Working Titlez

Can you make a bunch of money selling books like burgers? Possibly. Guest blogger Sue Campbell analyzes the commonalities of the e-books that make the bucks. You might be surprised at some of them. ~CHU

Can Anyone Sell a Million Books on Amazon …

By Guest Blogger Sue Campbell

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I recently read, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months by John Locke. Yes, I was one of the multitudes who clicked that “1-click” buy button. So, you’re asking, what is his secret sauce? How’d he do it? Could he do it again? The short answer to that last thing is yes. And he will, again, and again, and again.

His strategy boils down to just three obvious things. He writes for his niche market, and he uses Twitter/Blogs/and an Email list of his buyers to get the word out, and the third is price. That’s it. If you’re like a writer friend of mine who hasn’t sold a million ebooks yet, you’re thinking, “Well, that’s not new, it’s no different than what I, or thousands of other self-published authors are doing.”

So what’s really the secret? He’s writing for a niche. A niche he’s identified, learned what they want, and is delivering it, over and over and over as fast as possible.  Remind you of a super-successful business model? It should.

1. The niche—it’s a very popular one. Light, but often violent, and funny, sexy thrillers. He says his a small niche—I would argue that one of the biggest “niches” in bestsellers today. He writes to it religiously and doesn’t waver much from his formula. He’s found if he does, his readers don’t like it. And you piss off your readers at your peril.

So if it’s such a big niche, how are his books different from the pack and how is it they are they selling up there with the bigger names? Well there is a difference. And you’d think it wouldn’t be a good one.

The difference is slight, but noticeable. Sort of like the difference between a Big Mac and Fat Burger, (or In-N-Out, or Carls Jr.’s $6 Burger—name your favorite poison). The first is adequate, and will tide you over until your next meal, but somewhat less satisfying than a really superb burger. Something is missing, even if you can’t quite pinpoint what it is.

What it is—is the richness, the details, the building of characters, that subtle nuance of language in the hands of a master. And there are masters of language even in these genres, I know this, because I’ve read these genres, and I like them. A lot.

Some of my favorite thrillers are books by Joseph Finder, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, John Grisham, and yes, even James Patterson (though he’s perilously close to the flavor of a Big Mac). There are more. This is a big wide and deep field—people eat this stuff up. Like McDonalds. But like fast food, there’s room in this field for Carls, In-N-Out, Fat Burger, and McDonalds too.

To be fair, I needed to understand what it was these new millionaire authors were peddling to understand why they are so successful. So I read some. Locke’s, Saving Rachel; J.A. Konrath’s Shot of Tequila and he and his writers friends’ Draculas; Barry Eisler’s Lost Coast; Amanda Hocking’s, Switched; and other titles by lesser known, self-published authors. But those four authors in particular are notable, because they have all done very, very well in this arena. All but Hocking are writing in the thriller/crime/police procedural/hard boiled—whatever you want to call that “niche” genre. (Draculas was a horror/splatterpunk romp).

The young Miss Hocking writes young adult fantasy, and paranormal romance (ala Twilight) also a particular niche audience with rabid fans who’ll slurp up anything with fangs and broken hearts. But she too writes to her niche and only her niche.

All of them have something in common, aside from writing similar stories in similar ways, they share a strategy. (No Locke didn’t reinvent the wheel as he likes to think he has.) These books are, by and large, fairly short fast reads. Predictable, hmmm, maybe. They are like junk food—you get what you want and you don’t have to work very hard to receive it. They don’t challenge you; they don’t ask anything of you; they don’t make you think; and they aren’t likely to stay with you long after you’ve finished one. In fact I’ve started one, and skipped to another (by another author) and hardly knew I was reading another character, let alone another book.

And let me say right now, unequivocally, that they aren’t bad, well, not really bad. These stories are entertaining, fun, and an easy way to spend an afternoon and perhaps the evening too, depending on how fast you read.

