What you need to prep for your ebook upload day

One of the things that you learn as an indie writer is the things that you should have pre-assembled before you start uploading your ebook to an online retailer (such as Amazon or Smashwords). My current list runs as follows:

Properly formated file (ex. a .doc for Smashwords) with all your front and back matter, plus a table of contents.

The front matter needs to include what edition it is (Amazon or Smashwords, etc.), the year of the copyright, a link to your Amazon author page (for the Amazon version) or Smashwords author profile (for the Smashwords version) or other such page, plus your social pressure "please respect the work of the author; do not pirate; buy your own copy" boiler plate. Try to keep your front matter as small as possible--it chews up space in the sample version, and you want people to read as much of your story or information piece as you can in hopes of hooking them into your ebook, and hopefully hooked well enough that they buy a copy. While you often have no control of the size of the sample, you can control the size of your front matter (if you can move something to the back matter, then do so).

The back matter is your bio and any ad copy and links you want to toss in for your other works. It also includes any sample chapters of your other works that you want to include.

Ad copy and keywords

You should spend some time before your upload day writing out your ad copy, so that you can copy and paste it into the relevant field when you are uploading. For Smashwords, you need both a short and a long description (400 characters is the limit of the short description--4000 characters for the long description). Resist the idea that you will be able to crank out perfect ad copy at the drop of a hat.

Your keywords (phrases) are words that one would use to search for your ebook that do not show up in the title or description. My most used keywords are "Golden Dawn" and "witchcraft" and "pagan"--"wicca" and "wiccan" tend to be included in my descriptions.

Category

What category would you expect to find your ebook in? Where are similar ebooks?

Cover 

Make sure that your title and name on the cover matches the information in your front matter. If possible, make sure that your cover looks good both at regular size and in the thumbnail version.

Price

How much are you charging?

A snack and a drink

Because you do not want your blood sugar to tank midway though the process if things go sideways.

Enough time and energy

Besides these things, you need to allot a couple of hours to the upload process. Even after you do it the first time, you can be surprised when you upload as retailers make changes in their upload layout and requirements. Hopefully, you will not need it, but it is better to schedule plenty of time just to be on the safe side.

And do it on a day when you have plenty of energy. Nothing screws up the process like being tired.

How ebooks could slump during Xmas

The other day, I talked about the fact that my ebook sales slumped on Barnes and Noble during the Christmas shopping season and have yet to recover. Now, this sounds odd when you look at the news that ereader sales were still strong with some outlets reporting record sales of ereaders sold (whether dedicated ereaders or other devices with ebook reading capabilities). So how could a writer's royalties slump during the Xmas shopping season?

Two things to keep in mind about my royalties for fourth quarter 2012. One, despite the slump at B&N, fourth quarter was still my best quarter ever as a writer (thanks to Apple). Two, I was not surprised by the drop in my ebook sales.

My ebook sales were normal until Thanksgiving. And Apple's expansion played a big part in fourth quarter being the best for me so far. Likewise, I did have some new erotica available under one of my other pen-names.

It is after Thanksgiving, and up to January tenth (and maybe beyond...I am waiting for the latest sales update), that my Barnes and Noble's sales slump.

There are at least three possible reasons for this slump. Two reasons tie into the fact that most of my royalties come from a single item (yes, one item is accounting for about 80% of my current income). One, I did not put out anything new for awhile under the pen-name that is credited for that item (different pen-names for different fetishes). Two, I might have hit the saturation point for that item. But I would expect to see a gradual decline in sales, not a sudden drop like my figures show.

The third possible reason, the one that I believe is the real cause, is also the reason that I was not surprised by this slump. In fact, I was expecting a slump in my royalties.

Now, bear in mind that I spent twenty years in the restaurant business (ten as a manager), plus my father owned a produce business (he started out in deliveries, and moved into sales). Restaurants, unless they are located close to shopping centers, tend to have decreased sales during the Christmas season. Why? Because people are spending money on other things, mainly Xmas shopping.

And that is the golden reason that a writer's ebook sales could slump during the Christmas shopping season, and into the post-Xmas season--people are spending money on other items.

In this case, ereaders and other associated devices.

