Thinking of going indie?

First off this week, a couple of bits of business.

I never awarded prizes for those pathetic Valentine's Day stories I asked y'all to post. Apparently you guys have either sublimated your bad experiences or you don't want to admit to having had any, because I only got three stories. And I can't pick -- they're all great. So congrats to Laurie Boris, BigAl, and Rich Meyer. The mini-bookmarks are as good as in the mail.

Speaking of prizes, the Goodreads giveaway for Crosswind is over. I had more than 500 entries, but only three could win. Congrats to Joanne Wofford, Alison Hong, and Justine Miller for being the lucky winners! I'll get your copies in the mail to you within the week.

Thanks for playing, everyone.

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Bigstock Photos

If you've been thinking of going indie with your book (or books), but you're still on the fence, have I got a website for you. A couple of weeks ago, indie phenom Hugh Howey fired up a new site called www.authorearnings.com. Howey was approached by an indie author who knows something about number-crunching, and together they sifted through Amazon's sales data and came up with some pretty amazing results -- among them, that for the top-selling books, "[i]ndie authors are earning nearly half the total author revenue from genre fiction sales on Amazon." How can that be? Because indie authors make more per book than traditional authors do. A lot more. Indies who publish through Kindle Direct Publishing earn 70% of the purchase price from ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99; traditional contracts typically provide their authors a 25% royalty on each ebook sold.

So okay, not everybody has a top-selling book. That's why Howey and his unnamed Data Guy are collecting information on earnings from as many indie authors as they can. There's a button on the website's landing page that will take you to the form for inputting your own earnings info.

As you might expect, the blogosphere lit up almost as soon as the first part of this report went live. The usual suspects have all weighed in, with trad-publishing apologists claiming the data is incomplete and/or just plain wrong, and indie-publishing cheerleaders picking apart the trad-pub arguments yet again. It certainly makes for great theater. But it also makes me wonder whether traditional publishers are paying close enough attention to the indie movement. 

To be clear, Howey himself isn't out to skewer trad publishing. He's a hybrid author, after all -- his dead-tree books are traditionally published, but he's still self-publishing the ebook editions of his novels. What he says he wants to do with authorearnings.com is to force traditional publishers to wake up. In the old days, when publishers actually nurtured their authors and took an active interest in their careers -- and when a trad contract was the only respectable way to get your book in front of readers -- it made sense to pursue a traditional contract. Now, indie publishing is offering a respectable -- and more lucrative -- alternative. Howey would like to see publishers lower the prices of their ebooks, and offer better contract terms to their authors.

I snagged an interview with Howey this week for my LynneQuisition feature at Indies Unlimited. That post will run this coming Thursday. But in the meantime, I'll leave you with another mind-expanding conclusion from his report. If you write mysteries, thrillers, speculative fiction or romance: "Genre writers are financially better off self-publishing, no matter the potential of their manuscripts."

Just sayin'.

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This moment of bloggy reporting has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Reducing Twitnoise: A modest proposal.

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I hope I don't get myself drummed out of the indie author corps for this post.

I dislike Twitter. There, I said it. And yet, it ought to be a natural for me, because broadcast news requires short sentences of 10 or 20 words, in subject-verb-object order. I'm used to conveying ideas in quick bites that are easily understood by a distracted listener.

Moreover, a reasonably-sized slice of my broadcasting career was devoted to writing "bumpers" -- one-line promos about the next story or stories that are designed to pique your interest so that you stick around through the commercials.

So I should be gravitating to Twitter. But I hate it. Why? Because I feel like every time I'm there, somewhere around 87% of my tweet stream consists of people trying to sell me something. Oh, it's not all blatant "buy my book" tweets; often it's people retweeting other people's "buy my book" tweets.  To make matters worse (for me), there are a number of apps that will not only filter out the dreck from your own feed, but will allow you to schedule your "buy my book" tweets, as well as "buy this other guy's book" tweets, as often as you want, all day long, for weeks into the future.

