

But wait, there’s more ! You can buy your SAN (Standard Address Number) at the same time. This number is an ANSI standard (American National Standards Institute) and assigns each address a unique number used to positively identify all buying and selling transactions within the book industry. A fingerprint, if you will, that is shared between you and your vendors (assuming the fairy dust worked and you’re shipping to bookstores). They’re $150.00 and we say “No thank you kind sir.”

Now that your eyes have glazed over, let’s ask the questions again. Do you need an ISBN? No. Do you want an ISBN?

Still unsure? So am I.

Holding me back is practicality. I’m not going to make my fortune being an Independent publisher of my own work. I’m not going to “be discovered” and offered a huge contract with a big name publishing company. I’m just happily writing away, entertaining readers and having a good time. Would I like to have ISBN’s on my titles? Yes, I would. I think I could reach more readers if the titles were purchasable through Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Not everyone knows who or what Lulu is, and they might hesitate using a credit card with an online company they’re unfamiliar with, where they’ll sell their soul to Amazon in a flash. Your books are not going to sit on a shelf in any bookstore, but someone could walk in to their local B&N and ask the nice lady behind the counter to order it for them. Or they could surf B&N’s website and find it, then order it. And let’s face it, all the other “grown up” novels have a number.

But is it worth shelling out $275.00 ? Yeah, it boils down to $27.50/ea, but you have to buy them all at once.

My roommate/sister is unemployed, so I’m supporting us both. I have a tooth that’s chipped and needs work. I CAN continue to do this without ISBN’s and be none the worse for wear. Times like this, the Lulu option of just $99.00 seems really tempting, until I’m reminded that Lulu would be listed as my Publisher of Record, and that after doing that three times, I could have bought a block of 10 and been completely Independent. When I sit and contemplate the real cost per number is only $27.50 after buying a block of 10, I think it’s a no-brainer, until I have to shell out $275.00.

That’s when my financial responsibility powers activate, and I talk myself down again.

I have the money, easily, but is it truly and honestly wise to SPEND the money?

My real desire is to be my own Indie Publisher – Midnight Reading, and be the Publisher of Record for all of my titles. And in order to do that, I’ll have to go for it. But my wallet is padlocked, and I swallowed the key !

I’ve considered “going in” with others. Find 2 or 3, maybe 4 people who want to share the numbers. Spread the cost out. The only issue is that their titles, anything they wrote that they used a number on, would require showing Midnight Reading as their Publisher of Record. Maybe not an issue to some, but if the roles were reversed – if someone offered to share with me and use their Publishing company name – I wouldn’t do it. ISBN’s can’t be sold by anyone other than Bowker’s and the few brokers approved through them by the government. So the block of 10 you purchase will always be identified as yours, whether you use them on your own titles, or someone else’s.

Now you might wander over to Create Space and find out they’ll give you an ISBN at no charge to you. But not only will they be the Publisher of Record, their contract is pretty friggin’ strange and their formatting is a much more involved, rather annoying venture. Add to that the facts: Createspace = Amazon = The Devil ! ;}

And there we are. ISBN’s in a nutshell. My friends tell me to Just Do It, and I’m sure I will – eventually. In the meantime, my next post will be another issue I’ve been researching more and more lately: Advertising.

Power to the People!

Make Love, not War!

Excuse me, I asked for Sprinkles.

adventures in eBooks

Or How I Stopped Worrying, and Learned To Love The Byte.

When I first made the decision to become an Independent, I knew I’d be posting my novels on the web, for people to read for free, and I knew I’d be making them available to purchase as a paperback – but I hadn’t yet fallen in love with the notion of the eBook. People talk about reading books on their PDA’s and their cell phones, I’ve never known anyone who owns a Kindle, but I kept thinking “Good lord, who in their right mind would read a NOVEL on their cellphone?”

But they do. Apparently quite a few of them do, it’s just ME who can’t see text that small.

So while building a paperback at Lulu, I realized the option for also building the eBook version is easy – no more complicated than checking a box and setting a price. So I did, and the print and eBook versions became available side by side.

And much to my surprise, it’s the eBooks I sell the most of.