I can’t say they are really good either, but that’s the bookish snob in me. I like good literature too, and I swoon over a well-wrought sentence. Probably because it’s something that I’d like to aspire to, but realistically don’t think I’d ever achieve. Sometimes I want a gourmet meal, other times a burger suits me fine. There’s a place for both. And that analogy brings me back the strategy and How He Did It.

2. A low, low price. It’s vitally important.

Let’s say that I have a choice between a known writer, like a Stephen King or a John Grisham, or an unknown. Like McDonalds, I know what I am going to get. I’ve read them before, they’re good at what they do—some would put them in the masterful category (I’d be one of them). High art? Maybe not, but master writers just the same. Their ebooks are selling for between $5 and $10. Granted they are longer, some of them much, much longer—and I know that I’ll get what I paid for—I’ll have a relationship with that book for several days. Also, because I’ve had good experiences before with the author—I’m pretty sure I will enjoy it. These are bargains really—newer titles may be priced in the $20 range. (I know why they are priced there—they have publishers, costs are higher… it’s not greed. Another story for another time.)

Then there are the books by authors completely unknown to me, selling from 99¢ to $5. Thousands of them, in every genre imaginable, and some I can’t begin to imagine. Most of these works are hanging right around $2.99. This is the magic number, or so it seems. Why? There’s no scientific reason I can figure out. Except that it’s as low as you can go and still get Amazon’s 70% royalty rate. Books sold for under $2.99 or over $9.99 earn the author (or publisher) 35%.

Pricing your book this low isn’t instinctive to most new authors. After all they want to become rich and famous and the may have toiled for years over their masterpiece. Right? Right, but they won’t, and it doesn’t matter.

An author must put on their reader’s hat and ask, “Which would I rather do? Spend nearly $20 on a book by someone I know, and will need to spend a week reading, or hey here’s a book almost like that one for less than a buck? Does it matter that I don’t know the author? Will I think twice about spending a buck to see if it was worth it?” Did you think twice about buying that pack of gum, or can of soda? Now also factor in that you (unknown author) are not Stephen King or John Grisham and your prospective reader doesn’t know what they are going to get.

A low price will allow readers to take a chance without even giving it a thought. And writing to the niche, allows readers discovering the new author to get more of what they (hopefully enjoyed the first time). That equals series. Every one of these authors is writing series novels. Almost without exception the first book is 99¢ and subsequent books in the series are $2.99. Like a crack dealer, give them a taste and keep them coming back for more.

But I can hear authors saying, “How can I make a living on that paltry amount?” Volume. They must keep writing more, and publishing more. Of course if they really did spend years polishing that treatise, this strategy is going to be very hard to make it work for them.

In a recent interview in the NYT, Amanda Hocking admitted to spending about two weeks on her novels. (That maybe just the first draft, but they don’t go through more than a couple of rewrites/edits.) Two weeks. That’s … fast. The other fellows are fast too—publishing several books a year, though maybe not this fast. Which brings me to the difference, and the one I said you’d think would not be a good thing.

The fact that these are multi-book series, and fast reads, not long, and not challenging to read—possibly makes them a bit less challenging to write as well? No thesauruses’ were harmed in the writing of these books. Weeks were not spent agonizing over a sentence until it sang like poetry. They are straightforward writing. For thrillers, plot is king—so not much character development takes place. And speaking of plot—plausibility is sometimes optional. But let me reiterate, in case you think I’m hating on them. Not so, they are what they are—enjoyable so long as you understand what you’re getting. Also, they are short, and did I mention, cheap?

That means I am not going to spend a long time with them—they are a weekend fling. Fast food. If I want a relationship—I’ll date Stephen King. So sometimes fast, and shallow is a good thing.

Reviewing: popular niche, series, cheap. What else?

3.  Marketing. In this case social networking.

Here’s where it gets a little murky. Locke goes into some detail to explain that his marketing consists of infrequent blog posts that resonate with his “niche” audience. He has cultivated some 20K Twitter followers and he Tweets regularly, and re-Tweets items by others that relate to his blog posts. Importantly, he says that these posts must be genuine and heartfelt to be effective. Right, well that sounds reasonable. He devotes about an hour a day to this activity.

