Writerly Stuff

I think I was supposed to do a post about titles this morning, but I forgot and that one should probably be written ahead of time instead of on the fly.  Right now is definitely 'on the fly'.  LOL

Amazon, in its infinite wisdom, has changed the KDP page for checking out book sales - the Dashboard.  (And even the tiny picture next to my bookmark for them is different, making it so I have to go looking for it instead of going right to it.)  Turds.  I guess, for a limited time, you can still see the data the old way, but I'm not inclined.  If you're landing there for the first time, you might see that some of the metrics have a picture of a lock on them.  Click the lock, fix your preferences, and all will be well.  (It doesn't tell you to do that.  I found out by accident.)

I probably don't need to say this, but I detest change for the sake of change.  We'll see if the Dashboard is actually better or just different.  I'm holding off on my opinion there.

I guess now I could use a sale to show me exactly how it would work in the new Dashboard. :shrug:  If wishes were fishes, we'd all eat like kings.

I don't need to tell you that sales have sucked this year.  Well, ever since I went wide, I guess.  Of course, there's been very little marketing on my part, so that might be a huge factor.  The will to market is a dry, dry well.  As is the budget for marketing.  With no budget, all things markety have to be done by me, and with a dry gumption well... Umm, yah.

Anyway, enough with my whining.  I'm making progress on Shroudlands 2.  Not great leaps and bounds, but progress.  I'm almost at 18K words now.  My brain threw a curve at me last night that I wasn't expecting, so we'll see how that plays out.  Or whether I need to trash that plot path and initiate a do-over.

How are things in your world?

The D2D Adventure Begins. Again.

 Yesterday began the not-hard but totally tedious and slightly irritating process of listing my books with Draft2Digital.  I started out with what I figured would be easiest - a single title novel rather than a series.  

Most of the process is pretty simple.  But I knew that from the last time I went with D2D.  Unfortunately, they changed something.  Now, they make you pick one of their pre-set formats.  Which is probably awesome for people who haven't already formatted their books and don't have an idea of how to do it.  For me?  Well, let's just say things didn't go exactly as they'd gone before.  

Oh, the manuscript itself seems fine.  It's the front and back matter that gave me a headache today.  Their theme thingies were giving me weird spacing.  Like the pre-formatted list on my Other Books page suddenly had a BIG LETTER at the beginning of the list and was hard left-aligned while the other books were normal and tabbed over.  You know, like you want for the story part.  And I couldn't find a way to force it to recognize those first and last chunks as NOT BOOK.

Although, now that I think about it, maybe a section break would work.  I'll try that with the next book.

Anyway, I went with the simplest theme I could, unchecked some thingies, and ended up with everything looking pretty much like I want it to look.  And since this is Blink of an I, I don't think anyone's really going to get themselves in a tizzy over the slight differences.  :shrug:  I could be wrong.  Time will tell.

Anyway, it's a learning process I'm happy to get through.  It's just tedious.  And if tedious bothered me, I wouldn't have made it this far in the self-publishing thing. 

Since it's a learning process, I made a spreadsheet.  Shocking, I know.  But this way, I'll be able to keep track of where I'm at in the process with the 15 other books, as they drop.  I have a page with all my books and where they're at in the process, then another page with which outlets they'relisted and when go live.  And of course, a page showing what they're listed at and how much I'll make from each.  And what sold where.  And probably a tab each with links to the outlets themselves.  It's all very tabiful.  Do you hate me yet?  You know me and spreadsheets.  (Or if you're new here, you don't, but you'll learn.)

Someone mentioned that I might be able to get Amazon to let my books free sooner than the end of their contracts, but I'm happy to let them ride along and fall out naturally.  It'll give me time to work with the books as they come out without having all 16 dropped on my head at once.  And I can still utilize the free days and countdown deals until that happens.  Can't hurt, eh?

Okay, so Blink is out to a variety of outlets.  Six of them are already showing published.  Two of them are foreign, so unless you read in German (the link's not ready yet) or French, they're not for you.  Two of them are for borrowing from libraries, so I can't post the links because I don't have the apps for that.  But it's also now at B&N and Kobo, which I can actually see.  I'm waiting on Apple, two services I've never heard of, and Hoopla (another library service).  Hoopla is supposed to take a while, so don't jump right over there.

Today, barring acts of payjob and any minor apocalypses, I'll begin work on getting the A Model Curse series loaded and ready for bear.  SU doesn't drop out of Amazon until Wednesday, so I've got some time to work on the formatting for those.  I'd like them to publish together, if at all possible.  Fingers crossed.

And I'll be adding Universal Links to the Pages here once I get those finalized.  You know, because D2D provides universal links and junk.  Here's the one for Blink, btw, All sorts of interesting things D2D didn't have back in 2016.  Weeee.

