I Can Finally Now Add www.briankeene.com To My CV

Ever since I was a little boy, my lifelong dream was to write a guest blog post for Brian Keene. And, well, that day has finally arrived, which means it's time I can retire from all this writing nonsense. Or ... on second thought, I guess I might as well keep doing this writing nonsense after all, as it seems to be going well.

Many thanks to Brian for giving me a platform to ramble about ebooks and such. Regular readers of this blog probably won't find anything new there, but go check it out anyway. There are obviously many more things you can do in regards to ebooks -- many of which I talked about this weekend at the GSHW meeting, in fact -- but these are the important basics.

By the way, I somehow ended up with an extra copy of Needle, so if you're interested in winning a free copy, check out the details here. But hurry -- the deadline is midnight, EST.

Now What?

So in case you've been living under a rock, you probably heard about the Department of Justice filing "an antitrust lawsuit against Apple Inc. (AAPL), Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York district court, claiming collusion over eBook pricing.” For those not familiar with the case, here's a good rundown. On the one hand, this is great for consumers. I mean, who wouldn't want lower prices? Sure, I don't mind paying $9.99 for an ebook, though I am hesitant when it comes to ebooks priced at $14.99. After all, you aren't really owning the ebooks to begin with. Then again, on the same level you aren't owning a movie when you go to the theater, or even a play. You're paying for a few hours of enjoyment. So it boggles my mind when readers complain at paying 99 cents for a short story that takes them maybe a half hour to an hour to read.

Anyway, of course many of the publishers are upset about this latest ruling, which is to be expected. They've been making a shit load of money this past year. As for the writers? Well, sure, they've been making money, but not as much with that standard 25% digital royalty. Take, for instance, the novel Run by Douglas E. Winter, which was published in hardcover by Knopf back in 2000, then later reprinted as a mass market paperback in 2001. Despite being a great novel, it went out of print years ago. However, I recently found it was brought back digitally for the bargain price of -- drum roll, please -- $13.99.

That price is just beyond absurd if you ask me, especially considering that the book isn't even available in print anymore. And if it was still in print, it would be a mass market paperback, which would mean it would be priced at the most at $9.99.

Scott Turow, the president of the Authors' Guild, is none too pleased with what has happened, but you have to keep in mind Turow is a mouthpiece for major publishing. He's looking out for the publishers' interests, and not the interests of, well, authors.

My concern right now is for the authors such as myself who have been benefitting greatly from the agency pricing model. Sure, as a consumer I prefer lower ebook prices, but as a businessman I want the publishers to price them as ridiculously high as possible. After all, the higher the cost, the more likely readers will try newer authors, such as yours truly.

So it will be interesting to see what happens once everything gets worked out and prices begin to change. Will readers buy fewer self-published titles? Probably not. Will this eventually hurt publishers and their authors? Doubtful. I mean, yes, publishers won't be raking in quite as much as before, but maybe they'll sell more books at the lower costs, which will make up for it. Nobody really knows. But this is bound to get really interesting ...

Returns

The Hint Fiction anthology came out in November of 2010. It got some really great reviews and sold very well. In fact, it quickly earned out its advance, which should be noted because not many books actually earn out their advances, or if they do it can take many, many years. In many ways, it was a great novelty gift, and with Christmas right around the corner, the book would make a wonderful stocking stuffer. Unfortunately, a second printing could not make it into the market fast enough, and I remember there being a shortage of copies at Amazon of all places come Christmastime. How many potential sales were lost from that, I haven't a clue, but it seemed when the extra copies became available it was way after the fact. Anyway, when the whole project first came about, it was important to me that the contributors were paid, and if possible paid well for their time and effort. It still seems to be an ongoing trend in the "literary" community that exposure is payment enough for work appearing in journals, but that's because it seems the majority of those in the "literary" community are trying to build their CV for when they go on teaching jobs, and the more writing credits, the better. For the rest of us schlubs, money is so much sweeter.

My agent was able to negotiate a nice advance, though the majority of it went to the authors. Typically in a project like this, an editor receives an advance and splits it 50/50 with the contributors (the editor keeps the 50, then metes out the other 50 among the contributors). From there, if there are any royalties, the editor does the same thing -- retains their 50%, and metes out whatever 50% is left.