What he does do that other self-publishers don’t, is to keep his blatant plugs pretty low key, and never presented alone. As in a post that consists solely of “Hey buy my book, you’ll love it because it’s good.” Frankly, I prefer this soft-sell approach.

What he relies on most are his cultivated list of buyers to spread the word. I for one am far more likely to take the word of readers than that of the author that a book is worth my time,. But honestly, I am suspicious of books whose Amazon pages contains 20 five-star reviews and not a one lower than that. I am far more likely to put credence in reviews if there are at least one or two dissenters. For some reason, it looks more realistic, and less like your mother and all your friends reviewed the book, and no one else has read it. But that may be just me.

Getting your fans to sell for you is a smart tactic, and one that takes a good deal of work to implement. This crowdsourcing is a strategy that most publishers cannot employ, because they don’t know who their readers are. I would have guessed that this took time to pay off, but Locke claims it didn’t take but a few months. I suspect that it could have been: right time, right place, and right name-dropping that really got the ball rolling for him. But who knows really how these things go viral?

And that is what has to happen. For you to sell a million ebooks it has (or rather they as a series have) to “go viral”. It has to develop a momentum of its own. Who would have thought a kids’ book about a boy wizard would become the juggernaut that is Harry Potter? You just never know.

Do I recommend Locke’s How I Sold 1 Million Ebooks.… Meh. It’s not exactly earth-shattering material, but honestly, it’s only $4.99. So why not?

I haven’t drawn any conclusions, but I don’t have to. What I’ve outlined here is fact.

If this is so damn easy then, and you can make a million bucks writing “just adequate” fiction, why isn’t everybody doing it? Well, from my perspective it kinda looks like everybody already is. (That’s also another story.) But the truth is, it isn’t that easy. It’s a lot of work—and definitely no guarantees. So my hat’s off to all of those writers working their tails off—and my admiration goes double for those able to make money at it too. No matter what you write.

©2011Sue Campbell. Sue is a freelance book designer and aspiring writer. Her work can be found in bookstores, and at www.suecampbellgraphicdesign.com.

Great news this morning! Three of our books placed in the National Indie Excellence Awards — Higher Than Eagles by Maralys Wills and The Home for the Friendless by Betty Auchard are Finalists in the Memoir category, while Friendless received a second award in the Interior Design category. And Dancing in My Nightgown, also by Betty Auchard, WON the Indie Excellence Award for Non-Fiction Audio. What’s extra-wow is that Betty, herself, is the narrator. Local production house Dog & Pony Studios were producers. So proud of everyone involved. Here’s book designer Sue Campbell’s report.

Where do you find your best inspiration? That in-the-groove place where the ideas just flow and you’re on the creative high ground? Our Stephens Press book designer Sue Campbell may have the cleanest floors in the state of Colorado — as doing the mundane allows her to enter that altered state where thoughts flow and swirl and bump and collide into the new and wonderful. Check it out in the latest Shine journal.  Sue’s poetry has been published for two months running.

This was not the final cover design. Why?

Authors usually face the design of their book cover or jacket design with some trepidation. They know how critically important the cover will be to the book’s success, especially in retail environments. As publishers, we take many factors into consideration in designing covers. The design needs to communicate the content and help the buyer identify books in which they’d be interested. We listen, too, to the author’s suggestions. We consider the marketplace, what competing titles look like, color trends, typography, and much more. Research tells us that IF a customer picks up a book, they’ll spend 8 seconds looking at the front cover, and if their interest continues, they’ll flip it over and spend 15 seconds reviewing the back cover. Book designer Sue Campbell recently posted an article on the design of a new Stephens Press title, A NEW DAY by Dora Barilla. Sue outlines the design process and the covers that were developed at Sue Campbell Graphic Design.

