The E-Book Cover Game

Every so often someone asks me about my e-book covers and who I got to design them and how much it cost. And the answer always depends on the e-book cover, as some were done by myself, others were done by my friend Wyatt Perko, and my most recent one was done by Jeroen ten Berge (who will also be doing my upcoming thriller The Serial Killer's Wife). The thing is, e-book covers are even more important than regular book covers. Sure, a regular book cover has to really grab your attention, but most likely the potential reader is in the bookstore and is already browsing for new books. The potential reader and book are so very close that the potential reader can actually pick the book up, turn it over, read the back, even flip through the pages.

But a potential reader can't quite do that with an e-book, can they?

No, all they can really judge, oftentimes, is just a thumbnail, so you better make sure that thumbnail sticks out and really catches attention -- and in a good way.

Of course, to do this will cost either a) money or b) time and effort. The thing is, a lot of writers don't have the extra cash to spend up front for professionally designed covers (a sort of catch-22, if you think about it). So they decide to do it themselves, sifting through deivantart.com or istockphoto.com. There they might find something of interest and, if all goes well, will get permission from the artist to use the artwork or simply pay the correct amount of credits. And then it's off to Photoshop, where they add their title and byline and then -- ka-blamo -- that's it. Or maybe they are talented enough to design their own covers. This is definitely possible. In fact, Aaron Polson has been designing some really great covers of his own recently.

But let's go back to those who decide to use some kind of stock image. It might be a great image, but remember that when you decide to use it, it doesn't mean nobody else can use the same image too. That's what those images are there for. So then you might end up in a situation like these three writers.

The funny thing is, while the first two titles are self-published (at least I believe they are), the last book there, Infection, is published by a company called Eloquent Books, which, if you Google them, brings you to this website. It's a publisher but it's not really a publisher, as evidenced by this submission page. Right now I'm too tired and lazy to do more research, but I'm guessing this is the kind of "publisher" you want to stay away from. After all, they are VERY INTERESTED in the following (their caps, not mine):

Quite honestly, if you're an author who already meets those qualifications, then trust me, you don't need this "publisher" in the first place. Especially since this "publisher" will only use stock images like this one:

Remember, if you don't want to self-publish your own e-books and would rather have a publisher do it so you can think yourself special for having a "publisher" easily distribute something you can do yourself and then keep taking a cut of your proceeds, please make sure they are at least creating for you original and eye-catching cover art. I mean, it's the least they can do.

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The Power Of Free

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9,370. That's how many times The Silver Ring has been downloaded so far at Amazon as of 3:27 a.m. When I mentioned, just two days ago, how Amazon had made the novella available for free on Kindle, I had said only 40 copies had been downloaded. What I didn't say was that I hoped it would at least make 1,000 downloads before the weekend. Instead, that happened by the next afternoon.

Like I said, when Amazon emailed me telling me what they had planned to do, I decided to make the most of the opportunity. I spiffed up the formatting, made sure to include excerpts from The Calling and The Serial Killer's Wife, my forthcoming thriller (speaking of which, Blake Crouch just sent me his introduction last night and, among other things, he calls the book "a scary, thrilling, page-turning, race-against-the-clock novel if ever there was one, with a true shocker of an ending"), and I even dropped eBookNewser a heads up as, during the week, they feature a free e-book of the day. I knew the chances were slim that they would feature The Silver Ring, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to at least try. And, well, it turned out they did feature it yesterday. And while I haven't had a chance to keep an eye on the sales ranking constantly, I did make sure to try to check at least once an hour to see how high the ranking would get. And here's where it basically ended up (the US Kindle store and the UK Kindle store, respectively):

For some reason it didn't come up, but The Silver Ring is also currently #1 in the UK's horror section. (Also, it's interesting how you don't have to sell as many copies in the UK Kindle store to reach a very high ranking, but I guess that's because Kindles are relatively new to the UK, not like they are here.)

But of course, despite these numbers, there really isn't much reason to get excited. I mean, sure, they're great numbers, but just how many of those who downloaded the novella are actually going to read it? I'd say a very small percentage. People love free, especially those with e-book readers. In fact, I've heard it speculated that many people who buy Kindles will first go to the top 100 and browse there and buy books and download the free books just to fill up their nifty new device. And it makes sense. After all, The Silver Ring has been holding steady for the past day. I'm sure at some point it will begin to fall and disappear completely. And I'm sure it will be read by a small percentage of those who downloaded it. But even if, say, 5% actually read it, that's close to 500 people (and I'm going based on the fact we're almost at 10,000 downloads; we could even assume that that number will grow and grow). Even if, say, 25% of those 500 people really dig the story enough to try more of my work, that could be something, at least a start.

