March Price Experiment and Numbers

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. School is getting hectic. Anyway, I wanted to pop in real quick while the numbers are still fresh.

So in the month of March, I dropped the price of Days of Reckoning to $0.99. I did this originally so I could gift a copy. Amazingly, while it was at the new low price, I sold 8 copies. So I left it there for most of the month. Results? 31 copies sold on Kindle. This represents 6 times the number I'd sold in any given previous month. Which means I made just as much as I did when it was at $2.99.

I also released a short story, Charmer, in the middle of the month. It sold three copies. Shorts are a harder sell, and I'm guessing that being listed with a full novel at the same price also hurt its chances.

I still only managed one sale of Days on Nook, and it looks like I scored a sale through Sony as well. Still don't know if any of my downloads from Smashwords were paid or not. I really hope they go to a monthly reporting system soon.

So for the month of April, I'm leaving both at $0.99. I should be doing a guest blog later this month, so I'll link to that when it appears. And I'll be buried under a mountain of schoolwork, as usual. May 15 can't get here fast enough!

E-Publishing: Pay Dirt or Fool's Gold?

I was discussing e-publishing with some of my fellow MFA students this past week, and one of them posed the question: “How big is the e-pub gold mine? How comparable are sales for e-pub and traditional publishing?”

I’m pretty sure that attempts to answer this question have ignited small wars recently. Since I don’t want to clog up my class’s message boards addressing the issue, I figured that I would offer my two cents here. I’m going to try to limit things to my own personal experience; however, since I have only been selling my e-book since December, I don’t have a long track record to draw upon. So please forgive me if I have to name drop in this post.

To answer the question “how big is the e-pub gold mine?” we have to first draw a major distinction between “potential” and “probability.” Right now, the potential for e-pub sales is huge. There are millions of e-reader and e-reading capable devices on the market, and more are being sold every day. Self-pubbed e-books tend to be much cheaper than those offered by traditional publishers (usually $0.99 to $2.99 on the self-pubbed side, and $9.99 to $14.99 for a new traditionally published e-book). So that’s a big advantage in favor of writers self-publishing: cheaper books usually mean more sales (as long as the books are well-written and formatted). The market is there, and all indications are that it will be there for some time.

So what’s the probability that a self-pubbed author of an e-book will be able to take advantage of this marketplace? This is where things get a little dicey. Distribution is no longer an issue. Self-pubbed authors have access to the same stores as those pubbed by New York (there are some small presses who focus on the e-market, and some of them offer their books through their own websites. But when it comes to the major platforms, it’s a pretty even playing field). The challenge for self-pubbers is the same it’s always been for any new or independent writer: exposure. To make sales, people have to find your book. Ad campaigns tend to be expensive, and there is no guarantee that someone will buy your book just because they see a banner for it. Word of mouth still seems to be the most effective means of advertising. Showing up on Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s “top sellers” lists seems to help boost sales. Being involved in various forums and other facets of the online community is also probably useful. You’ll also read about a lot of success stories in those online communities, which can be very convincing that electronic self-publishing is the way to go.

So what’s the reality? There seem to be a ton of people making good money in this business. Is it really possible and even probable to join their ranks? Well, it depends, mostly on what your definition of “successful” is. And here’s where I share my personal and perhaps sobering experience.

You see, I’m not a successful self-published author by most standards. Currently, my novel ranks in the 100,000 range on Amazon, and 800,000 on Nook (disclaimer: this doesn’t include Smashwords sales, because they only release their figures and payments quarterly, so I haven’t received an accurate report from them yet. I’ve had 24 downloads of my book sample in just over a month through them, but I don’t think any of them turned into purchases). I’ll be blunt: those are shitty numbers. I’m averaging 5 sales a month. Again, shitty numbers. That means I’m earning (according to my royalty statements) a whopping $10.30 every thirty days or so. Definitely won’t be quitting my day job for that!

Here’s the rub: I’m pretty much an unknown author. I’ve also only been at this for three months now. Most authors I’ve read about who have been successful have taken several months to a year to find their audience. I only have one book for sale. Again, most successful authors have more (usually at least three). I also have done little promotion beyond Facebook announcements and a couple of guest blog posts. I’m still figuring out the finer points of e-formatting. So there is hope for me yet. And right now, I’m doing better than I was in the print market.

It would be eminently helpful if I had a novel published in print so that I could compare the two. Unfortunately, that dream never came to pass. And I don’t want to speculate on what I might or might not be earning if I kept trying for a print deal. Once you start dealing with pretend numbers, I think your whole argument falls apart. So I can only compare my online experience to the two short stories I had published in anthologies released by small presses. Again, this is an imperfect comparison, but it’s the only experience I have to go on.

So my first short story sold in 2005, and was printed in 2006. I received about $150 as an advance. It never sold enough to earn any royalties, but I did make about $250 profit off of copies I had purchased at my author’s discount, and then sold at list price during a book signing. So all told, in the five calendar years of 2006 - 2010, I earned $400 from that story. Five calendar years is 60 months, so doing the math, I’ve earned $6.67 a month off of that story. And that’s it. That number will only decline as the months go on, unless new income comes in. Now, I knew this was a likely scenario, so maybe it’s not quite fair to break it down this way. I was happy to get $150 for a short story, and even happier when people actually bought copies at the signing. So it’s a $400 story on the whole, and unless I ask for my rights back it will probably stay there.

My second story sold in 2006. I was supposed to earn almost $400 as an advance. But the publisher fell on some hard times, and I still haven’t seen a cent in payment. I haven’t gone to court over it, because the fees and time just aren’t worth the hassle. It remains to be seen whether or not I’ll demand my rights back. For now, I’ve chalked this up as an expensive learning experience, and it’s also been motivation for striking out on my own. I don’t want to be burned again, intentionally or unintentionally.