Today I’m interviewing author Betty Auchard. Betty’s first book, Dancing in My Nightgown, the Rhythms of Widowhood is her memoir of losing her husband of 49 years, getting through the grief, and learning to live again—in a whole new way. Far from being a morose downer, Betty’s stories are touching, inspiring, upbeat, and even funny. Betty had a lot to learn having married at 19, and never having lived as a single person before. Betty’s quirky, loving, and funny personality makes her one of my favorite authors to know and to work with. In this interview she shares her thoughts on the writing process:

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started writing. Did you always have a secret desire to be an author?

My secret desires were to be invisible, to fly, and to play the piano. My unconcealed desires were to be a movie star and an artist. I became an artist, so I still have time to become a movie star. But all my life I loved writing letters and telling true stories because I saw, and still do see stories in everything. And I’ve always jotted things down that I didn’t want to forget—sort of like a grocery list for my life.

Becoming a widow at 68 when I had never been single before meant I had more to write about than ever. I wrote about everything that was happening to me because life felt like the twilight zone. It was unreal. I had no way of knowing then that writing was my tool for healing.

Grief recovery was the hardest work I’d ever done in my life and grievers must be allowed to babble about the same old things over and over. It’s the only way we can accept that our loss is real. Writing was like talking to paper. If I felt good I wrote about it. If I felt bad I wrote about it. One day I saw that Postum (Denny’s favorite beverage) was on sale and I almost put a jar in my cart. I was so blindsided by that unconscious act that I had to abandon my grocery cart and run outside to cry. Naturally, I wrote about it. I knew that someday I would look back on my experiences and realize how far I had come.

Writing was more important to me than eating. Naturally I lost weight, but gradually, I regained consciousness and the act of writing took on a life of its own. I became aware that my journaling on junk was starting to use a lot more paper and my writings were becoming pretty good stories that I liked a lot. One thing led to another and I started taking writing classes. This all happened over about six months. By six months I was in love with telling about life from my point of view which sometimes made me cry, but it felt good; like vomiting from my eyes. Sometimes my quirky point of view made me laugh at myself. As hard as I tried not to come off as a widow I always revealed that I was one. It made me feel vulnerable. I may as well have worn a talking T shirt that shouted, “This Lady Lives Alone.” But, to be honest, I liked my stories so much that I practically forced strangers to read them. I knew then that Betty, the Writing Beast had been born.

2. Tell us about your writing habits. When you write do you need music? Or quiet? Is there a special place, time or ritual you use to get in the groove? And has this changed over time? For example from the time you wrote the first draft of the first book until now as you work on the second?

Eleven years ago when I wrote all day long in my nightgown, I didn’t know how to use the computer so I did a lot of writing in bed where the light from the window was perfect. If not there, then I wrote in my lounge chair where the good lamp was located. I wrote on a lined tablet on a clipboard, and used only a fine tip Pilot Precise pen. My thoughts landed on paper as easily as I talk.

Once I learned how to use the computer I relocated upstairs to what used to be my art studio and is now my computer room. I first TELL myself the story out loud a few times and then I start typing without stopping, typos and all. It’s still a lot like free writing but it’s on the screen and I feel as though I’m still talking.  I write best in the mornings when my brain is awake and lively. But I still write at night or any old time I’m in the mood or when I know I won’t be interrupted.  Sometimes that’s into the morning hours. I let other things go unattended, which is slothful but true.

My best writing time was two months ago when I treated myself to a hotel room. I checked into a Holiday Inn Express, 25 miles away so I wouldn’t be tempted to dash home for any reason. I told my children not to call or e-mail unless it was really important and a request for a recipe was not important. It was wonderful. I stayed one week, went home for one week, and returned for one more week. I ate sparingly and used the small fridge and microwave in my room for simple food.  I managed to get ahead on my second manuscript. The cost? About $2,000, but I told myself that I deserved it.