Unfortunately, dealing with all this now is distracting me from editing.  Derp.  I'll pull me head out soon.  Promise. What I can't promise is when this next book will be ready for people to read.  :shrug:  If I could split myself into three people, that would help.  Busy busy busy.  Which reminds me I need to do something for the payjob before I forget.

On that note, I'll let you go.  Stay tuned.

So, A Thing Happened

So, a thing happened.  I can't remember if I talked about it here or over at The Writing Spectacle, but this is the gist of it...  Earlier this month, I got a letter from Amazon.  It talked about illegitimate page reads and how they weren't paying for those or some such nonsense. I read it, thought it was a general letter to authors in the KU program, and filed it in the Archives.  Then I dilly-dallied checking out my September numbers until a few days ago.  Imagine my surprise, when the report showed a big fat zero in the place where it should've shown money for my page reads.

Then I remembered the letter.

I went into the Archives and pulled the letter out.  I guess it wasn't for everyone after all.  At the bottom, it said if I had any questions to reply to the letter, so I did.  I got an auto-gram stating it could take up to 5 days to research my case.  This morning, I got a new letter telling me basically nothing.  It did assure me that my account is still in good standing, but reaffirming the fact that illegitimate page reads were not going to get paid for.  But not actually saying my page reads were illegitimate or what have you.

Basically what I took from the reply was that those page reads I had in September are gone and I have no recourse to get my big whopping $3.79 from Amazon.  Sort of a 'so sorry, Charlie, but you're screwed.  Thanks for playing and we appreciate your business.' kind of thing.

Except now I don't feel like I can trust Amazon to give me a definite accounting of what I'm getting paid.  I mean, it's always been a case of trust.  Authors have to trust all of their sales outlets to give them the right numbers and then to put the right amounts into their bank accounts.  We have to trust the booksellers to not screw us royally.  And I can do that.  I have done it for over 6 years now.  Except now I can't.

Amazon wants me to continue to trust them, but they don't trust that my sales are real sales.  As if I somehow got someone to make up page reads somehow and risked my account in order to bilk the big 'Zon out of less than $4.  I'm the chick who found a pricey cell phone at the lake and then did my damndest to find the owner, including waiting around at a safe location for someone to come pick up the thing.  I'm the gal at the Walmart who stops the dude whose dollar just fell out of his pocket.  I couldn't have been in on it.  And since I wasn't in on it, they have got to be somehow thinking there's a Robin Hood character randomly faking page reads so the little guys like me can have pennies out of the big KU pool.  I can't parse it any other way.  

And they want me to remain exclusive with them throughout all this.  Except if I can't trust them to report the right page reads to me, how can I trust them to report actual sales?  How can I trust that tomorrow they won't tell me my book sales are illegitimate and they aren't paying for those either?  =o\

I've been a good little author.  I was on the frontlines defending Amazon when anyone would say anything negative about them.  And they thumbed their nose at me.  

Now, taking my books off Amazon would be stupid.  They're still the biggest fish in town and cancelling my books on there would be like cutting off nose because I ran afoul of a skunk.  Still need my nose, even if sometimes it encounters something that stinks.  But I am taking my books out of KU.  I can't see any other way around the lack of trust there. 

Unfortunately, a whole bunch of my books just re-upped for a 90 day stint.  If you're a subscriber, and you still want to read my books through KU, you'd better get cracking.

I managed to get Ugly and the Beast out just as it was renewing.  And Cinder Ugly a day before it went.  Sleeping Ugly should be out on the 1st.  That's one series.  As for the rest of them, they fall out eventually.  

I had hoped to do some kind of sale thing, but right now, I'm too meh.  I need to start thinking about going wide with all of these, which means changing back matter, etc.

It sucks.  Truly.  And you might think 'All this over $3.79???', but what if it was $379?  Or $3790?  Put it another way... What if it was $4 from me and $4 from you and $4 from every author in the KU program?  Why are we even in this thing if they can do this to any of us with no reason, no explanation, or anything?

They kicked me, who's no bigger than a guppy in the grand scheme of publishing.  I wonder how many other guppies they kicked this month.  

So, I'm out of it.  As soon as I can be out of it.  It was good while it lasted.  Time to dust off my Draft to Digital account and see if I can't pick my sales up off the floor.  A MODEL CURSE will be the first series to launch there.  I'll let you know about that and about the other series and singles as they become available widely.

By the way, don't look for me to do NaNoWriMo this year.  Maybe it'll be a NaNoEdMo if I can get my head out of my as... armpit long enough to get back to work on Untitled Fantasy, but there will be no new words.  

All Sixteen Now Available in Paperback

All sixteen of my novels are available in paperback now.  Mission accomplished.  Now I need to get off my ever-widening ass and write another book.  (Yes, the proofs have their own table and are held in place by two gnomes.)

Serial Crime Investigation Unit (S.C.I.U.)

Dying Embers

Fertile Ground

Early Grave

Dennis Haggarty Mysteries

Accidental Death

Natural Causes

Duke Noble, P.I.