I should mention that there is one refund for The Silver Ring right now. Which at first I thought was hilarious because who refunds a free book? In fact, I don't think you even can refund a free book. But then I remembered seeing a sale for The Silver Ring Wednesday night; I had been keeping an eye out for when the sales started to increase figuring that would alert me to when the book went free. But when I checked, I saw it was still 99 cents. Which means that was an actual sale. And then, maybe an hour later, more and more people began to download it as the price went to free. So I'm thinking that this person, whoever they are, saw that they had purchased a 99 cent e-book that was now available for free and so refunded it. No big deal. It happens. Amazon's policy is that you can return an e-book in the first seven days, which, if you think about it, means you can purchase an e-book, read it in the first six days, and then return it for your money back. Not quite the thing I would do, but you have those cheap bastards out there. I mean, my day job is in retail and you wouldn't believe the entitlement many customers think they deserve, such as they purchase a product a full price on Tuesday, it goes on sale Wednesday, and they think they now deserve the product at that sale price.

Anyway, the real question: has the insane number of downloads helped bring in sales for any of my other e-books? Well, I think it's too early to tell. After all, it's only been two days. You have to figure you need to give that 5% time to actually read the novella first. And I think there's a good chance even a bigger percentage will because of a few things:

  1. It's short, only 18,000 words long, as opposed to a massive-length novel.
  2. It has short chapters. Thirty chapters for a 18,000 word novella, making the average chapter length only 600 words. (It's a psychological thing, you know, that shorter chapters make you read faster; many people are able to read The Silver Ring in one sitting because the chapters are so short, but if it were a straight story with no chapter breaks, it would take your average reader much longer to read; in fact, they might not even bother in the first place. Sad but true.)
  3. The formatting is professional. It might be arrogant to say it, as I do my own formatting, but it's true, especially with so many shoddy formatted e-books out there.
  4. It's a fast, fun story. Is it great? Well, I'd like to think so, but I know it's not my strongest work. Hell, I originally wrote the thing in high school and only revised it a few years ago. So it is what it is. Still, I'm proud of how it turned out and very happy it has the chance to be read by so many people.

The time is now 3:59 a.m. and, checking again, The Silver Ring has now been downloaded 9,408 times. Again, you have to ask yourself what does it mean? The same argument applies to the whole sure-your-99-cent-e-book-is-selling-but-how-many-of-those-readers-are-actually-reading-it? At this point I think the same answer applies: a sale is a sale just as a download is a download. You think traditional publishers care if the books they sell are actually read? Of course not. They just want to make money. But then again, don't we all?

Talking Zombies With Nate Southard

The Dishonored Dead just recently came out, and as my friend Nate Southard recently had a zombie novel come out, we thought it would be fun to interview each other about our books. Below is my interview with him. You can check out his interview with me over at his website.

RS: So tell us a little bit about Scavengers.

NS: Gladly. Scavengers tells the story of five men from Millwood, a small Indiana town that survived a zombie outbreak through equal parts isolation and dumb luck, who are sent to the neighboring town of Rundberg in search of much-needed supplies. Of course, the last anyone saw of Rundberg, it had been overrun with the walking dead. It’s probably a suicide mission, but desperate times and all that ...

I originally told this story in my 2005 graphic novel A Trip to Rundberg, but I wanted to expand and improve it. I think I pulled that off.

RS: What is it about zombies that interests you? Is there a certain fascination with them? And is there anything about Scavengers that is different from most zombie stories?

NS: For me, zombies represent a certain level of hopelessness in horror that I find especially chilling. Once the dead stop staying dead, there’s no return to normalcy. You can fake it for a while, sure, but sooner or later reality will crash through. You don’t see that sort of finality with some of your other genre touchstones.

On more of a guilty pleasure angle, they make excellent fodder. You could have told Die Hard with zombies and had a body count in the hundreds. No one would have batted an eye. I think it’s important not to fall back on that, though. It’s a lowest common denominator type of story, and I know I don’t want to read one of those.

As for what makes Scavengers different? At first, I just wanted to tell a small town catastrophe piece. I grew up in rural Indiana, and sometimes imagining having to escape impossible odds is the most fun you could have. I was a little tired of urban zombie stories.

I also wanted to toy with the idea that mankind deserves to survive. So many of these body muncher stories have that big reveal of “We are the monsters!” I Am Legend. Night of the Living Dead. Mankind is the real enemy. I wanted humans to deserve survival. A disaster didn’t drive these people apart. Instead, it pushed them together. I like that.

And don’t worry. I know I Am Legend is a vampire story.