Now, on Lulu, the eBook is a pdf, and while I’m not exactly tech ignorant, I’m not completely up on all the tricks, so I wasn’t sure if the pdf could be read on readers and phones. As I believe I’ve learned, it depends on the device. But still, in the interests of making the books more widely available, I started to look around. I found an article about a writer who’d put his novel on the Kindle, priced at $1.00 as an experiment, and it had sold in droves because of the small price tag. Who’s going to flip out over trying a new author for a mere buck, right?

So I looked in to the Kindle. I’d had no idea previously that Indies like me could publish to the Kindle store, and as it turns out, we can. Only there’s a catch that I wasn’t willing to wrap my mind around. You might feel differently, but in order to publish your novel to the Kindle, you’ll have to sign Amazon’s digital rights contract.

It’s not too bad, until you hit the line where they require, in no uncertain terms, full access into your US bank account. Oh, and they’ll take your SS# while you’re at it.

They refuse to pay you to your Paypal account, you MUST give them access into your checking account, and your Social Security Number, to boot.

Well that was it for me. I refused, and decided publishing to the Kindle, along with Godzillazon, wasn’t for me. That’s when a commenter mentioned Mobipocket and I started researching. It took a little doing, reading the contract and fully understanding it, but what it boiled down to was something a little easier to swallow.

All you need to do is download their free publishing program, very easy to use, and sign their contract which gives them some money making rights, but YOU keep all copy rights, digital rights and full ownership of your work. And you can terminate the contract at any time, for no reason at all, and your book will vanish from their site, no hard feelings. They’re not demanding access to your checking account, either. They’ll happily pay you using your Paypal account, or a credit card that accepts payments, or they’ll send you a check or wire transfer you money. You format your eBook using their program, you can even test run it on your computer or your smartphone or PDA to make sure it all looks the way you want it, then upload it to their server (after signing up with them) and suddenly your eBook is available for sale in the Mobipocket store, and loads of others.

Keep in mind, if you’ve decided you don’t like Amazon’s digital rights agreement like I did, you’ll have to remove them from the list of Mobipocket’s available retailers. Otherwise, like me, you’ll get an email from Amazon telling you they need your SS# and access to your bank account and while you’re at it, they’d like your first born and then give you a proctology exam. Then, like me, you’ll burst a blood vessel before realizing you can remove them from your approved list.

Now, there’s a slight hitch that may or may not get in your way.

Mobipocket, French company that it is, won’t pay YOU until you’ve made $150.00. If you cancel, you’ll be paid what they owe you. But if you’re in this for the long haul, you won’t mind – and if you’re good, and lucky, it won’t take long to earn that. If that seriously pisses you off, then don’t do it.

As for earnings – yeah, they keep a cut, and for some of you it might be too big a cut, but in the book business it’s pretty average. Only you can decide if this is okay with you or not, but in a nutshell YOU set the price of your book, and you earn 35% of net, regardless of retailer markup.

Example: Set the price of your novel at $1.00, and for every novel Mobipocket sells for you, you earn .35 cents. If a retailer sells your eBook for $12.00, you still earn only that .35 cents. If a retailer sells your book for .50 cents, you earn that .35 cents. If you have a webpage, and use an Affiliate link to your book, any time someone clicks that link and purchases you book, you earn another .10 cents. Be honest with yourself – who’s gonna buy your eBook for $12.00 ?

Sound pathetic? Kindle’s agreement is the same. Such is the life of a writer, which is why even traditionally published writers, 98% of them anyway, keep their day jobs.

I haven’t actually figured out the percentage that Lulu pays the author, mostly because math makes my brain go fuzzy, but at Lulu you do set your own price. When you’re building your novel, you’ll reach a point where they tell you the base cost of printing/creating and you’ll add your cut, then they’ll show you the final cost to the public. You can mess with this as much or as little as you like, and change it at any time – allowing for “sales” and the like. It’s best to keep your profit pretty damn low, so as to make your purchase price really attractive.

Mobipocket works much the same. You set the price, and at any time you can change it. Just keep in mind, you’re not going to make a fortune writing – and people aren’t going to pay you $14.95 for an eBook, or even $9.99. If you want readers, and you want to make serious sales numbers, you’ll keep pricing in mind. Folks will risk a new author for $1.00 or $2.00, not much more.