Rumor Has It

Once Upon a Djinn

Wish in One Hand

In Deep Wish

Up Wish Creek

Wish Hits the Fan

A Model Curse

Sleeping Ugly

Ugly and the Beast

Cinder Ugly

Single Title

Project Hermes

Blink of an I

Unequal

Well, Wouldja Look at That

So, I've been trying to get Amazon to put the books for A Model Curse into a frickin' series, like they have with all my other books. Cuz, ya know, it's nice for readers to see that a book is part of a series and what order the books are in and junk.  Three days later, Amazon in its infinite wisdom presented me with this whole new thing they're doing.

Now, writers can manage their own series with this nifty new thingie-bob:

Umm... yeah.

Anyway, it was kinda buggy at first, but after several tries, I managed to create A Model Curse and add the three books to it.  It should be visible on the site within 72 hrs.  

Thank goodness all my other series books are still where they're supposed to be and I don't have to go through the trouble of creating and adding for them.  Whew.

One benefit I see is that this allows the author to come up with verbiage for the series, so when a reader goes to the series page, they can read about the series instead of getting the blurb for the first book in the series.  Unfortunately, this means some extra work for us - coming up with series blurbs and all that junk.  Goodreads had this ability for years, but I haven't really taken advantage of it.  Shame on me.  

I'll be working on this stuff over the next week or so.  Right now, I have four series available:

Serial Crimes Investigation Unit (Dying Embers, Fertile Ground, Early Grave)
A Dennis Haggarty Mystery (Accidental Death, Natural Causes)
Once Upon a Djinn (Wish in One Hand, In Deep Wish, Up Wish Creek, Wish Hits the Fan)
A Model Curse (Sleeping Ugly, Ugly and the Beast, Cinder Ugly)

Anyway, if you're writing in series and you need help with how to make those books be part of a series on Amazon, here's the linkie-loo to those instructions.

Good luck.  And may the sales be ever in your favor.  Or something. 

WTF Amazon?

Okay, so I started noticing this about a month ago, but Amazon has started letting people leave 'ratings' without leaving reviews.

And it sucks.

Wish in One Hand now has two single star ratings that drag down the overall star average without any explanation or user ID or anything.  No clue as to why they left a bad rating.  No clue if they even bought the damn book.  (Which I suspect they might not have since I hadn't sold any copies of WIOH this year prior to last week, and the rating came before the sales.)  No reasons, just slammed with shitty stars.

Goodreads, of course, has been doing this all along.  It sucks there, too.  I suspect, though, that people don't pay as much attention to the rating average on Goodreads when buying a book.  On Amazon, stars are critical to sales.  You see all five little yellow stars filled or partially filled and you're more likely to click through.  You see only four stars and the fourth star isn't even filled in, and you might just move on to something with more star power.

I mean, let's face it - people are lazy.  You have to grab them immediately and encourage them to put forth the effort to click through and read the blurb.  Stars do that.  More stars = more click-throughs = more chances to make a sale.  And the reverse of that is also true.

Gah, as if selling books wasn't hard enough.

And it's not like people won't abuse that rating thing.  Noooooo.  At least when someone had a bone to pick with you before, you could maybe contest the bad review they left.  This?  I'm not sure how anyone does anything about a random anonymous bad rating.

Not sure what the fuck Amazon thinks it's doing there.  I just hopes it goes away before it does too much more damage.  

The Best Laid Plans

If you're in the Kindle Select program (the Amazon exclusive thing), you know that you have 90 day windows in which to use their prezzies to market your stuff (i.e. free days or Kindle Countdown Deals).  Each book has a start date and an end date to show you your window.  It's all cool.

Except when you have a series and all of their dates are staggered around. 

My Once Upon a Djinn series is staggered because I wasn't planning anything when I did my releases, so there's no cohesion within the series for Kindle Select purposes.  WIOH, IDW, and WHTF are all kind of close together.  Poor UWC is hanging out there alone.  Which makes marketing a little sketchy sometimes. 

So, I figured I'd take it out of the program until it got closer to the others.  And that's where the issue came up.

Right after I set UWC to not be in the program - a program you have to be in to garner page reads through Kindle Unlimited - someone in the UK started reading the series in KU.  They went through WIOH in a couple days and started IDW, which meant that they'd be getting to UWC shortly.  Except UWC wasn't in the KU program anymore.

Blerg.

So, despite my idea to have the books be together as a series in the program, I had to put UWC back in right after I took it out.  Don't want to disappoint the reader.  Lucky for me, the whole thing is automatic.  Once you click that you want it in Kindle Select, it's available for KU subscribers to read.

I guess there are worse problems to have than the one where someone is reading my series so I can't be all anal about dates and junk.  I'd still like to have them be uniform, but c'est la vie.  Wishing for the ability to do so is like wishing for no page reads.  And that's just silly.