RS: Well, at least not the Will Smith remake; those were like a vampire/zombie hybrid.

Anyway, Scavengers is being released by Creeping Hemlock’s zombie imprint Print is Dead. What came first — your expansion into novel form or did they contact you first and from there you came up with the idea? Also, what was it like adapting the novel from an already published graphic novel? (For some reason I’m put to mind of Max Allan Collins writing the novelization to the screenplay based on his graphic novel of Road to Perdition, though I know this is completely different.)

NS: Oh, the adaptation came first. I’d been toying with the idea for a little while, and then Night Shade released a call for zombie novels. I decided to go for it, but I made the decision about three weeks before deadline. In that space of time, I busted out two or three drafts, sending large chunks at a time to my pre-readers. Months later, I gave it another rewrite, this time giving it the time it deserved. A few months later, Creeping Hemlock announced their submissions call, and I jumped on immediately.

I had a lot of fun adapting it. The graphic novel moves so fast, it’s probably more of a short story than a novel. With the adaptation, I was able to not only expand the story of this desperate mission, but I could look back into the characters’ lives to see what they’d been up to at the time of the outbreak. It made for a great writing experience. Then again, I rewrite like I’m addicted to it. I could probably write this story seven different ways and still be happy.

RS: Any plan to write any more zombie novels or short stories?

NS: I wouldn’t say I have plans, but I can’t see myself never working with them again. There are still plenty of fun stories I can tell with the Scavengers characters, not to mention all the possible takes on zombies. Once I’ve got a zombie story that needs telling, I’m sure I'll jump right back in.

RS: Any favorite zombie novels or graphic novels or movies you care to mention?

NS: The Walking Dead is pretty amazing. It has its ups and downs, but Robert Kirkman never devolves into bad writing.

As for novels, I’d have to go with Simon Clark’s Blood Crazy. It’s a different twist on zombies, and it’s pretty epic. The best part is that it never explains why these events (which walk the line between horrific and bizarre) are happening. They don’t matter as much as the terror of the new world.

RS: Man, it’s been years since I read Blood Crazy but I remember loving it. And I’ve only read the first volume of The Walking Dead so far, but I really enjoyed it, too. Thanks for answering some questions, Nate, and good luck with Scavengers!

Purchase the trade paperback of Scavengers at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or the e-book at the insanely low price of $2.99 at the Kindle Store.

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The Silver Ring Is A Kindle Freebie

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First, let's get the important stuff out of the way.

My 18,000-word novella The Silver Ring is currently available as a free download at Amazon (US and UK). Normally 99 cents, now it is free. What's even better is that it includes, along with an excerpt from The Calling, a special sneak preview of my upcoming thriller The Serial Killer's Wife.

That's right, the first four chapters of The Serial Killer's Wife is included in this free download of The Silver Ring.

So what are you waiting for? Even if you downloaded it before, download it again!

Why, you might ask, is it free? After all, only publishers can make e-books free on Kindle, so how did I do it?

Well, yeah, that's the thing -- I'm not 100% sure. My guess is that, years ago, when I originally uploaded the novella to Smashwords, I made it available for free. It then was distributed into the Kobo store where it's been free ever since, even though I had long ago changed the price to 99 cents. It had come to my attention that Kobo still had it available for free, and I had even notified Smashwords but had heard nothing. So my best guess is that somehow Amazon caught wind of it and decided to match the price. I got an email the other night telling me that they were changing my price to free and that there was really nothing I could do about it (okay, the last part isn't quite true, but it was between the lines).

At first I thought: Huh?

And then I thought: This is great!

I already had an excerpt from The Calling included with The Silver Ring. After all, they're both essentially young adult thrillers with supernatural elements so it made sense. But then I thought about my newest novel, The Serial Killer's Wife, which I plan to release shortly. And I realized that this was an opportunity to really help spread the word about not only one novel, but two. After all, novels are where you really make money (or at least where I really make money), so it was a no-brainer. Of course, there's no guarantee that everyone who downloads The Silver Ring for free will actually read it (many people just download free books for the hell of it), but even if a small percentage reads it (and I think it helps that it's 18,000 words long and really fast-paced) then, who knows, maybe they'll want to take a chance on one of my novels. It's like what most writers hope for with their 99 cent books but here I'm able to do the same with a free book.

How long will Amazon keep The Silver Ring free? Who knows. It could be a few days or weeks or months. It could even be a year. But I'm not upset. After all, at 99 cents I'm only making a 35 cent profit. Last month I only sold 9 units. So far this month I've "sold" 40 units, and those have only been in the past few hours. I get no money from these "sales," but that's okay. Sometimes free exposure really does pay off in the end. Here's hoping.