Ebooks are not physical items. You cannot wrap an ebook. And do you really want to buy a friend or family member an erotic novel or short story?! Probably not. (Remember that most of my income comes from erotica of a particularly dubious sub-genre.)

On the other hand, ereaders and other ebook reading devices are physical items. Therefore, you can put them under the Xmas tree.

And I believe that is the real reason that my sales slumped during the Xmas shopping season. This slump is probably a pattern that I need to get used to, and budget around.

If I am right, about February, as people's wallets start to recover from Xmas shopping, I should start seeing my royalties return to normal.

(And why no corresponding drop in Apple sales? Well, it was the first quarter for many people to buy ebooks in Apple's expanding global market...this might not be the normal buying pattern for those customers.)

How not to use a PDF to advertise yourself

Isn't the value of a book determined by the amount that people are willing to pay for it?

Ok, this is one of those situations that even if you do not know the players involved, you can still roll your eyes with me.

A few years ago, someone issued a fifty dollar hardcover book. I think it was technically self-published.

It went out of print, and soon people were trying to sell it for a thousand dollars--but the highest I have seen it sell for on eBay is one hundred and fifty, and no one--I mean no one--has ever offered me more than the original fifty for the copy that is in my possession.

A couple of years ago, a pdf of the book ended up on the pirate sites. I am not sure if it is up on Pirate Bay, but I imagine that it is. I know that I could easily find a pdf of the book today if I didn't already have a copy.

There are some issues with this particular pdf. While it has all 666 pages, they are occasionally blurry and not all of them are in proper order. (The book is ok until page 505, then it has 520 & 521, then 536 & 537, then goes back to page 506, proceeds ok until page 519, then to page page 535, then goes back to 520, all is ok until page 523 when is jumps to page 538.)

Recently, the author (who refuses to publish anything new, or even reprint this book, because of the behavior of internet pirates; and brags about how much his book goes for, despite the fact that he says that resellers are a bunch of dishonest scalpers) offered a pdf of his book to people that attended a webinar of his.

Now, I have a friend who attended the webinar because they were hoping for a better pdf of the book. After all, it is simple to create a better pdf from the original files--and that what should be happening, right?

[Not a spy--a friend in this person's organization. There is a difference...or at least, in my universe, it is. I am quite sure that this author will think otherwise, but they already hate the fact that I occasionally communicate with people inside his organization. After all, this is an organization that has labeled me an enemy, and here I am still friends with people on the inside of it.]

Wrong, the writer was giving away copies of the bad scanned and formatted pirated version of their book. Oy vey. Here is a person who obviously does not know a marketing opportunity when they see one.

What they should have done is create a clean, completely readable version from their original file, added a few advertising pages (are they really married to the 666 page count?), with a linked table of contents, and gave that version out instead. You know, a version that was superior to the version already available on the pirate sites, complete with a note saying that they were giving an improved version of book to the greater community. You know--a win-win situation.

I do not know why they did not do this. But I do know that they missed a golden opportunity to advertise their expertise. A new clean version, complete with an advertising page, would get them more respect than giving out the same bad pirate version that most of us already had a copy of.

Oh well, they will still have a field day advertising themselves once they see this post...because they will come up with a spiritual reason about why what they did is better than doing this in the business-like manner that I think they should have used. After all, what do I know about spiritual matters--for god's sake, I am treating this situation like it was just an advertising campaign.

Where my ebook sales are happening

Troll cat insists that I answer his riddles three before I start filing things.

As the result of a question on Facebook, today I looked at my ebook sales figures and figured out where I was selling the most stuff.

(Please note that I am doing business through Smashwords. This is because I started putting up ebooks during a semester that was tight on time--I had time to deal with one site and one site only. And then, I just continued to do so...because even their slowest times to complete global tasks is still quicker than the print market I first started out in.)

For occult writing, Smashwords is 61.5% of my sales. The rest is done through Kobo (31%) and Barnes & Noble (7.5%).

This is only the ebooks that I am charging for; the figures for my free ebook is incomplete.

For my sales in erotica, the hands-down winner is Barnes & Noble at 64%. The other markets that I am selling erotica in: Smashwords (14.5%), Apple (11.6%), Kobo (7.7%), and Sony (2.2%).