Do you get anal about stuff?  Or is it just me?

Pondering the Rankings

Amazon rankings...  There's a love/hate relationship going on there.  But what does it even mean?

If I sell one book, that book's ranking jumps from somewhere in the millions to somewhere in the hundred thousands.  The higher the ranking obviously means better exposure and thus better sales, but only when you get in the top 100 on the narrower genre listings.  Does it really make a difference to readers if the book is in the overall 6 digits rather than 7? 

For that matter, does a higher ranking mean a better book?  I've read some highly ranked books that were total dogs and some lowly ranked books I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Is it a matter of following the herd?  Oh, look how many people bought this book, it must be a good one? 

I can get my books to jump by offering them at a steep discount and advertising the hell out of them, but that only means people were looking for a deal and something about my ad sparked their interest.  Whether the jump in ranking equals a jump in sales?  No clue.  Generally, once the ad gets shuffled to the back of everyone's inboxes and the new ads for the day come out, my sales tank. 

How often does anyone really look at the lists?  I mean if you manage to get on one of the Top 100 lists, that is.  Beyond that, you can't look at anything. Wonder what #102 is?  Too bad.

Last month, I actually took the time to find new books on the Top 100 lists in political thriller and suspense.  I found two books I actually wanted to read.  (New to me, and underappreciated, of course.)  One of them was a dog.  I haven't started the other yet, because I got burned on the last one.  If the other one sucks, too, I'm done trying to find books on those lists.  I ain't got time for that shit.

So, how does the book buying public make heads or tails out of any of this ranking stuff?

:shrug:

Just pondering.

Do you look at rankings when you're trying to find a new book?  Can you make any sense of this stuff?

Sales and Kindle Unlimited

Here is a look at my Amazon 30-day sales graph as of yesterday

If you haven't seen one of these, the top graph is the quantity of whole books sold and the bottom is pages read through the Kindle Unlimited program. 

The spikes you see in the first graph directly correlate to paid advertising.  There's a little residual sale activity after the ad, but beyond that, crickets in the whole book sales area. 

What's notable is the continued page reads after the sale is over.  Two weeks after the ad went live for Dying Embers, I'm still seeing people in the KU program reading books even if nobody is buying the whole thing all at once. 

Sure, these numbers aren't going to wow anyone and I'm nowhere near making the list of top sellers in KU, but to see residual pages reads at all is always welcome.

This is why I keep my books in KU.  As I've said before, the times I've taken my books to a wider distribution, I do not see enough sales to make up for the page reads I've lost.  Of course, your mileage may vary.  We all have to do things that work best for us.  I just don't have a wide enough reach to bother having my books available everywhere.  And I don't have a large group of people out there telling me they'd buy my books if only they were available for Nook or Kobo or whatever.  (I used to have a couple people who asked, but one sale here or there wasn't making it worth my while.  If you don't have a Kindle and want to read my books, Amazon has an app for that.)  My stay in Kindle Select could change, but for now, this is working for me. 

Any questions? 

Watch Everything

Over the weekend, I sold a book.  Yes, I sell few enough right now that it's an event, but that's not why I bring it up.  I sold a copy of a book at $3.99.  And I got $1.40 in royalties when I should have gotten $2.74.  (When you're small beans, every penny counts.)

Basically, they gave me the 35% royalty rate instead of the 70% rate.

Once I realized this, I checked first to make sure I hadn't accidentally clicked the 35% rate at some point.  Nope.  I've got it clicked right.  Then I contacted Amazon to get it fixed.  (I'm still waiting on a reply at the time of this post's creation.)

Then I got to thinking.  I don't usually check this stuff.  Usually, I assume everything is hunky-dory until I match up the deposits with the amounts I assume I'm going to get.  Which is two months down the road from the actual sale.  So far, everything has matched up. 

But what if it didn't?

And what if I was selling way more books, so one messed up royalty percentage wasn't as obvious?

What a clusterfuck that would be.

Now, I don't believe this was intentional.  I think it's more an issue of the massive amount of calculations and code it takes to run a website like Amazon.  There are bound to be errors now and again. 

Sometimes, it's a customer issue.  In February, Amazon showed that I sold a copy of Project Hermes, but the money never showed in my Royalties Earned section.  I chalked that up to the actual payment never going through - which sometimes happened.  Sucks, but it does.  Oddly enough, I got paid for a copy of PH in April that I never showed selling.  So it all worked out somehow or other.

My point is authors really have to watch what's going on.  All of it.  All the time.  $1.34 doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up over time.  Or think of it this way, that's a cup of coffee.  Over 100 sales, it's $134 which I'm sure none of us can afford to lose.  Over 1000 sales... 10000 sales...

:shudder:

Or think about the agent that screwed all those authors out of royalties last year because he was funneling the money into his private charity.  And somehow the authors just assumed their books weren't selling?  I'd be watching even closer when someone was handling those amounts of my money.  Embezzling... it's a real thing, folks.