I knew from the start that this book was going to have a lot of contributors, and while it wouldn't have hundreds and hundreds like the SMITH six-word essay anthologies (which, from what I understand, only offered a contributor's copy), it would have at least one hundred. Which meant that, if I wanted to do the typical royalty thing, every two years (assuming the anthology even earned out), I would waste a day or two sending out tiny royalty checks to over one hundred people all over the world.

While that sounded like a lot of fun, I decided instead to pay the contributors a lot of money up front as a one-time fee. This way if the book earned out, cool for me. If the book didn't earn out, oh well. The payment worked out to a dollar a word (or more if the tiny story was very short), which is how much The New Yorker pays, baby. It wasn't a lot, but it was something, and nobody seemed to complain. And then, so, the book came out and, like I said, earned out pretty quickly. In fact, from my first statement from the publisher (which went from October 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011, and which I received in September of 2011 -- publishing works slow, in case you didn't know), the anthology sold just over 12,500 copies, with only 780 copies being returned, and 441 digital sales.

Ain't too shabby, though you have to remember that I don't earn any royalties until the advance is earned back.

Now here's the important part: bookstore shelf life is finite. Every week more books are being released, which means the bookstores need to return the old for the new. This is, of course, the publishing business model.

So let's fast-forward another six months to March of 2012. I receive another statement from my agent (who was sent it from the publisher). This statement goes from April 1, 2011 to September 30, 2011. By this time the anthology has been released for practically a year.

And in that time, how many copies did it sell?

About 900.

Sweet!

But wait -- remember how I said shelf life is finite, and the bookstores need to return the old for the new? Well, here's how many returns there were during that six-month period:

Almost 3,000.

So do the math -- if 900 copies were sold, and 3,000 copies were returned, that puts us in the red for 2,100 copies.

Which means even though the anthology had previously earned out its advance and sold 900 additional copies, I get nothing.

But wait again -- there were some ebook sales, too. Not a lot, mind you. This isn't really a book that translates well to digital, and besides, the ebook price is pretty high considering there isn't much wordage in the book. Still, how many digital copies were sold in that six-month period?

121.

And guess what -- no returns.

Which means I actually receive a royalty on those sales!

Except, well, I don't receive that much, since the royalty for digital is only 25%, but still it's something.

And in another six months, how sales will there be then? Even if there are more sales of the print edition, remember how many returns there had been previously. That means it'll be a long time before I start making anything on the print. But the digital, with infinite shelf life and no worry of returns? Sure, I'll keep making some money off that, though it will very minimal.

Or let me put this in a different perspective: the royalty I received off those 121 digital copies in a six-month period?

I made about the same amount yesterday alone on my own.

When Tags Attack

There's a mindset that when an author has a book published, that's it. Sure, a little promotion here and there, but then that author moves on to the next book. And while this is nice in theory, the truth is an author -- either traditionally published or self-published -- should always be aware of all of his or her books. I know many newer self-published authors struggle with trying not to check their sales every half hour, but really, it's like watching paint dry sometimes. Some authors try to go weeks, even a full month, without checking their sales, and while that shows strong willpower, I think it's important for self-published authors to check their sales and product pages at least once a day. The reason being that a lot can change in a day. Amazon might for some reason do a price match and drop the price of one of your books. It might go from $2.99 to 99 cents, and if you weren't vigilant, a whole week or more might pass before it came to your attention. Your book could even be made free for some reason, like it did to one writer awhile back who then made a big stink, complaining that Amazon owed him money for every free download (which is stupid, really, because a free download is far from being a sale, as those who downloaded the book most likely would never have bought it in the first place). Also, I believe it's important to track your sales. If a particular title is selling well, good. If it's selling extremely well, great. If it's not selling at all, you need to examine it and ask yourself why.

So far this month, because of my free promotion at the end of February, No Shelter has sold just over 650 copies in the US Kindle Store.

In the UK Kindle Store?

A big whopping zero.

So yesterday I investigated and saw that in the UK Amazon No Shelter had a new review -- a two-star review from a reader who thought the book was just completely unbelievable. Okay, fair enough, because really, the book is completely unbelievable which is, you know, sort of the point. But as I've said before, you can't really argue with reader reviews and just need to accept them for what they are.

But then I noticed something else that had to do with the book's tags. Now, I've never really understood the point of tagging books, though I know for awhile a lot of writers bandied together to tag each other's stuff until Amazon sort of put the lid on it. I never saw the point, really, because it didn't seem that all of that tagging was doing much good for those writers. Anyway, when I looked at the tags, I found these:

So yeah, as you can see, some kind reader helpfully tagged No Shelter as "child sex abuse fiction" and "paedophile fiction," among other things (what, exactly, is "goan crime fiction"?).