If you, too, are an indie author, you probably already know this. And you've probably been petitioned, cajoled, and/or coerced into either sending your own advertising tweets or retweeting somebody else's. Right?

Here's what bothers me. See, I'm not a public relations professional: I'm not paid specifically to sell other people's stuff for them. Mind you, P.R. is an honorable profession -- it's just not what I get paid to do. I'm an author. And as an author, I believe (maybe wrongly!) that I have a reputation to uphold. I want readers and other indies to associate my name with a certain level of quality. And so if I'm recommending that someone click on a link I've posted on Facebook or tweeted on Twitter, I want them to know that I've vetted the material at the link, and I think it will be worth my followers' time to check out.

So when somebody hands me a list of tweets from people I met five minutes ago and says, "Here, tweet these, and then we'll all tweet one for you," I resist. I haven't read any books by any of these people; I don't know whether I can recommend them or not.

I had someone tell me this week, "It's just a retweet. People will know you haven't read the book."  Really? I'm sending out a tweet under my name, with my picture on it, and people won't think it's a personal recommendation?

Do we have any figures on whether "buy my/his/her book" tweets actually sell books? Any proof that this tactic does anything other than annoy people with Twitnoise (a word I just coined -- do you like it?)? If so, please let me know and I will reconsider my prejudice against the practice.

But if it annoys people *and* it doesn't sell any books, why do we keep doing it?

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Speaking of self-promotion (and yes, I get the irony): Coming out this week will be the second of the "Land, Sea, Sky" prologue stories. In "Where Were You When?" last month, I introduced you to Tess Showalter, who's on the verge of becoming a journalist ("Gee, Murgatroyd, I wonder where Lynne got that idea from?"); this month, in "Change of Plans," our main character is Darrell Warren, a nice guy whose life is about to do a 180-degree turn courtesy of a certain rabbit-eared god. I hope you'll check out both of them on Amazon.

Also, I'm making good progress on Crosswind, the first LSS novel. The first draft passed 40,000 words early this morning -- whoo hoo! I'm hoping to finish it by this time next weekend, but that's probably too optimistic. We'll see, though.

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This moment of cranky Twitter blogginess is brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Happy New Year!

Scared everybody off with that New Agey post last week, huh?

Never mind.  2012 is almost over and 2013 is less than 36 hours away.  Soon I'll have a whole new year in which to post crazy stuff and make everybody wonder.

This year has been pretty spectacular, and my thanks go out to all of you for making it so.  As well you know, I've published three books, ramped up my participation at the Indie Exchange, and joined Indies Unlimited as a contributing author. More importantly, I've sold some some books and gained a few fans. I'm grateful to all of you for my success so far.

I've got a few tricks up my sleeve for 2013.  Gravid should be out in early spring, with Annealed to follow a few months later, assuming all goes well.  That will wrap up the Pipe Woman Chronicles, and force me to come up with an idea for a whole new series.  Aieee....  No idea what I'll do next, sorry.  Maybe some short stories.  Dunno yet.  I'll figure it out when the time comes.  I'm putting off thinking about it so that I don't get sidetracked from finishing Gravid and Annealed -- and nobody wants that, right?  Didn't think so.

Also, starting next week, I'm going to be instituting a new feature on the blog called "Rursday Reads."  I've been reading mostly indie books this year, but I haven't had time to post reviews around the web for months.  I figure if I review one book a week, I can whittle down my tottering pile of Books I Ought to Review within a few months -- and then we'll see where we are at that point.  I'll set up a separate tab for the reviews, and they'll go up on Thursdays.  Why the odd spelling, you ask?  Well, back when I was in junior high, Michigan City Area Schools turned our class scheduling over to a computer.  The schedule forms had a single-letter designation for each day of the week.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday got the first letter of the word, but for some unknown reason, "R" was picked to designate Thursday.  Hence, Rursday.  And "Rursday Reads" has a nice alliterative thing going for it.  So there you go.