My fantasy novel Ether has been up in the mobipocket store for 4 days now, and it’s selling for $2.00. I’m earning .35 cents for every sale, unless the buyer followed a link from my web page, which then earns me .45 cents per book. I used Ether as my test-run because it’s been for sale for a while now, and I wasn’t ready to risk my latest novel by debuting it in a format I didn’t have at least a little experience with.

Which brings us to a topic I’ll talk about Wednesday – buying your own block of ISBN’s. The pros and cons of being your own Publisher.

Power to the People!

Make Love, not War!

These pretzels are making me thirsty.

it’s dark in here

The big scary world of Going It Alone — or as I and many others prefer: Indie publishing — is huge, dark, a tad chilly and often intimidating.

And if you’re a reader of “those” blogs who enjoy nothing more than mocking a self publishing writer who prefers the term Indie I have just one thing to say: Pphhfftttt!

What do you care if I call myself Self Pub, Indie, or Bababloo? Go worry about something that matters, for the love of dirt. I’m an Indie artist because 1) I own all rights to my work, print, electronic, audio and brain waves from Venus. 2) I am my own Publisher – Midnight Reading Publications. And 3) a subject for a blog post next week – I own my ISBN’s.

So shove that up your pie hole and stop complaining about me calling myself an Indie writer.

Now, as for this blog post today, it occurred to me that — while I’ve entered the fray fully and completely, and am learning a lot along the way — it might benefit others to see how it’s done. Or at least how I’m managing it. Maybe I can be of service to others, maybe I can offer other Indie’s hope, inspiration, education. Maybe my ruins can merely serve as a warning to others. I will say I’m more and more pleased every day as I find the ranks of us Independents growing in leaps and bounds. High quality writing, great stories, interesting people with various backgrounds, all entering the world of Going It Alone for different reasons.

Whatever your reasons are, you’ve come to the point where the rest of us began, and that is: Finding the right venue.

You’ve heard of Create Space, and iUniverse, Lulu and some others. I chose Lulu myself because of all of the available avenues I investigated, Lulu costs nothing. Zip. Zero. I can build a book there in paperback, or hardback, or electronic, even audio on a CD, and unless I want to buy a copy myself, I’ve put out exactly $0.00. All it took was a little formatting, a bit of time, some artwork, and voila, a Trade Paperback exists with my work, my name, and it’s available for sale at Lulu and Amazon (does that surprise you? it did me). Amazon lists your work in their search engine, and manages the sale, but buyers are still paying Lulu (and you) not Amazon. It’s an interesting tape worm sorta symbiosis that just started and I’ll be keeping an eye on for talk later.

Paying someone, even paying a place like Create Space, would remove me from Indie and put me square into the Vanity category, or Pay to Play. I’m adverse to that, but you might not be. I won’t look down on you, turn my nose or flick a booger if you decided to pay to make your book available. We all do what we do for our own reasons. So long as you’re fully educated in the choices, reasons, and expectations of whatever you’ve decided. If you’re under false assumptions, and think the Independent writer is going to get on the shelves of Barnes & Noble, you’re still in the learning stage. There are people who can help you understand the differences, and I can point you in their direction. Just ask.

The biggest hurdle of an Indie after writing a great book with proper grammar, pacing and story-telling, editing, polishing, then creating and making available said novel – is sales. And the greatest tool for sales is advertising. Word of mouth, banner ads, blogs, Twitter, a web page people can easily find, even carrying around business cards in your purse to hand out here and there or tack up (with permission) onto public boards. Advertising is a black hole of its own, and one that I’m starting to get more serious about, and learning loads, so I’ll have more to say about it soon.

Another hurdle is impatience, of which I am Queen. But here’s where we can actually dominate our “Traditionally Published” brethren. They’re going to wait years to see a new title hit the shelves, where it will be given an average of two weeks to fly out the door, after which returns and remainders can kill their fledgling career. Low sales can keep them from ever getting that second novel published. But as an Independent, YOU control when that book hits the great big world, and it can STAY out there – available to purchase, until the Internet goes the way of the Dodo. You might not make any sales the first week, or the first month – but as your advertising avenues grow, your web site or blog become more popular, your Tweets gain followers and you write more novels – you’ll start to see sales. Then as word of mouth spreads, maybe you’ll get a review or listing somewhere, and you can see sales take off.