Of course, the problem arises that the book features neither of those two things.

So are those two tags keeping my book from selling? Hard to say. But what I can say is that I wasn't (and am still not) happy to have my book associated with those two tags. If someone wanted to tag them "awful" and "sucks" that would be one thing, but those two? Absolutely not.

I contacted Amazon immediately, basically saying that it came to my attention those two tags had been used in regards to my book, which did not feature either of those things, and would it be possible to have them deleted.

Well, here was my response:

Hello Robert,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your concern. I'm sorry if you were offended by the contents of the tags for your book "No Shelter."

We understand your concern, but the tags don't fall outside of our guidelines. Therefore, we cannot remove the "child sex abuse fiction" and "paedophile fiction" tags from our site. I apologise if this causes you any frustration.

We want our feature to be something that all our customers find useful.

Please take a look at our tags Guidelines for information about acceptable tags content:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200255630

We appreciate your understanding in this matter. Thank you for your interest in Amazon.co.uk.

I once again checked the information about acceptable tags content -- which I had done before I sent my first message -- and saw that yep, I still had a case ... or at least I thought I did. After all, I'm not sure how all of their customers would find grossly misleading tags useful, but whatever. So I sent this message:

I'm following up on a response from [name redacted] in regards to one of my titles being tagged "child sex abuse fiction" and "paedophile fiction" -- neither of which have anything to do with my book. [name redacted] says the tags don't fall outside of your guidelines and hence cannot be removed, but isn't one of your guidelines for tagging that customers should not use "Tags that promote illegal or immoral conduct"? If that's the case, how does "child sex abuse fiction" and "paedophile fiction" not fall under this umbrella?

I haven't received a reply yet, but even when and if I do, I don't see much changing. Unlike many writers who complain about their dealings with Amazon, I've never had a problem as they've fixed whatever problem I had before without much fuss. This, however, is different. Amazon is, above and beyond, all about customer service. So if a customer placed those tags there, then so be it. At some point hopefully new readers come along and add new, more appropriate tags. Or readers who have read the book might be able to downgrade those two tags (I'm told this is a thing, apparently?). Either way, those tags are there and there isn't anything I can do about it.

My point?

Well, as an author (either self-published or traditionally published), you need to be very vigilant about your work, no matter how long ago it was published. Because sometimes, well, sometimes shit happens.

UPDATE: I received the following reply from Amazon. As expected, the outcome is not in my favor despite the fact that the tags are in direct violation of Amazon's own tagging guidelines:

Hello Robert,

I understand you are concerned by the tags posted on your book "No Shelter."  After careful consideration, I agree with my colleague that the tags don't fall outside of our guidelines. Therefore, we cannot remove the tags from our site. I apologise if this causes you any frustration.

I understand that you are upset and I regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

We appreciate your understanding in this matter. Thank you for your interest in Amazon.co.uk.

About Last Month

So as many of you know I did a few special free promotions last month, utilizing Amazon's Kindle Select Program. Well, I got my statement today, and while I knew I had sold a lot of ebooks, it turns out I sold a lot more than I had first thought. To give you an idea, November and December of 2011 were my best two months of the year in terms of sales, mostly because it was the holiday season. Well, in January I made about the same amount of money that I did in November and December combined, if not a little bit more. Sounds great, right? Well, it is, but we have to keep in mind that this past holiday season was the biggest so far for ereaders, so ebooks were being bought up like crazy.

My best seller for the past several months has been The Calling, which usually maintains the same sales ranking, bouncing back and forth between the 2,500-4,000 area. Typically that means I'm selling 20-30 copies a day in the US Kindle Store (in the UK Kindle Store, it bounces back and forth between 1,500-2,500 and sells maybe 10-15 copies a day). In January, it kept the same ranking, but I was selling a lot more. In fact, for the month of January alone, between the US and UK Kindle Stores, I sold 1,379 units of The Calling alone. To put that in perspective, that number is more than all of the ebooks I sold in October combined. I'll talk more about The Calling next month, when we come up on its one-year anniversary (hard to believe, really, it's only been a year), and it should be interesting. But for now, let's look at the promotions, shall we?