To be clear, I don't intend to turn this into a review blog, and I am NOT accepting books for review.  (Don't go looking for submission guidelines, guys -- there aren't any.)  I'm just trying to kick myself in the butt to get reviews of these books posted -- and, at the same time, give some love to my fellow indies who deserve it.

So those are my writing goals for 2013: finish the Pipe Woman Chronicles, write something else in the second half of the year, post some book reviews here on the blog, keep up with my regular posts all over the place and -- oh yeah, I'm starting another blog tour right after New Year's Day.  It's called the Orangeberry Big Bang Tour.  I don't have a complete schedule yet, but I'll post it on the Tour Dates tab once I get it.

Happy 2013!  Enjoy your celebrations, stay safe, and see you next year!

The Indie Unlimited Oasis.

It was sometime in April. I was parched and past sweating, crossing the vast indie publishing desert on my virtual hands and knees, when a message appeared before me. Maybe it was on Twitter; maybe it was on Facebook. In any case, it didn’t look like a mirage – although who can say, really, with mirages? What criteria can you use, except your own senses? And I knew from experience that sensory input is not to be trusted in such a situation; until you get on top of a mirage, it looks solid enough. 

My heat-addled brain drifted back to the summer days of my childhood, driving with my parents along an endless ribbon of highway. With a child’s naivete, I believed in the puddles of water on the road before us, perfectly reflecting the sky above. Alas, as we reached them, they shimmered into nothingness. Baffled, I turned to my parents. “Where did the puddle go?” I asked, and they told me it had been a mirage.

So you never know, I told myself now. This message could be another of those mirages so common to the indie desert: a come-on for a contest with a steep entrance fee in the fine print*; or a guest post that disappears into the ether with the blog’s makeover; or any one of a number of other opportunities that appear marvelous on the surface, but that evaporate when you get too close.

I dithered. The merciless sun climbed higher in the sky. At length, I decided it was either pursue or perish. With my last bit of strength, I clicked the link – and discovered the oasis that is Indies Unlimited. 

It was not a mirage! It was real, and solid, and packed with useful information and advice. I wandered through the posts in amazement. Whole new worlds opened before me – like-fests and book promos and Animoto. 

And the people seemed to appreciate my input, even when I admitted I had no interest in Pinterest. And they were funny. 

So when the Evil Mastermind offered me free gruel if I’d stay, well, my answer was easy. Head back out into that trackless desert – that barren waste – alone? I think not.

*Fine print: This might be a slight over-dramatization of my experience. Your mileage may vary. Offer good only on the planet Earth. Do not operate motor vehicle with windshield shade in place. Happy birthday, Indies Unlimited!

 

A version of this article first appeared on Indies Unlimited on October 2, 2012.

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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post. 

An Ode to Book Bloggers.

I'm posting a day late this week because I'm taking part in the "Celebrating Bloggers" blog hop, sponsored by Terri Giuliano Long, the author of In Leah's Wake.  Terri's got the details on her blog here, but basically, the idea is to share some love for book bloggers.  (Hint: click on the link -- there's a giveaway.)

Y'all might not realize it, but there aren't a whole lot of marketing opportunities for indie authors (or at least, not a whole lot of ethical opportunities, which I'll talk more about in next week's post).  On Amazon, I'm one author in a vast sea of others.  You can gain exposure by making your book free, and you can certainly move a lot of books that way (free is everyone's favorite price, after all), but if readers are snapping up 30 or 40 free books at a time, the chances that they'll ever find yours on their Kindle or Nook or Kobo again -- let alone to getting around to reading it -- are kind of small.  And then you have to hope that they like your book well enough to go back to the place where they bought the book and leave a review, or -- best of all -- that they remember your name and spend money for your next book.

Granted, you can take out an ad somewhere like Facebook.  But how many people will see it, let alone click through to buy your book?  If you're like me, you've got something like Adblock Plus installed on your computer, so you don't see any ads.