I have yet to earn anything through Diesel, Page Foundry, Baker-Taylor (I have had some of my free stuff downloaded through Diesel and Baker-Taylor, so maybe someday I will get some sales there).

As for Amazon, we all know the problem between Smashwords and Amazon. And besides, some of my erotica is of the Forbidden Four category and therefore, too racy for Amazon to stock in the first place. Someday, I will break down and upload some stuff directly to Amazon. Probably after I take time out to answer my cat's riddles three.

How much is PayPal costing writers?

One of the difficult things about the ongoing PayPal censorship saga is determining how much of a monetary loss this is going to create for the writers. Now presuming that the writers of the Forbidden Four are doing it for money, this is a very important question.

There are some who believe that writers of the Forbidden Four write this type of stuff because they are perverts. This is wrong. Working writers drift to the fields that result in paychecks and royalties. Let's be honest--the first time, I realized that someone had to be getting a paycheck to write was when I encountered a letter magazine devoted to one of the Forbidden Four. The only reason I ever considered writing the Forbidden Four was all about the MONEY.

So how does one figure out how much of a financial loss that writers of the Forbidden Four are going to suffer now that PayPal has decided that they can no longer write and sell this type of material while using PayPal's services. (And yes, there are other payment options---they are just not good payment options.)

Let's take a look at a writer who was relatively new to writing in the Forbidden Four ebook market and what type of loss she suffered. Her entire stock of the Forbidden Four consisted of five stories (two were reprints), and they were only involved in this market for two quarters (six months).

If she would have sold these five stories in the print market, she would have recieved 50 to 125 dollars for the material, provided that all would have been accepted. If we look at her quarterly earnings (and ignore the fact that she just started to supplement her regular writing in this field), her quarterly loss was 55 to 80 dollars (presuming no gain in future quarters and no new stock added).

Of course, PayPal would love to argue that the loss in income stops right here. But it does not.

For one thing, a single quarter is not the entire commerical life span of an ebook. So what is the commerical life span of an ebook? One year? Five years? Ten years? Or more?

In the space of a year, the loss in income is somewhere between 220 and 320 dollars. Over ten years, presuming no drop in sales, this is someplace between 2200 and 3200 dollars.

And the writer was planning on doing more of this type of work...clear up to the second that PayPal steeped in and denied her this income source. So we are looking at a monetary loss of anywhere from fifty to three thousand plus for someone who only lost five ebooks (short stories really) to this PayPal policy change. But the real loss cannot be figured out because we can never be sure how much this writer would have written in this field in future years. (Their goal was to continue adding stock until they did not need to flip burgers any more---good move PayPal, we must keep people in their burger flipping jobs.)

Future is so bright I gotta wear shades

Last night, I was trying to explain how writers make money through royalities to my wife. I might have had an easier time eplaining nuclear physics to her. In particular, I was trying to describe what I was doing on Smashwords, and why I suspected that in the long run I would hit the break-even point on some (if not all) of my writing there.

Midway through the conversation, I realized that my wife did not even understand the concept behind book advances. For the one person in the audience who has only been involved in the modern world of ebook publishing, an advance was something that publishers used to give to writers...it is still possible to get an advance today, provided that you are someone like Stephen King, who is guaranteed to sell copies even if one's writing bores the general public to tears and one's ideas are lifted from other writers.

My wife was not even aware that book advances had to be earned back before a writer got more money from the publishers, much like she did not realize that some writers took fifteen years to get their first book contract and that it can take three years to get your book onto store shelves.

(Gee, why do some of us decide that ebook through self-publication outlets are a better option---getting published by a Big Six legacy publishers sounds so quick and easy; you will be raking in the money before you die.)

Of course, I understand her concerns. She would like me to be making money (as getting a paycheck) tomorrow, rather than a quarter or three down the road. Again, for the newbie in the audience, even on a self-pub site like Smashwords, it can take awhile to get cut a check; it takes a calendar quarter for the distributors (iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, etc.) to send their sales figures to Smashwords, who in turn waits to pay you when the next quarter ends (plus thirty days)---nevertheless, it is still more timely than the print market was.

