Math, Guns, and Snark: SLHuang's Self-Publishing Thread

LAgrunion said:

Hey you didn't say that to me.

*feels devalued*

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YOU TOO DONKEY!!!!!

*feeds you all the hay*

cutecontinent said:

what about enabling kdp select? at least on your short story. it accounts for like 75% of my sales

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I'm opposed to locking my readers in to Amazon.

I'm not saying I'd never ever use Select in the future, especially for a specific project. But as perhaps evidenced by the Creative Commons stuff, I have very strong opinions about openness and availability of creative works, and it would make me extremely unhappy to lock my readers in to a single retail platform. Particularly considering that (1) I think it would be a good thing for the overall marketplace (and for authors) if Amazon had less market share, and (2) locking people in to Amazon also means locking them in to a particular file format, and the MOBI format is one of the most ridiculous, bloated, frustrating, consumer-unfriendly . . . (And I say that as someone who has a Kindle.)

I totally understand why people choose to go with Select as a business decision -- it's often a good business decision, and depending on one's SPing goals, it makes a superduper amount of sense. But profit isn't the only variable I'm optimizing for (or even, probably, the primary one) -- again, I think it's totally cool for that to be others' main motivator, but this just means for me in particular, Select doesn't make sense.

Tooooooooooooooooomorrow I am announcing the reveal and release date for book 3

which will be in about 6 weeks...

oh dear have I forgotten something I'm sure I've forgotten something

ARGH

Okay, let's leave that aside for a second. What else is happening . . .

Oh! I just applied to join Codex, which I thought I'd mention in case anyone else here thinks it looks useful. It's a closed writing group for newer SFF writers, somewhat like SFWA except for "newer pros." Self-publishers can join as long as you have at least 1,000 sales earning you at least $5,000. Or you can join with 1 qualifying short story sale to a pro market (and there are also a few other ways). And unlike SFWA, it's free, which is relevant to my personal situation at the moment.

oh gawd book announcement tomorrow

HOLD ME

Root of Unity

IT IS ANNOUNCED!

Since it IS ANNOUNCED I shall announce it here as well! I sent my mailing list, made a blog post, announced on Twitter . . .

ROOT OF UNITY has a release date of September 30!



ISN'T THAT COVER REDONK AWESOME HOW AWESOME IS THAT COVER

It's available for preorder on Amazon. This is the first time I'm announcing *before* the book is totally finalized, so I am avoiding Kobo preorder until the ms is in its very final form because I've read that there have been snafus with people receiving an old draft (HORROR). And I have a query out to D2D confirming that I can upload a draft form and that it won't be a problem to change it prior to release. For now, I've marked those links as forthcoming. Barnes & Noble, of course, does not allow preorder.

But well over 90% of my sales come from Amazon anyway. It's absolutely painful to look at how low the other sales channels are and still stubbornly opt against going exclusive with Amazon, because I think my income would increase nontrivially if I did. A boost from Select would have to cover an almost-insignificant number of sales on other platforms, and I feel pretty sure it would. I weep.

BUT! I still desist, because I think it's better for the market for Amazon to have competitors, and because I am opposed to locking my readers in to a specific retailer and ebook format. But I feel the need to be honest about this for other SPers reading this, because if I were in this purely as a moneymaking venture . . . (I absolutely can't fault authors who use Select. My weeping is that the other retailers can't seem to Retail Better, not at consumers or authors.)

I'm all nerves, btw. The more popular my series gets (and let's be real, it's not all THAT popular yet, but it's slowly increasing), the more anxious I get about new releases. WHAT IF THEY HATE THIS ONE! Etc..

*flails*

Oh! I also released a new "interstitial" short story today through my mailing list, free-to-subscribers, and have that up for preorder as well to release on Sept 1. It's about 8,200 words, so more a novelette than a short story, and the time I spent on it was probably far out of proportion with what I'll get back from it, but I wanted to write it, dammit.

I've been thinking about doing a bundle eventually, books 1-3 for $10. Anyone have experience with bundling? I'm also seriously considering going permafree with Book 1. Gonna see if I can get a Bookbub ad on Book 1 for this release in any event. I have a lot more reviews now so maybe?

Oh dear lawd this is the most disorganized post ever. I'm still discombobulated by everything I've been doing the past few days. I'M SORRY, DON'T LOOK. *hides*

J. Tanner said:

If you get it, I recommend also temporarily dropping the price of the other books and adding the "limited time sale" notice into the top of the blurb for book 1. I've seen this be really effective for a few people in generating sell-through for multiple books.

Permafree and bundling seem like an "or" decision with three books. There's a decent argument for either one, but I'd say try permafree first for a while on its own and wait to bundle for book 4. So then you have a freebie, and then a $9.99 bundle that's basically 50% off the set of 4 and still a discount for those who've read a theoretical permafree book 1.