I know it's a pain in the ass to have to watch every little thing.  We've all got better things to do with our time than babysit this stuff.  But not watching could really hurt the bottom line.  And I, personally, like to get paid what I'm owed.  

Anyway, I'll try to remember to let you know how this all works out.  I have every faith that Amazon will fix my little burp.  Well, not every faith.  I did screen capture how my pricing page looked for WIOH before I emailed them.  You know, just in case.  ;o)

Stuffs

Amazon wrote back and told me everything was fine.  :shrug:  So, I proceeded with the marketing yesterday.  And nothing happened.  I'll keep trying, but I know how things go when I don't have paid advertising.

Anyway, here's what I put out to all the FB groups yesterday:

Ready for some exciting reads? Try the Serial Crimes Investigation Unit (SCIU) series. Follow Jace as she pursues a killer burning victims alive. Watch Teri as she hunts a rapist intent on playing God. Tag along with Ned as he tracks a murderer killing the elderly. Snag all the suspense, thrills, and justice right now for less than $5/£5. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.) - with links and hashtags and junk.

Lame?  Possibly.  But I was trying something different.  I figured I'd get at least an A for effort, but I suspect I got an E because no sales. and my rankings didn't move in an upward direction, so no downloading for future KU reads either.

In other news, I got back to editing Ugly and the Beast.  It's not quite as awful as I thought.  Oh, it's pretty messed up - being a first draft and all - but I can work with this.  Then I need to get off my dead ass and write Cinder Ugly.  The money might not be there for editing and publishing, but I can have things ready for when it is there.  Sitting around waiting for the magical moment when all the stars align and their light illuminates me is for the birds.

So, it's back to work for me.  Which really bums out my dead ass.  It was really getting into not working.  But not working means not getting paid in the future.  Know what I'm sayin'?

What stuffs are going on in your world these days?  All good things, I hope.

Technical Difficulties

I was all prepared to post about the sale I'm having for the Serial Crimes Investigation Unit series, but in getting ready for the hoopla, I noticed something's not quite right.  Currently, Amazon is showing Dying Embers at $0.00. 

Gah.

Good thing I check prior to actually marketing.  Fertile Ground and Early Grave are showing correct at $1.99 each, which is good, but the flagship of the series is Dying Embers.  Can't market the whole series if the first book is wrong.  And right now, I'm not sure if someone one-clicking the book will get it free or wind up paying 99c when they thought it was free.  Either way, it's a pretty bad way to have a sale. 

I've contacted Amazon.  So far, they've been pretty good about getting things fixed when I've contacted them.  Hopefully today's error will be fixed quickly, so I don't lose too many marketing days.

I assume everything is okay on the UK site.  They won't show me pricing there because it's not my country.  Which is weird because I can see pricing on the sites for other countries.  :shrug:  If you happen to be able to see pricing in the UK and see it as free, let me know. 

Ah, life and it's occasional technical difficulties. 

Anyway, if you've already read DE, pick up a copy of Fertile Ground and/or Early Grave at $2 off.  I can tell by the way page reads go that they're real page-turners.  (I always thought so, but it's nice to have it confirmed by other people.)

Using Amazon Perks More Effectively

Okay, so if you sell books exclusively through Amazon, you know you have these perks you can utilize to help boost sales - chiefly, the Kindle Countdown Deals (KCD) and the free book days. 

Once every 90 days, you can choose to discount your books or have them free for up to 7 days.  With the discount, the days have to be in a row.  With the free, you can sprinkle them around.  Every 90 days you can use one or the other, but not both. 

I've used the KCD and the free promotions, but probably not to the best of their abilities.  And I don't always remember to use them every 90 days. 

The sales I had for Project Hermes, Sleeping Ugly, and Blink of an I were built to use up my KCD before my 90 days ran out. It's a use it or lose it kind of thing.  You get a whole 'nother 7 days when your clock resets, but you can never get back the days you didn't use.  So, I figured, why not use them.

Part of my problem was not keeping good track of when my 90 days were for each of my books.  So, yep, built another spreadsheet.  (It's what I do.) 

As you can see, I've got a line for each of the books (sorted by series), with columns full of dates - when my exclusivity starts, when it ends, and the next one and the next one.  I also mark when I've used my perks by putting a solid box around the date I'm currently in.  So I can plan accordingly. 

The other day, Silver accused me of being organized.  I scoffed.  Traditionally, I have been about the least organized person I could think of.  But, I guess, as I got older and had more time on my hands, I did become organized.  Hence the spreadsheets.  :shrug: 

Being organized has helped a lot with this business part of writing.  (Not so much with the writing part of writing.  That's still an unorganized mess.)   I'm probably still not using all the perks to the best of my abilities - say, getting advertising set up in time for it to be effective - but I'm working on it. 