When I think a story is finished, it’s imperative that I read it aloud. Only then do I hear what is clunky or awkward. The sound of the words and the cadence of a sentence are critical. A radio is distracting and never on when I write, which means that it is never on. I watch TV only when I eat something or to watch Dexter or The United States of Tara. The truth is that I sit way too long at my computer because I’m in love with it. And where the day goes I’ll never know. Time just races by when I’m in the writing zone.

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Sue Campbell, a Colorado resident, is an experienced art director and book designer of many years; she is also the principal designer for Stephens Press titles. In this interview with Working Titlez, she shares her knowledge on what makes an effective cover design, how the process works, and what inspires her creative efforts.

How important is color in book cover design?

Color is always important in design. Color is hard-wired in our brains. It means things to us on a basic human level, but it also has cultural meaning so we must be careful with how we use it with respect to cultural connotations. Certain colors evoke emotional responses—it reminds us of events or experiences. And it also acts as a language, one that we learn and with it make associations. For example: we know that darker colors mean mystery and fearful happenings—tension. It makes sense then for thrillers to often appear cloaked in dark and mysterious images in dark colors that evokes a bit of unease.

Should color trends be followed?

By trends, if you mean what is fashionable or popular in a given year. No. I don’t think so. I don’t personally follow color trends because color is so significant. Particularly in book cover design. Because colors are rich in meaning—the decisions to use them need to be made in consideration with the subject matter, genre, target audience, and the feeling you want people to get when they see the cover. People may be surprised that we don’t just pick blue or red or green because that’s the author’s (or our) favorite color. Of course, sometimes you have to do that too. That’s an ill-considered way of making those kinds of design decisions though.

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Just announced: DAMN THE REJECTIONS is the 2008 USA Book News National “Best Book” Award Winner in the Business/Publishing & Writing category!

USABookNews.com, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, announced the winners and finalists of THE NATIONAL “BEST BOOKS” 2008 AWARDS (NBBA) on October 20, 2008. Jeff Keen, President and CEO of USABookNews.com said winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape: Simon & Schuster, Tarcher/Penguin, HarperCollins, Hyperion, St. Martin’s Press, McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons and hundreds of independent presses contributed to this year’s outstanding NBBA competition. Keen adds, “NBBA’s success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.”

Six finalists were named, with Damn as the top winner. Kudos to author Maralys Wills, along with the “village” it takes to nurture a book from manuscript to bookstore shelf, including editor Ray Newton, designer Sue Campbell, coordinator Stacey Fott and assistant Krissy Hawkins. Yay team!

The metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. A simile is a technique that uses words such as “like” or “as” to compare two ideas. Even though similes and metaphors are both forms of comparison, similes allow the two ideas to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas metaphors seek to equate two ideas despite their differences.

Huh? What was that again?

Using metaphors in your writing can be a surprise for the reader — and an effective way to make your point. They can also be dreadful, eliciting groans and guffaws.

There is a collection of “worst” metaphors written by high school students that floats around the Internet. Stephens Press book designer Sue Campbell is a fine writer with a wry sense of humor. She’s crafted a story using EVERY metaphor on the “worst” list plus creating a few doozies of her own. Titled Hefty Bag, you’ll find this writing exercise on the Downloads page.

Stephens Press book designer extraordinaire Sue Campbell is a closet poet — who knew? She’s been persuaded to share a bit of rhyme about the poet’s bane, “da rules”.

Poetry Anarchy
by Sue Campbell (2007)

What are the rules for poetry?
Who knows about voice, and meter and timing?
Oh, and never mind rhyming.

That, I could never do.
Sure, it’s pretty simple
to find a rhyme for blue.

But what about orange, or purple?
Does it matter
when words don’t want to patter?
Instead preferring to shuffle, or plod, or slink.

The picture is the thing
that makes poetry sing.
Words are paint, to be slathered,
stippled, babbled and dribbled.

But I, since I’m clueless, and ruleless
am free to sling words with abandon,
seeing what sticks,
and what runs down the page.
Smearing in embarrassment, at being used
and abused by one who knows no rules.