In the first week of January, I made The Dishonored Dead and No Shelter a Kindle exclusive and free for several days. My reason for doing this? Well, they weren't strong sellers to begin with. In December The Dishonored Dead sold only 45 copies, while No Shelter sold only 30 copies. They definitely needed a boost, so I thought I'd see what a few days free might do for them. Well, here's what happened for these two titles in the month of January:

The Dishonored Dead 

• Free Units: 2098
• Units Sold: 93
• Units Borrowed: 45

No Shelter 

• Free Units: 14,735
• Units Sold: 894
• Units Borrowed: 130

As you can see, there was quite an increase, especially with No Shelter.

The next week, I did another special promotion, making Man of Wax and Phantom Energy free for a few days in the Kindle Store. In December, Man of Wax had only sold 127 copies, while Phantom Energy (which has always ever been a labor of love) brought in a whooping 3 copies. Here's what happened for those two titles in the month of January:

Man of Wax 

• Free Units: 25,520
• Units Sold: 1055
• Units Borrowed: 112

Phantom Energy 

• Free Units: 374
• Units Sold: 7
• Units Borrowed: 2

As you can see, Man of Wax had an incredible increase, though it should be noted that, unlike No Shelter which I didn't mess with the price, after the promotion I made Man of Wax 99 cents for a few days, to try to propel it back up the charts. My hope was that it might breeze its way into the Top 100, where then I could change it back to $2.99 and it would, in theory, stay for a few days, as most readers browse the Top 100 constantly. As for Phantom Energy, well, again it has always been a labor of love and I never expected it to make much money to begin with. But I'm proud of that little book. Oh yes I am.

Anyway, the main question at hand is was all of this worth it?

I believe so. I definitely made more than I would have on Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, and I even gained a bunch of new readers (I received some emails, a lot of readers signed up for my newsletter, etc), though of course the downside is that, as is the case with free books, readers who normally don't read dark violent thrillers downloaded Man of Wax, tried it, and hated it so much they posted one-star reviews. Three one-star reviews out of eighteen ain't bad, I guess, considering that eleven of those reviews are five-star, but it still doesn't help the algorithm. Yet despite that, Man of Wax is selling better this month than No Shelter, which has thirteen reviews, most of which are five-star. So that's surprising.

After all, a promotion like this is a short-term boost. In the month of January alone, I sold nearly 4,800 ebooks. That's quite a lot, compared to what I had been selling (it helps, too, that I have a lot of ebooks available). But what is the lasting effect? Well, currently here are my sales for those titles which I'd run the special promotion on last month:

The Dishonored Dead 

• Units Sold: 41
• Units Borrowed: 6

No Shelter 

• Units Sold: 57
• Units Borrowed: 3

Man of Wax 

• Units Sold: 98
• Units Borrowed: 6

Phantom Energy 

• Units Sold: 4
• Units Borrowed: 1

Obviously the sales haven't stayed the same, but I never thought they would. The purpose of the promotion was simply to give those books a boost, and it looks like, for the most part, it has, considering that we've just entered the second half of the month. Will those sales increase as the year progresses? It's impossible to say. Unfortunately, much of it has to do with Amazon's algorithm, which can be unpredictable. As I mentioned before, one bad review can suddenly make your book stop selling, or at least slow down quite a bit. Which is scary, really, when you've started to depend on the money coming in.

The Calling, which I mentioned at the beginning, continues to sell very well. Will it continue? I certainly hope so, but I can't count on it. Do I plan on making it free anytime soon? No. Right now I don't want to do anything to jinx it, and while making it free for a few days might shoot it up the rankings even more after the promotion, there's no telling how high (or low) it might go. And once it peaked, the sales might dip and keep dipping, way below what it's selling now. So it's a gamble, like everything else in life. You have to look at the long-term, but at the same time you have to worry about the short-term, because who knows what will happen in a year (or even next month). Everybody talks doom and gloom of what will happen when Amazon becomes a monopoly and decides to screw over writers, and while that might happen, I figure it's best to take advantage of the 70% royalties right now than to be screwed over by the 25% traditional publishers offer. Besides, Amazon really isn't doing much of anything with their self-publishing program; they don't really have to lift a finger and can just sit back and continue to take 30% or 65% royalties, so why they would eventually mess with it is beyond me.

But that's something to worry about later.

For now, I'm focusing on prepping The Inner Circle for an April release. At the moment, making sure the book is the best it can be is the only thing I'm worrying about.

As it should be.