My website, www.Midnightreading.com enjoys a modest average of 1,500 hits per month, and growing. While I’m a little different than some Indies in that I also offer my novels for free, to be read online, the eBook versions are very popular. And thanks to a comment on this blog by Elisa I researched Mobipocket, and learned how to create eBooks that are available for the Smartphones, PDA’s, the Kindle, your Blackberry and many more. After less than 24 hours in this new market, Ether is already selling. I’ll blog on this topic soon, and hopefully others can learn from my success and my mistakes !

So next week, Monday if I can get it together, I’ll start talking about Mobipocket, how to use their service, create an eBook, and get it listed for sale all across the globe. As we go, I’ll blog about using Lulu, some tricks and tweaks I’ve picked up over the months. About advertising, looking for “outside the box” ways to promote your book, about buying your own ISBN’s so that they’re fully and wholly YOUR own. I’ll talk about creating a web page, a blog, and Tweeting in the Independent writer world. We’ll look for sites that will review Indie writers, places to list your work, and cover art lessons I’ve learned along the way.

I’m still learning, and finding new information every day. You’ll read about my discoveries, and my blunders, and maybe it’ll help you drive around the pothole I might have crashed nose-first into. And please, use the comments to tell me your own tales of woe, give us advise, ideas and let us hear your success stories!

Power to the People!

Make Love, not War!

Ooh, does that come in red?

did you know?

That the website has been redesigned?

www.Midnightreading.com

That you can purchase my novels in Trade Paperback, or eBook? They make great gifts, and summer beach reads.

www.Midnightreading.com

That you can now purchase Ether, my fantasy title, as an eBook for your iPhone, smartphone, PDA, Kindle and other e-reading devices at Mobipocket?

That the Fourth and final book in the Keeper series will be out in September?

Or that my newest title In The Time Of Dying, a Miltary SF, is coming out by the end of the year?

Well, now you do!

not for the faint of heart

In January of this year, I made the decision to go back to what I truly loved about writing. After years of learning, researching, and discovery, I stopped trying to find an agent and get that “big publishing contract.”  I learned a lot in those years, and contrary to what some might think, I’ve made a logical, careful choice.

But this route is not for everyone, and definitely not for the faint of heart.

When you make the decision to become an Indie artist, and forgo the “traditional” publishing world, what you’re really doing is accepting certain injustices as an accepted fact.

For instance, when a certain very popular website has strict rules against reviewing or recommending any self published author — unless it’s a pal of theirs — does just that – garnering massive free publicity for said self publishing author – it brings to light the uphill battle we Indie artists have.  When we take on the life of an Indie artist, what we’re really doing is acknowledging that we will never be respected, that we will be actively mocked and misunderstood, and that no matter how good our art is – it will never be accepted — and that we do so with this full understanding.

And that it won’t matter that often times, the Indie artist will outsell the newbie traditional author, the latter will have immediate and unquestioned respect while the former never will.

By finding going the agent/publisher route and having a paper or hardback hit the bookstore shelves, the traditional artist wins automatic respect. No matter if their work is well written, or even sells. No matter if they earn out their advance (the majority won’t) and no matter if their publisher never buys another title from them – they are crowned with the name “Writer” and can enter into any conversation at any writing forum and be hailed the conquering hero.

An Independent, self publishing author who goes it alone, spends not one dime of his/her own money and yet earns back thousands from sales, then repeats this again and again with future novels, will never earn even a portion of that same respect.

Genre sites will not discuss your work.  Popular web sites that review other works will not touch yours with a ten foot pole.  And yet, now and again, you’ll see them do just that for a friend with no explanation or apologies.

These are the challenges the Indie artist faces.  You may be popular beyond your dreams. Your work might garner cult followings, devoted fans who devour your every novel and happily purchase copies for their friends.

But having said that, those of us who accept this decision – while we may rage against the machine of inequality and injustice – must do so carefully in public, so as to avoid the labels “Sour grapes” or “Jealousy”.

We are the monks who worship in seclusion, versus those who take the public pulpit.

You will be mocked by other writers. You’ll be scoffed at by writer advocate sites, ignored by traditional reviewers and shunned by genre web masters you’re not sleeping with at the time. Then one day you may turn around and realize you have a cult following. People are reading your work, they’re buying your novels, they’re asking when your next piece will be available and they’re spreading the word.

And when it’s all said and done, it just might be worth it.