As for my novel that is currently online, it’s averaging around ten bucks a month. So right now it’s a $30 story (since it’s been selling for three months). I’m going to risk slipping a bit into “imaginary” mode, but if those numbers hold, in a five year period it will earn $600. Factoring in expenses for cover art and the ISBN I purchased, and it will take seven years to hit that number, roughly. Again, this is not major money, but it’s better than I’ve done before, and it certainly beats what it was earning sitting on my hard drive.

Now, the question begs to be asked: is it worth it? It is for me. It might not be for you. I’m not viewing this through rose-colored lenses, either. First, I do plan on releasing more material electronically, to see if the trend of “more books = more sales” holds true for me. Second, I will probably be playing with price points and incentives, which will throw off the math above, but might make it more interesting. Finally, at least I can say that - even if I fail - I’m giving it my best shot. I don’t like failing. I can’t imagine many people who do. But at least I can learn something from this process, whatever the outcome. And at least I’m not failing because someone else made bad decisions that turned into me not getting paid.

I’ll probably revisit this topic again at the end of the year, when “Days of Reckoning” has been on sale for a full year. At that point, I’ll have more of a track record to go on. I also should have more material available. I don’t know if I’ll have struck paydirt. But at least I can say that I tried.

Special thanks to Jen Brooks, a talented writer and colleague from Seton Hill University, for posing the original question.

Big Pulpy Shoes to Fill

I wrote earlier how exciting I think the “e-book Revolution” is for readers. If you have an e-reader or don’t mind consuming your books on a computer, there is a whole new world of inexpensive fiction out there now. And for writers, e-books represent an amazing way to connect to readers, and maybe even earn a few dollars along the way.

But before you can start counting the money, you have to write the books. A lot of them. The more material you have available, the more likely readers are to find you. If you scroll through the comments sections of blogs like JA Konrath’s “Newbie’s Guide to Publishing,” you’ll see many readers who are much more inclined to buy from authors with multiple titles available than they are to buy a single lonely book. Readers like to read. A lot. And they love it when a new book comes out by their favorite author. Before, a reader might have to wait a year or more for a new title. Now, the author might release two or three or more a year. That means there’s opportunity for both readers and writers to benefit from the world of e-books.

Back in the heyday of pulp fiction, titles would be released on a monthly or even bi-weekly basis. Walter Brown Gibson, the original author of “The Shadow” mystery series, cranked out two 60,000 words novels a month (Hutchinson, 18). That’s a tremendous amount of output. I don’t know many people who can match it. An author named Lester Dent wrote at perhaps a more reasonable rate: he created one “Doc Savage” novel a month during his career, although he also branched out and wrote for other pulps as well (Hutchinson, 42). And this was all in a time before laptop and tablet computers, and e-mail submissions or electronic uploads.

Those are some serious shoes to fill. I don’t know if I could do it. I’m fast, but am I 12-24 novels a year fast? Probably not. But it’s possible. Gibson and Dent did it. And anyone who has ever completed “National Novel Writing Month” can do it. I’ve had three successful NaNoWriMo’s. So maybe it isn’t so farfetched.

Of course, production is only half of the battle, especially today. Novels and stories also need to be edited. That’s a topic we’ll look at next time, so stay tuned!

Work Cited:

Hutchinson, Don: The Great Pulp Heroes. Niagara Falls, NY: Mosaic Press. 1996. Print.

A Pulp Renaissance?

There are plenty of blogs that talk about the game-changing effects of selling directly through the Kindle and Nook stores, as well as other distributors like Smashwords. So I’m not going to rehash all of that. My stance as an author should be pretty clear by now.

Instead, I’m going to talk a bit about the e-book revolution from the standpoint of a reader.

About ten years ago, I was reading Dashiell Hammett’s “Continental Op” stories. And I thought how cool it would be to have stories and books like that again. But pulp fiction seemed to have sailed. Vestiges still remained, in the form of men’s adventure books like “The Executioner” and the monthly releases from Harlequin. What appealed to me about books like that (and still does) is how easy and, well, fun they were to read. And it also helped that they were cheaper than the other paperbacks in the bookstore. Yeah, the quality was hit or miss, but if you only dropped a few bucks on them, as opposed to six or seven on a stand-alone title, what did it matter?

Prices in the bookstores have gone up now, even on the monthly release titles. And on Amazon, most paperbacks can be had secondhand for as little as a penny, plus about four dollars shipping. So there hasn’t been as much of an advantage to buying current pulps. But now we have programs like Kindle, Nook and Smashwords. And prices are good - often as low as $0.99 to $2.99. So I think we’re seeing a renaissance of pulp fiction.

Some will argue that the price of e-reading devices negates this theory. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to have a dedicated e-reader to read e-books. Millions upon millions of people now use smartphones, iPads and iPods, and other tablets and laptops. I think it’s fair to say that most households in the US at least have a desktop computer. And reading applications are available for all of these devices. Granted, most people aren’t going to lug around a Dell for the purpose of reading a $0.99 novel. But someone with an iPhone, waiting at the subway stop? A student sitting in class, bored with the lecture, taking notes on their iPad (Not that I would ever advocate classroom distractions…)? My own mom, who used to have a travel bag dedicated to the books she wanted to read on vacation, and now has an iPad as well?

The devices are already here, and people are already using them. Now, the product is here too. Some of it good, some of it not so much. Kinda like the Executioner books, or the monthly romances, or the old pulps of old. And the best part is, you can try samples for free of most of these books (as long as the author has made it available). A whole world of inexpensive, fun books is becoming available again.

Welcome back pulps! We’ve missed you.