I hope this helps give you some ideas on how to keep track of this stuff.  Use it if it helps and if it's no use to you, thanks for reading all the way down to here anyway.

Do you use the perks?  Any ideas on how to better utilize them?

Observations While Searching for Books

I spent part of my time this week looking for something to read on Kindle.  I wanted a suspense, preferably free, that met my parameters (low reviews, new-to-me).  The Top lists of Free weren't giving me what I wanted, so I tried searching the 'Zon.  And I learned some interesting things...

When you search 'free' on Amazon, it pops up all the Kindle Unlimited books.  Which are only free if you're a subscriber, so that doesn't do me a damn bit of good.  (And they aren't really free, folks, they're included in your subscription price.)  So I sorted by price from low to high.  It was still throwing KU books in there, but I got some actually free books that time.

A bunch of authors are doing this thing where readers get the first six or ten or whatever chapters FREE.  Which isn't a whole book, it's a teaser for a whole book.  As a reader, I do not approve of this.  As a writer, I can totally see how that might be a good marketing thing, but I feel like it would just piss readers off.  With the 'look inside' feature, readers can get a whole bunch of chapters free for every book.  Listing the first x-number of chapters as a separate entity feels like a bait and switch to me.  :shrug:

Other authors are doing this thing where the whole book is split into 'parts'.  The first part is free, and the other parts you have to pay for.  I got caught on one of these a while back.  I downloaded it and got into it before I realized it was only a first part.  It was a good first part, but the idea irritated me sufficiently as to make me not buy the other two parts.  Isn't that how drug dealers sell their junk?  Give customers a taste and once they're hooked, you've got them.  I don't respond well to those sales tactics.

Another thing I noticed was books by authors I've never heard of with an obscene number of reviews.  The smell test tells me something's off.  Big Name Bestseller only has 500 reviews, but Joe Schmoe self-publishes and has 3000 reviews?  Umm. No.  It makes me wonder how much Joe paid for those reviews and it makes me think few of them are real.

I still haven't found any books to download.  For now, I'll read paperbacks and keep looking for the elusive 'right book'. 

Those are my observations and opinions.  What are yours?

Oh, and speaking of searching for a good book to read, both Wish in One Hand and In Deep Wish are on sale today only.  99c each.

Paperback Update Stuff

Here's an article on Moving From Createspace to KDP that explains some things.  Mainly, I learned why I can't find the easy way to port my books over.  They don't give you the option, I guess, until they send you the letter.  And I haven't gotten mine yet.  I expect they're doing all the more important, better selling people first.  :shrug:

My proof for Sleeping Ugly arrived yesterday.  It's gorgeous.  Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the Createspace system and I had no way to approve it.  I wrote them a note and they fixed it.  I approved the paperback and it's available for purchase now at CS.  It'll be available on Amazon in 3-5 days.

Here's the paperback cover...

Pretty, eh?  She sends it to me only in PDF, so I had to screen capture the above, but that's basically it.

I'm waiting on the proof for Early Grave.  Here's the print cover I came up with for that...

Fingers crossed it looks as good in person.

Every finger crossed that my paperbacks work out with the Amazon printing process.  If I have to buy a new set of proofs for 12 books, it's going to put a dent in my budget.  And if I have to buy all new proofs, I'll be giving away old proofs.  My friggin' proof shelf is overloaded as it is.

Oh, and I ordered copies of Sleeping Ugly.  When those arrive, I'll do a giveaway or something.

Don't expect a paperback of Blink of an I any time soon.  I had planned to start that process after I did Early Grave, but then the CS thing became real.  It's gone this long without a paperback, it can go a little while longer.

Meanwhile, it's back to manuscript polishing on Unequal for me.  I have about a hundred pages left to go before I send this to AWE tomorrow.  And after I finish this, I will be back to writing new words on Ugly and the Beast. 

Have a great weekend, folks. 

Stuff and Junk

Hey All.

First things first, apparently a bunch of people got notification letters*, so it's official that Createspace is closing.  Don't panic.  I seems like if you do nothing, Amazon will port all your books over for you eventually.  If you'd rather not trust them to do it right, you might want to start thinking about moving your titles over ASAP.

There was also something about being able to move all your titles at once, but I can't find that on Amazon.  I'll check CS.  And something about being able to just move your book without a whole bunch of set-up mess, which I thought I saw the last time I was in there, but last night I couldn't find it.

Okay, with that out of the way, I wanted to remind you all of the immortal words from Galaxy Quest: "Never give up.  Never surrender."  Yesterday morning, I was in crisis about my book.  Several of you gave me advice and pep talks and offers of assistance, all of which I appreciated.  Yesterday afternoon, I kicked my own ass and made myself do the work.  Once I got out of my own way, it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.  After I got rolling, it took me about three hours to fix all the problems with that horrid scene.  And I stopped for the night feeling pretty good about what I'd done.  We'll see what today's editing session brings.