Anyways, I digress. The important part is that I can foresee making my time investment back (provided that the initial figures are a true indication of how well I am going to do). In fact, I may even make a nice little profit. That means that the future is a little brighter; I might have to invest in a new pair of sunglasses.

For those who are curious what I am doing on Smashwords, you can download a free copy of some my work. The rest of you can just sit here and watch the following video by Timbuk 3: The Future's So Bright.

 

Thirty books all with the same cover

Warning---in this post I am talking about a writer who writes erotica...well, that is the polite term for it.

So tonight, I decide to spend some time on Smashwords...because I had no desire to read my homework. While there I am checking out the various books that people are putting up. I had the adult filter off because I am curious about whether that is a viable money making choice.

(Feel free to blame my curiosity about possible money making options on the fact that part of my student loan has still not gone through yet, and the semester is about to wound down. And I thought some merchants paid out slow.)

While there, I noticed that one of the erotica writers (ok, let's be honest---it is pornography) has used the same cover for thirty of their books. The cover for Summer Suds, a sex romp that starts at a car wash is the same cover (with just the title changed) as Summer Camp Surprise, and the list goes on for twenty-eight more books. They do have a couple of other covers, including one that is used twice.

Nevertheless, I find myself wondering isn't there some rule of thumb that you want the covers of your book to be different from one another? Or does that just apply to actual physical books?

Now, I suspect that the only reason that this writer is even using a cover is that you must have a cover to get into the premium catalog (aka the rest of the distribution network). But seriously, are they so cheap that they are only willing to spend money on one "safe" cover? Looking at their regular website, I realized that they are willing to buy for the more racier, not approved by Apple style of covers (lots of naked flesh and sex acts if you are curious).

So are clothes really that expensive that more than one cover is out of their price range? Or does it really not matter if all your erotica titles have the same cover? And does this also apply to other types of ebooks?

Pricing ebooks

I have been thinking a lot lately about how ebooks are priced. Mainly because I just started to get back into the writing game after a brief absence.

(Not that it is a serious venture back into the field, more like a sticking my toe into a pool of slime and wondering why I did so. For those who are curious about how serious I am taking it, just slip over to Smashwords and take a gander at my little test project, Pizza Boxes on the Floor.)

Honestly, looking around the internet, it looks like the Wild West when it comes to determining ebook prices.

The traditional publishers are still secretly trying to charge the same amount for an ebook as they are for a physical copy. Actually, the other day, I saw a history book that actually cost more for the ebook copy than a physical copy. I am guessing that some publishers believe that people will be willing to pay for convenience.

In my case, I am not willing to pay for convenience. Or rather I am not willing to have to pay for a ebook and then have to pay again for a hard copy with actual page numbers that I can cite in a college paper.

On the other side of the scale, there are the pirates who believe that no one should make a penny from any ebook. I am sorry, my cats would like to eat; therefore, I need to get paid something. And yes, if I am going to be pirated, than one of the pirate is going to have to pay a copy first.

So the question will arise about why I choose a 99 cent price for a 8860 word ebook, especially one that a reader will some time can find almost the entirety of for free on the internet already.

Well,  I had three choices.

First option, the "reader names their own price"---there are two problems with this option. One, I know that a lot of readers would download the entire book and not read any more than the free preview that I am already offering; and two, there are outlets who would not carry the ebook if this option was choosen.

Second option, the "free ebook" option---I am sorry, my favorite charity is my cats, and they would like to eat. If I wanted to give stuff away, I would have choosen the first option; it would result in the same amount of income.

Third option, "pick a price that ends in 99 cents," better known as the iBookstore price force---iBookstore, if you are charging for a book, will automatically round the price to the nearest 99 cents. It is an iCommerce thing (I am sure that Apple is going to trademark that term soon enourgh).

So in the interests of greed, because we all know that occult writers only write books for the money, I went with the third option, and decided 99 cents was a good price for 8860 words.

Is 99 cents that much? Some people are going to say it is. But I do not think so. After all, that is how much a can of cat food is being sold for at Walgreens (and they label that a "great buy"). And my cats would like to occasionally eat.