But book blogs?  Ah, book blogs are marvelous.

Book bloggers themselves are marvelous.  For starters, they're readers.  Nobody in his or her right mind would start a book blog if he or she didn't like to read in the first place.  I know some bloggers who just wanted a place to keep a list of all the books they've read, and the blog grew from there.  So you know that they're looking for books to read and review.  And they're upfront about the types of books they like to read, so if you do a little homework, you will know immediately whether they might like your book.

Book bloggers, as a tribe, have the patience of Job.  They often put up with pushy authors who want to know why they haven't yet seen a review of their darling.  Sometimes, authors turn unprofessional, even abusive.  It takes a thick skin and a sense of the absurd, I think, to survive as a book blogger for long.

But bloggers don't just do reviews.  They also provide a platform for indie authors to gain visibility.  Over the past year, I've done numerous guest posts, a couple of Q&As, at least one character interview, and a post that broke the fourth wall and let me talk directly to Joseph and Naomi.  This not only gives bloggers content for their blogs, but it lets us authors showcase our creativity in different ways than just writing fiction allows us to do.

So hats off to you, my book blogger buddies, and may your tribe ever increase.
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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post. 

September Social Splash.

I got involved with what ultimately became The Indie Exchange almost a year ago. Now that it's a year old, they're throwing a little shindig over at their place. There are prizes involved, so if you're interested in that sort of thing, feel free to stop by. The info is below. Good luck! (And yes, I'll be back tomorrow with your regular weekly post.)


Incredibly, The Indie Exchange - or Adopt an Indie as it was originally known - is now a year old. The planning for the first event started in September 2011. In January 2012 the decision was taken to make it an all round service to readers, bloggers and authors. From an event supporting dozens of authors, the Indie Exchange has grown into a 800 member strong - and growing - group. To celebrate, we're inviting you to our best ever giveaway: The September Social Splash.

Main prize: $100 Amazon voucher

Second prize: $10 Amazon voucher

There are so many ways to win - just check out the Rafflecopter below. You can complete as many actions as you like to enter the draw and be in with a chance of winning the $100 prize.


Thank you to all our members and visitors for making The Indie Exchange such a success so far!


Visit The Indie Exchange: Website ** Facebook Group ** Facebook Page ** Twitter

Happy Birthday The Indie Exchange

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy hearth/myth anniversary!

What a difference a year makes, huh?

My first post on this blog went live August 16, 2011.  That means it's been close enough to a year to celebrate.

I took a brief trip down Memory Lane yesterday and looked over all the posts I've made this past year.  Okay, my ulterior motive was to find some that I could re-run, thereby saving myself the hassle of writing new posts every week.  (I didn't find many. That's the downside to concentrating on writing topical posts, I guess.)  But in the process, I got a pretty good sense of where I was when I began this blog.

In August 2011, I had just published SwanSong, my second novel and my first foray into indie publishing.  The Pipe Woman Chronicles weren't even a glimmer in my eye.  I had a goal: to make some money with my writing.  And off we went.

I've learned a lot this past year, both in the technical arena (OneNote and GIMP and Power Director, oh my!) and about the business of being an indie author.  I've mapped out an urban fantasy series, written two-fifths of it, published one book in the series, and am on the verge of publishing the second one.  I've written blog posts and guest blog posts, answered Q&As, gotten reviews -- and sales! -- from total strangers.  I've created three book trailers (the Seized trailer was featured this past week at the Indie Exchange).  I'm on the staff at Indies Unlimited.  And SwanSong is a finalist for a Global Ebook Award.

And I'm still learning. I keep reading blogs and news articles, keeping my ear to the ground about the business, and picking up new technical skills.  And I'd like to think my writing is getting better (although I guess you guys will be the ultimate judge of that).

Anyway, it's been a fun ride so far.  Thanks for coming along with me.  And just so we're clear, the party's just starting.  Have some cake -- there's plenty!

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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.