Yesterday, between crisis and resolution, I read.  Which makes me want to remind you all again, find a good proofreader (or an editor who proofreads, too).  The book I'm reading is edited pretty well for all the other things, but it has a problem where an incorrect word is in place of the correct one.  I can't think of any examples this morning.  Oh, yeah, STATING instead of STARTING.  They missed the R and no one caught it because it's still a word and no amount of spellchecking software will catch it.  Now, I know mistakes happen, and if that was the only one, I wouldn't bother mentioning it.  But it's one of many so far and I'm only halfway through.  It's harshing what would otherwise be an awesome read. 

Speaking of software, Elizabeth Spann Craig mentioned a program the other day that helps edit for you - ProWritingAid.  She's not recommending it in place of a good editor, but more along the lines of using it to catch crap before you send to an editor or what have you.  It's only $50 a year, which is pretty reasonable if it helps stop flaws from muddying up your work.  I don't have the $50 to throw around right now, but I'll be thinking about it in the future. 

In a pinch, slogging through Word's grammar-checker will work, too.  Oh, it throws out a lot of suggestions that don't make sense, but it also catches things.  Use whatever tool you can to make your book the best it can be, right?

And that's about it for me this morning.  Feel free to chime in.


*I have not gotten any letters from CS yet, but I expect them shortly. 

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Reviews

You may have heard that some Amazon reviews are disappearing.  In their defense, they're trying to get rid of fake reviews and scammers to make Amazon a better place to shop.  A noble endeavor, but unfortunately, there has been collateral damage during this bloodbath.  Actual, legitimate reviews are getting caught in the crossfire.  And actual, real, honest authors are taking a hit.

First off, you can't review a book if Amazon thinks you're friends with the author in question.  Because, in their minds, friends can't be objective.  And to use their verbiage it might be 'perceived as bias'.  I've had some reviews I've written suddenly disappear and others get rejected for this very 'reason'.  And it pisses me off.  I am friends with some writers - BECAUSE they write good stuff.  And I review their books because the books are GOOD.  derp.  If that's bias, then I guess I'm biased toward a bunch of awesome writers I don't even know.  I'm not shining readers on.  I'm not faking my enthusiasm, so my friends can get more sales.  I'm geniunely enthusiastic about good writing.  Always.  I'm not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.  For Amazon to delete or reject my reviews is insulting as hell.  Not a damn thing I can do about it, though.

Harrumph. In case you can't tell, I got a 'you can't review this... ever' notice when I tried to post a review for a friend's book that I honestly loved.  GAH!

Yesterday morning, an acquaintance of mine posted to Facebook that Amazon had deleted ALL the reviews she's ever written.  Which explains why Accidental Death had 9 reviews and now only has 8.  I've known this gal since before either of us were published - when we were both part of a group of writers encouraging each other... so like 2006.  She made it going traditional and I'm indie, but we made it.  And now, suddenly, Amazon has decided her reviews are faked.  I hope she's contacting Amazon and pitching a fit.  It sucks for her.

But, yeah, this hurts me.  AD didn't have that many reviews to begin with and I've got a big marketing thing going on starting the 19th.  Every review counts.  And that one I lost was a 5-star.  :sniffle:

Then again, fake reviews hurt us all.  Actual fake reviews.  I'm hoping that once this storm is over, the honest reviewers can get their reviews reinstated.  I'm also hoping that once the storm has passed, and the majority of the shithead scammers are gone, the rest of us will reap the benefits.  We just have to survive this and ride it out.

Hang in there, folks.  It's likely to get worse before it gets better.  Until then, if you want to review a book but Amazon won't let you, go post it to Goodreads.  I'm hopeful this will out get fixed eventually.  Hopeful is all I can be right now.

Addressing Amazon Issues and Myths

If you're an author publishing through Amazon - and let's face it, that's about all of us - there is apparently some issue with the reports.  I've been getting an error message for the past week or so. I did some research last night by going into the community forum at KDP and it's not just me.  Loads of people are getting the same message with a subsequent drop in reported sales.  No need to panic.  I'm sure they're addressing the issue.  Also, some actual sales are showing up as free in the reports, even when your books are not free.  This morning the graph is telling me I gave away three books. None of my books are free right now.  However, the month to date report is showing them as sales, so it's all good. 

It does bring up an interesting quandary, though.  How do writers know whether the actual royalty deposits are correct when the reports are off?  No clue.  But there wasn't really a clue before.  I did see one person claiming this was a way for Amazon to steal from us.  Umm, and they call me paranoid. 

I guess we just have to trust that someone somewhere is keeping an eye on it.  Because, seriously?  There are certain people who are so hot to damn Amazon, you know darn well the company would be in deep shit if they tried to fudge this stuff.  So, it would be stupid of them to do it.  And they don't seem stupid. 

So, anyway, hang in there.  I'm sure this stuff will get cleared up eventually and we'll all get the money that's due us. 