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Ooo, good thoughts, J. Tanner! Thank you so much. This sounds like a good plan. (Permafree is also less work than bundling, so yay!)

cutecontinent said:

Congrats. ^^ Nice work. And I 100% agree about Amazon. Seems like no one else can compete with them.

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It's sad, isn't it? I think we'd all be better off if someone could. :-/

M. H. Lee said:

And if you do bundle your books, make sure to bundle them at $9.99 not $10 on Amazon. (They go back to a 35% payout when you get to $10. Hate it, but that's the way it goes.)

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Haha, $9.99 was what I meant, I was just rounding. I'm glad you made note of that for anyone else reading the thread, thanks! *facepalm*

Preorders

So, the reason not all of my preorder links are out simultaneously this time is that this is the first time I'm trying to do a preorder before the manuscript is *quite* in its completed form. Some things I should share with y'all:

* Amazon: Most people know this one. They allow a draft upload, but if you don't have the final in by 10 days before, they take away your preorder for a year. They won't just assume the draft you uploaded IS the final copy; you have to mark it as such before the 10-day period.

* Draft2Digital: This is what tripped me up. They allow "assetless preorder" which means you upload without a manuscript. I found that in their FAQ. So I tried, but it wouldn't let me. Confused by the fact that they seemed to allow preorder without the final ms, I tried uploading something else (I just used book 2) and emailed them. The answer: (1) You have to ASK them to have assetless preorder enabled on your account, (2) you CANNOT upload a draft manuscript or it will cause problems, and (3) for Apple, if you do an assetless preorder you must upload the book 10 business days before release date (14 calendar days). As always, Draft2Digital customer service has been absolutely stellar in quickly sorting out my account and fixing my book to delete the incorrect manuscript, but I thought I'd share here so others don't make the same mistake.

* Kobo: I've heard of Kobo preorder having issues for others, but it worked fine for me on book 2. HOWEVER, I've never updated a draft with them. I did a search and found some people complaining that on release day readers got sent an old copy of their book (no!). These complaints were from 2013, but I'm still a bit cautious, so I'll be waiting to post the Kobo preorder link until I can upload the ms in final form.

* B&N: Does not allow preorder, as we know. Sigh. So few of my sales come from B&N these days that I don't care nearly as much as I used to, though. eta: BUT you can get B&N preorder through Draft2Digital! See J. Tanner's posts below, yay!

J. Tanner said:

I expect you've considered this, and prefer direct upload, but for anyone following along...

You can get preorders on B&N by going through an aggregator like Smashwords or Draft2Digital.

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Wait, really? I thought the D2D FAQ said somewhere that if the retailer does not allow preorders they would send the file on release day. This might be a reason for me to switch B&N over to D2D -- I've been leaning toward doing that for other reasons anyway.

Wow, thank you for the heads up on this!

J. Tanner said:

I expect you've considered this, and prefer direct upload, but for anyone following along...

You can get preorders on B&N by going through an aggregator like Smashwords or Draft2Digital.

Another benefit is if you're pricing outside their preferred $3-10 band (like my 99 cent short stories), you actually get higher royalties even after their commission.

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YOU ARE TOTALLY AND A HUNDRED PERCENT RIGHT ABOUT THIS!

I just set up a preorder for my little in-between short story through Draft2Digital and not only is the preorder live at Barnes & Noble but since it's 99c, you're absolutely right about the higher royalty. I never noticed that! I'm thinking of switching my other 99c short story to D2D.

Thank you so much! Every time I think I've started to have a good working knowledge of everything I learn something new. Really appreciate you pointing these two things out!!!

I GOT A BOOKBUB!

I tried a 99c campaign first, as I figured that doubled my chances (you can resubmit for free right away if denied), and also because I've been thinking of employing permafree for book 1 so I figured this was my last time to 99-cent book 1. I wasn't expecting to get in, but I did! They put me in the "Supernatural Suspense" category instead of "Science Fiction," which is fine with me -- I know my book is hard to categorize and it's not exactly robots and rockets. (Well, some robots.)

They gave me September 27 which is pretty dang good considering my announced release date of September 30. I've told them I'll run the sale through the 30th -- they said their tail is about 4 days long and the 99c should give me a nice release-day bump too. I'm probably still going to be in Japan so I'm going to have to be VERY CAREFUL about time zones!

Any advice about sale timespans and running other promos in that period from people who've been there would be appreciated. My last promo period was Bookbub-less so I'm not sure how many of the same rules apply.

Anyway, right now I'm thinking I'll knock book 1 up to full price after the sale and then possibly permafree it in a few month when post-release sales start to slump, depending on what my graph is doing. Maybe in time for the holidays. (If anyone has advice/etc for this sort of thing it's appreciated as well.)

eta: Oh, and the second short story dropped on retailers yesterday. I always forget about those because they're mainly mailing-list incentives.