In other Amazon related stuff, I saw a new report that Amazon is screwing us in the reviews.  The person posting this even had a link to Amazons terms for reviewing books, and guess what?  I read them and they don't seem any different than they were the last time some arm-waving fearmonger claimed Amazon was screwing us out of reviews.  Again, no worries here.  Yeah, reviews seem to be down, but it's across the board, not just at Amazon.  I think it has to do with people not wanting to write a review.  How many of us have a boatload of Goodreads ratings without corresponding reviews?  Yeah.  So, again, I don't think this is anything to get excited about. 

Hell, maybe the fearmongers who keep saying 'Amazon won't let you review that' are actually keeping people from trying to review books.  Jus' sayin'. 

Oh, and the whole thing about having to spend $50 at Amazon to be able to write a review?  It's not new and it's not stopping people from reviewing your books.  For one thing, it's cumulative across the entirety of your online purchasing lifespan and includes everything you've ever bought at Amazon (except gift cards, I guess.  :shrug:).  If you've never in your whole life bought more than $50 worth of stuff at Amazon, you can't write a review.  Who hasn't bought $50+ worth of stuff through Amazon??   I see this as a non-issue.  So, if you want to review a book at Amazon, go for it.  If they, for some reason, deny your review - reword it and try again later.  (I had a couple reviews get denied because they had curse words in them, so I fixed it and resubmitted and it worked.) 

Any other Amazon issues out there that need to be addressed?  Anything you've heard/read but haven't had time to confirm/deny yet? 

Why I'm Amazon Exclusive

All my books are available at Amazon.  And only at Amazon* or through Createspace (which is owned by Amazon). 

Why?

Well, there's the ease.  I'm lazy and Amazon makes everything easy for me.  One place to sell books, one place to market books, one place to check stats... you get the picture.  But that's not the only reason.

I've tried putting my books on other sites.  Know what happened?  Next to nothing.  I sold 12 books total in 2016 through other venues.  And by marketing through those other channels, I lost the ability to have my books in the Kindle Unlimited program.  Compared to the 12 books sold in 2016 through other venues, people read (and I got paid for) the equivalent of 182 books.  That's $9.47 elsewhere vs $382 in KU.  The math doesn't lie.

Know what else happened?  I got paid a fraction of what I would've made through Amazon on each book.  Other venues paid me an average of 79c per book.  Regular sales through Amazon on my $2.99 books is $2.04.  Even with the KU per page money dropping, I'm still averaging $1.98 per book this year (down 12c from last year's average).  I can't argue with the numbers.

But not everyone uses Amazon you say?  I have considered the people who don't use Amazon.  Really I have.  Right now, those people who bought the 12 books last year may not be able to access my other books.  (Well, they could if they used Kindle for PC or for Nook or for whatever device they have.)  I'm truly sorry about that.  And it makes me a little sad.  I want everyone to be able to read my books, however they want to read them.  Unfortunately, when I weigh their needs against the money I'd be losing, the answer is clear. 

No money, no books.  It's really as simple as that.  It's why I've only published two books this year instead of the 3 or 4 in my other publishing years.  Oh, I can still write books.  I have scads of them on my hard drive.  But until there is moolah in my bank account, I can't afford to edit them or put covers on them and make them available for people to read.

So, there it is.  I'm Amazon exclusive and now you know why.  Any questions?




(If you've downloaded my books from anyplace else in the past year or so, you've stolen them.  And you're part of the reason why I can't afford to publish more books. Shame on you.)

KENP Page Count

If you haven't checked your books' number of pages (KENP - Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count) lately, do so.  As of February 1st, they changed some algorithm or something, and some books have changed size significantly.  Although Amazon said the change would average around 5% - and I heard of some that went up a little - mine all dropped precipitously. 

Dying Embers went from 541 KENP to 395.
Accidental Death went from 520 KENP to 380.
BloodFlow went from 715 KENP to 535.

Not sure what the dealie-bob is or why any of them dropped so badly.  Supposedly, it has to do with formatting and unnecessary spaces or font size or some other undefinable thing, and all my books have very simple formatting with no extraneous crap and a normal-sized font.  :shrug:

Not much I can do about it from what I've heard, and I always thought those page counts were way out of line, but it was good while it lasted.  I won't say the fundage hit won't hurt, but then again, my KU page reads have been way down since November, so it's not really effecting me that much yet. 

I do know that Accidental Death will be out of the KU program on 2/12, so I can try the wider distribution thing.  And because of this page count thing, I've chosen to take BloodFlow out, too.  It'll be unavailable through KU on the 22nd - unless something changes.  DE just re-enrolled because I wasn't paying attention earlier this month.  But then again DE is the only book people are reading regularly in KU, so I might've left it there anyway. 

Anyway, these are my experiences.  Your mileage may vary.  Good luck to you all.  :hugs: