A little over three years ago, in a fit of apparent insanity, a New York-based independent press bought a sizeable chunk of the short-story collection I’d been working on and published it as a stand-alone volume. I remain proud of the book, A Field Guide to the North American Family, which was reissued last month in paperback. A lot has changed since the end of 2007, though, and the new edition has me thinking again about a couple of misapprehensions I was laboring under at the time of its writing. The first was that inserting an “illustrated fiction” into an otherwise un-illustrated cycle of stories was just the thing to ignite the bidding war that would make me a millionaire. (Thanks a lot, W.G. Sebald!) The more important, related misapprehension, though, has to do with “the future of the book.”
In college, I had been an extracurricular binge-reader of 1960s and ’70s “experimental” literature, in secret rebellion against the masterpieces-only Atkins diet that comprised my coursework. Even in my mid-twenties, I was convinced that the novel of the future would incorporate as much Cortazar and Cather, as much Willie Masters as Wilhelm Meister. History had different ideas, as usual. Two weeks after my exuberantly book-y book came out – replete with color photography and typographic mayhem – Amazon launched the first Kindle, which sold out in less than a day. The book of the future, it turned out, had a built-in battery. And what I’d just published would never work on it.
Then again, as my therapist suggests (though my accountant begs to differ) maybe this accidental Kindle-proofing is a blessing in disguise. My nostalgia for print, after all, is something like Balzac‘s for the wooden printing press in Lost Illusions:
At the time when this story opens, the Stanhope press and the ink-distributing roller had not yet come into use in small provincial printing-houses…. [Now] the rapid spread of machine presses has swept away all this obsolete gear to which, for all its imperfections, we owe the beautiful books printed by Elzevir, Plantin, Aldus Didot, and the rest…
In the novel that follows, Balzac links speedier and more efficient printing technology, and the larger cultural pressures it stands for, to the artistic failures of his would-be hero, the “provincial” Lucien Chardon. Unable to withstand the allure of a fast franc, Lucien becomes in Paris whatever is French for “sellout.” (Not to mention – horrors – a critic!) But I would become no Lucien Chardon – not with Field Guide, anyway. To “sell out,” you first have to sell, and in committing to the ideal of the “beautiful” book, I had pretty much guaranteed that this particular project would remain unsullied by commerce.
Now, in honor of the future that never was, the durable pigments of the almost obsolete, I offer you the following trade secrets to fellow writers. The availability for the Kindle of some of the titles mentioned below points to the difficulty of the task; nonetheless, here are:
Seven Ways to Kindle-proof Your Book
Step 1. Use Color
The iPad and Barnes & Noble’s NookColor have already gone some way toward countering this strategy, and Amazon is rumored to have plans to follow suit with a full color, full-functionality tablet. As of this writing, however, the top-selling eReader, the Kindle, remains a black-and-white only affair. I suggest, then, that all of you aspiring Kindle-proofers out there familiarize yourselves with the color palette on your word-processors. You may, as Mark Z. Danielewski does in House of Leaves, choose to assign a single word its own color, like the sodapop in the old Cherry 7-Up commercials. (Isn’t it cool…in pink?) Or you may opt for a subtler approach, à la Richard Flanagan. In Gould’s Book of Fish, Flanagan uses a different color for each chapter, to represent the different dyes employed by his ichthycidal narrator. Still not persuaded? I once heard that Faulkner planned to use different-colored type to distinguish the different voices in As I Lay Dying. If it’s good enough for a Nobelist, isn’t it good enough for you?
Step 2. Illustrate, Illustrate, Illustrate
In an essay published in The New Yorker a couple years back, Nicholson Baker complained that “photographs, charts, diagrams, foreign characters, and tables don’t fare so well on the little gray screen” of the Kindle. Of course, as with Step 1, the iPad complicates things, and glossy (“glossy”?) magazine readers are apparently “flocking” to the NookColor. (Constant vigilance is the price of Kindle-proofing!) But it’s worth pointing out that, where words on a page are an abstraction of an abstraction, illustrations are only one representative step away from the visual world. And so the venerable tradition of the illuminated manuscript still seems to favor, at this stage of the game, the codex book. No wonder that, as writers grow anxious about the fate of print, we’re seeing an uptick in illustrated fiction; it’s the literary equivalent of abstract painting’s retort to photography. (This is to say nothing of graphic novels.) Lavishing attention on hand-made illustrations – as in Joe Meno‘s Demons in the Spring – or incorporating photographs, like Rod Sweet and Tim Williams‘ Instructions for the Apocalypse or Leanne Shapton‘s Important Artifacts, is a great way to add an extra exclamation point to your literary pooh-poohing of the eReader.
Step 3. Play With Text, Typeface, and White Space
eReaders currently use two approaches to rendering text. One is quasi-photographic, but the Kindle’s remains the more battery-efficient method of imposing a standard typeface. This makes the effects of a textually playful book like Danielewski’s House of Leaves or Karen Tei Yamashita‘s I Hotel or William H. Gass‘ The Tunnel – difficult to render on a Kindle. If you want to up the degree of difficulty, you can try combining this with step 1, following Gass’ lead in Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, wherein text in a range of typefaces and sizes curves and distends and floats around and behind the illustrations. And then there’s white space. Mallarmé may have got there first, but Blake Butler‘s There is No Year is moving the ball forward. It’s available for Kindle, but only the good Lord and Jeff Bezos know how it reads there. (I don’t think I need to point out the irony of the Amazon customer review for A Visit from the Goon Squad that finds “the ‘powerpoint’ chapter…extremely difficult to read on the Kindle.”)
Step 4. Run With Scissors
The opening story of John Barth‘s Lost in the Funhouse, famously invites readers to take scissors to it and create a Mobius strip. This cut-up aesthetic is more literal in Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Tree of Codes, which slices and dices the pages of Bruno Schulz‘s Street of Crocodiles to create pages like lace. It’s a piece of found prose-poetry whose sentences change as you turn the page. Except on the Kindle, where it doesn’t – and couldn’t – exist.
Step 5. Go Aleatory
Narrative fiction, as Vladimir Propp would tell you, need not proceed in a straight line. Presumably, the HopScotching of Cortazar’s Rayuela would be easy enough to approximate via hyperlink on a Kindle, as might something structured like Raymond Queneau‘s “A Story As You Like It.” But what about a story where the order of the pieces genuinely doesn’t matter. Or one where an Oulippan element of chance is built in? A narrative like Coover’s “deck of cards” story from A Child Again, say. Or B.S. Johnson‘s The Unfortunates, which consists of a beginning, an ending, and 25 middle chapters to be shuffled and read at random. Speaking of The Unfortunates…
Step 6. Put It In A Box
Gass at one point imagined reinforcing the random, “pile of pages” aspect of The Tunnel by printing it loose-leaf and selling it in a box. It can’t be any coincidence that, in the age of the Kindle, the book as boxed set has been making a comeback. New Directions, in addition to The Unfortunates, has given us the slipcovered (and thus far unKindled) Microscripts of Robert Walser. McSweeney’s, another box-loving press, has delivered any number of issues of the Quarterly, not to mention One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in boxed form. And in 2008, Hotel St. George Press published Ben Greenman‘s archetypally box-intensive Correspondences, albeit in a limited edition.
Step 7. Pile on the End Matter
This strategy exploits not so much a technical weakness of the Kindle as a practical one. My theory is that, because the number of pages remaining in a book aren’t palpable on a digital device, readers are less likely to go digging around in appendices, acknowledgments, and so forth. The endnotes function on the Kindle apparently makes it pretty easy to jump from the main text to the famous fine print of Infinite Jest. But with other kinds of end matter, aren’t you likely to hit “The End” and think: I’m done? Writers who sneak interesting and potentially meaningful information into the back of the book are thus a step closer to Kindle-proofing than the rest of us. Here I’m thinking specifically of William T. Vollmann, whose resolutely booktacular books often contain dozens, even hundreds of pages of end matter (interesting in direct proportion to the interest of the main text.) Or Walter Benjamin‘s Arcades Project. But I was struck, reading Georges Perec‘s Life A User’s Manual this spring, by the way the various indexes and appendices offered a variety of possible reformattings of the main text.
Bonus List: 10 Pretty Damn Kindle-Proof (at least, as of this writing) Books:
1. Nox, by Anne Carson (Rules Exploited: 1, 2, 3, 6): In many ways, this boxed version of a mourning journal Carson made after the death of her brother is the paragon of the Kindle-proof book: a book built out of books, and alert to its own status as an object.
2. The Original of Laura, by Vladimir Nabokov (Steps Taken: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5): The chief attraction of this slender posthumous work is its Chip Kidd design, which invites readers to cut out facsimiles of the notecards Nabokov composed on and make their own book…though, given the $35 cover price, I can’t imagine too many readers took Kidd up on it.
3. A Field Guide to the North American Family, by yours truly (1, 2, 3, 5): This is probably the only excuse I’ll ever have to insert my name in a list between Nabokov’s and Jonathan Safran Foer’s. There. I’ve done it.
4. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer (1, 2, 3): A Kindle version of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close actually exists, but, even if Amazon were to insert an animation, there is just no way to achieve in e-form the flip-book effect on which this novel’s conclusion rises…and falls.
5. The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman (1, 2): Okay, this is actually pretty easy to recreate on an iPad. But who would want to read this gorgeous thing on a screen?
6. Dictionary of the Khazars, by Milorad Pavic (5): The chief Kindle-resistant feature of Dictionary of the Khazars is that it is actually two books: a “male version” and a (slightly different) “female version,” bound back to back. You move from one to the other by flipping the book over and starting from the other end. Kindle that, Amazon!
7. Only Revolutions, by Mark Z. Danielewski (1, 3, 5): Unlike House of Leaves, the National-Book-Award-nominated Only Revolutions is too insanely Kindle-proof to actually be a good book. I found its main text – which takes the flip & read logic of Pavic a step further – to be a hackneyed pastiche of Finnegans Wake. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.
8. One Hundred Thousand Million Poems, by Raymond Queneau (4, 5): This echt-Oulippan “poetry machine” is a set of 10 sonnets, bound to a spine, but with incisions between the lines that extend out to the edge of the page. Readers can manipulate the pages to form and reform sonnets. Mathematically, there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 possible variations. In theory, an eBook equivalent of this would work beatifully (you’d just have to build in a “shuffle” function) – though by equivalence rather than reproduction.
9. Rising Up and Rising Down (the unabridged version), by William T. Vollmann (2, 3, 5, 7): In theory, this should be the perfect eBook candidate, in the sense that no one wants to lug the damn thing on the subway. It is, in a sense, almost all appendix. I’d bet dollars to donuts, though, that, via the logic sketched in point 7 above, no one would ever get through a digital edition. Vollmann’s detractors would argue that’s a good thing. I’m not so sure…
10. Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (1, 3): The brilliance of Where the Wild Things Are, as a children’s librarian once pointed out to me, is not just the illustrations, but the way they gradually expand to fill the page spreads (what’s called a full-bleed)…and then recede again into white space. It enacts for children the dialectic of wildness and safety that is the book’s explicit subject, and has, this librarian insisted, a deeply therapeutic effect. Wild Things, that is, uses its book-ness beautifully. You could reproduce this on a screen…but unless the aspect ratio was 2:1, it would have to be in thumbnail form. Perhaps the solution, as Reif Larsen has suggested, is to get away from the idea of reproduction altogether. Rather than deluding ourselves that the eBook is a book, we should think carefully about the effects each can achieve that the other can’t, and then work to find equivalents between them. And lo and behold, a fantastically inventive app of Larsen’s The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (Steps Taken: 2, 3) is now available for the iPad…perhaps pointing the way to yet another future of the book.
Last week, I created a Kindle version of my indie crime thriller novel, Felonious Jazz, using the tools at Amazon’s Digital Text Platform. It took about nine minutes, a “why-not” side project alongside my trade paperback, which I published using Amazon’s print-on-demand company, CreateSpace.
Can i ask you exactly how many copies the 17th best-selling title in Mysteries & Thrillers actually sells on Kindle?
The low hundreds per day.
It would be helpful to everyone for you to reveal the firm stats. This is of interest to everyone out there who writes professionally.
And "low hundreds per day" still sounds better than the daily sales of many other print books.
However, with the confiscatory/upside-down money split, it's not very appealing.
Well, I'm not going to get any more specific on my sales numbers. I will say that as an independent, the Kindle DTP deal of 35% of list price seems okay by me. To get a selling price of $1.99, I set a list price of $2.49 and earned 87 cents a copy. At 6.24 list, I get my current selling price of $4.99 and earn about $1.75. More than I'd earn per copy on a print contract. If I was selling a Kindle book for $9.99, I'd earn $4.37. As both the author and publisher, I don't have to share with anyone.
Math correction: 4.99 selling price yields $2.18 for me, sted $1.75
Well, I'm not sure that the price is what's important, that the price will determine whether I purchase your book. I think my TIME is more important. I don't have the TIME to read a $1.99 or a $4.99 unknown Amazon-generated mystery when I already don't have the time to read some of my favorite authors. I realize that "time" is somewhat self-determined, but I know I will be more likely to spend $14.57 for Road Dogs for my Kindle and feel like my time was well spent. Yes, I take the risk of missing your potentially even better book, but I am pretty much willing to let the critics spend their time on your book first. As a bookseller I am anxious for new, bright talent and am willing to invest in it, but my investment won't be based simply on the cost.
I am, however, impressed at what you've done, that you came up with the idea. I'm also impressed that it is possible to DO what you've done, apparently so easily.
Don Muller
Old Harbor Books
Sitka, Alaska
Don, I'm sure it helped my effort that my other job is freelance PR. I blocked out a little strategy, (though a simple and free one) and it worked very nicely. And I would love to believe that the title, cover art, blurb and free Kindle sample sealed the deal for more readers than the price. The truth is, I just don't know. Maybe the price's main function was to get it into consideration, and if people likes what they sampled, they were happy to go for it.
I'll say that I'm in the same situation as you: Stacks of books, many written by friends of mine, that I just haven't had the time to read yet. So I was surprised to learn how many of the people who spend $359 on an electronic reader are super frugal when it comes time to buy the fiction to read on it. What portion of Kindle owners that is, I can't say. But they are quite vocal on Kindle discussion boards.
You're sure right about the frugal (stingy?) issue! And I can't figure out the thinking behind that.
I'm still learning how to best use my Kindle (the wireless part doesn't even work here; no Sprint), but I like it a lot more than I thought I would. It won't replace my books, or future books, but I will use it. For a long time, I was quite worried about where all this (e-books, etc.)might lead (and still am, to some degree, as a bookseller), but now I'm kinda excited about being on the journey. Very interesting.
Don
Don makes an excellent point about time. I recently issued my YA novel Mortal Ghost at Amazon for the lowest possible price ($0.99) only to make it simple for Kindle owners in the U.S. to access it, since it's already freely available in multiple e-formats online, including Kindle-compatible ones. Frankly, I couldn't care less how many people buy my books, since that's not how I judge my work, but I've learned how very difficult it is to be taken seriously as an online writer – even by most lit bloggers, who hardly ever bother to review net fiction. Their claim – with of course some justification: who has the time to read through all the crap in order to find something worthwhile?
I'm very curious what your PR involved for this. Being unpublished and considering alternative avenues, I am always looking to learn what might make venues like this workable.
I can attest to the power of Bryan's model. I priced two of my books (The Ark and The Palmyra Impact) at $1.99 and the other (The Adamas Blueprint) at $0.99. In the two months they've been available for the Kindle, I've sold over 4,300 copies total, and The Ark is currently ranked at #160 (#14 in the Thriller section). I have not raised my prices because I think that it's a great way for people who would otherwise be wary of indie authors like me to take a chance on reading my books.
Quite an interesting and informative article. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love some links to the said Kindle discussion boards.
Any idea on how long those types of sales figures will run? Low hundreds per day * $2.18 per sale * 365 days adds up to quite a bit of change. Just curious if you think it's sustainable.
~jon
Kindleboards.com is a great resource for those interested in the Kindle.
Sales figures drop off dramatically as the rankings fall. I'd say sales are around 10-20 copies per day at an overall ranking of 1000. Of course, that will change as more people become Kindle users. It's hard for anyone except name authors to stay in the top 500 rankings with books priced at $4.99 or above because readers want to know that they'll get value for the money they spend.
First of all, what a great blog post! This is why the Millions is the best literary blog on the web.
I commend Bryan for trying something bold and for being savvy about how he did it (and as no one has yet pointed it out yet, said savviness continues with this well-timed blog post). I've said for a while now that self-published authors need to find a way to promote themselves, as clearly the barriers to publication have never been lower. It's the barrier between an author and his/her readership that remains quite high (possibly higher than ever). I think this is what Don and Lee are getting at with their comments. Even though you can put your material out there, getting people to read it remains the big obstacle. So again, kudos to Bryan for at least getting his book into people's readers. That's a big first step.
I am a bit worried about the implications of this, though. I'm not sure how I feel about turning the bookstore of the future into the .99 cent store. As the cost of content continues to approach zero, we are going to see some fallout. What if the author of the book is a lousy graphic designer? How would he afford to pay a designer to make a cool jacket (or thumbnail, as the case may be)? With what part of their $.70 a copy? What about hiring a publicist (admittedly not a problem for Bryan)?
This is a model that seems sustainable for self-published authors only. Not all self-published authors will be able to handle the rigors of self-promotion. I'd wager it's every bit as hard as writing a book. I deal with authors every day, and most of them are not good at selling themselves. That will have to change, but I think book publicists and marketing people actually do earn their money. If you think all a publishing company does is print the books, you are wrong. Do publishers need to change certain aspects of their business model? Definitely. But they still serve a valuable role.
Is self-publishing and self-distributing a great thing for some authors? Undeniably. But I don't think it can serve all authors. It would be a shame to miss out on those authors' books because they couldn't afford to hire a publicist from their meager pay.
Like it or not, higher ebook prices will come, and they will benefit everybody, authors included. Bryan found a way to game the system, and it's one that worked for him, but I'm not sure it will work for all.
I don't have a problem buying from an unknown author, providing they have good reviews on Amazon. So the low initial price is to get enough readers to have at least several reviews. A price of 0.00 gets even more downloads, but probably not many more readers. Raising the price later seems reasonable to me.
Perhaps ebooks will be offered at discounts to start and a price increase after a week or two. Retail stores do this all the time. Maybe time for booksellers to do things differently.
I came here from Twitter. I find this story very revealing. I own a Kindle, and I have bought books for $1 that I would not have bought had they been $5. One advantage of the Kindle store is that you can almost always request a free sample of a book before buying it. I always do that with new authors, except when the book is so cheap that I figure "why not"? And to answer one commenter, one reason why we plunk down our $359 is so we don't have to pay $25 and up to read new releases. If you read enough books, it actually makes economic sense over time. That's not the most important reason; the most important reason is it makes it easier to read more because I carry my Kindle all the time.
As a writer, I would also point out that I would much rather get a 25 cent profit per book and sell 2,000 copies than get a $3 profit and only sell 100 copies. It's not just the money, it's the number of readers.
Love the title of this book, BTW.
Karen, this is very interesting to me. You would buy a $1.99 title rather than bothering to sample because it's so cheap. That generates the burst of immediate sales I saw. But not at $4.99 Where's the threshold? Would you buy immediately at $2.99? $3.99?
I also appreciate the cultural insight that many Kindle owners are extremely heavy readers and didn't splurge but made an investment they believed would lower their book spending. I caught a whiff of this on Kindle boards, as well, and I think it accounts for the rage at any title above $9.99. People felt they'd been given an assurance that Kindle books would cost $9.99 or less, offering savings over hardcovers and most trade paper that would pay back the cost of the device over time. Probably a decision-maker for many buyers. So they don't like to see a bestseller Kindle title break that pact with them.
This is a great discussion. Let's keep it going.
–Bryan
Great post – this is exactly what I suggested we might see AGAIN when content becomes available at a lower price point (remember paperbacks in the '50's?). This is how the author can build a following, enlist fans to become advocates and give them the tools to spread their enthusiasm. Authors own the relationship with the reader – and those who take charge of that are the most successful. Bravo!
I published on Kindle a while ago. The publishing portion works well and you do get posted. I did adjust my price and got a small sales pop from it. The one thing that Amazon doesn't help you with is advertising (like google adwords). You don't really have a choice where (and if) your book pops up as a suggestion and they do not give you any stats on how many times hits/views you have gotten et cetera. But all in all it is the way things are going….I'm really looking forward to the DX this summer.
It's not that difficult to figure out why publishers have higher costs to recoup: Advances, editors, production editors, promotional costs, overhead. Need I say more?
As a self publisher, you took advantage of a great opportunity. Congrats on your good sales! That said, it isn't that difficult to figure out why conventional publishers are charging more: Advances, royalties, editorial costs, promotion, and so on. Printing, warehousing, and fulfillment are not the only costs a publisher faces.
This post pushes the discussion to another level. My sense is that some reasonable blend of legacy and self publishing will emerge. In fact, I was wondering if you, Boyd, are open to the possibility of being picked up by a publisher, as was (I think) The Shack. Will this be a different process — or an impossibility — for those who go straight to Kindle as opposed to hard copy books?
Yes, I would certainly be interested in working with a publisher. Publishing print books myself is a hassle that I don't want to take on, while publishing on the Kindle is very easy because my books were already in electronic form. All I had to do was pay someone to design nice covers for me.
I think anyone who gets enough sales on their own, like the author of The Shack, will eventually attract the attention of mainstream publishers. It just hasn't happened yet for someone who only published electronically. But it will.
My novels are published by big NY houses, under the names JA Konrath and Jack Kilborn. But before I landed my first publishing contract, my agent struck out with several other books.
For years I've made these unpublished books available as free downloads on my website, http://www.jakonrath.com. They've been downloaded over 20,000 times.
On April 8, I uploaded these titles to the Kindle, selling them for $1.59 each.
In six weeks I've sold almost 2000 ebooks.
Also, I've been working with my publisher to get a horror novella I wrote with Blake Crouch, titled SERIAL, on Kindle for free. It's currently the #1 download.
I just blogged about the experience this morning, and someone sent me a link to this post. This is the gist of what I've learned:
1. Ebooks are good, because they help get your name and words out there.
2. More people are reading ebooks. Walmart now sells the Sony Reader. The Amazon DX will be out this summer, and Kindle has an iPhone app. And everyone with a new ereader wants content for that ereader.
3. The cheaper you are, the more you'll sell. You can even outsell major bestselling authors.
4. Free is better than cheap. Many more people will download free than cheap, so you'll reach many more people.
5. Distribution still matters. If you want big numbers, you get more downloads on Amazon than you will on your homepage.
6. There is money to be made. Like the POD industry, Kindle is getting diluted with overpriced self-pubbed crap. Don't be overpriced self-pubbed crap, because that doesn't sell. But if you're a good writer, a smart marketer, and can live with selling your book for $1.59, you can make some cash.
7. This is the future. Don't get left behind.
The perception of value that has been leading people to consider Kindle books priced at the same level as printed books seems to me to be both a judgement of the relative production cost (the up-front costs associated with writing, editing, and formatting are essentially the same, but the incremental cost of a single copy is virtually nil for an e-book, as you describe, compared to printing, shipping, and storage costs for printed editions, so more of the purchase price can go back to the author even at a lower price) and of the end utility.
While the storage requirement if I buy ten paperback novels for me to read than if I buy ten e-book novels for me to read, when I buy an e-book the emphasis is on the pronoun. If I buy ten paperback novels, I and nine of my friends can read all the novels at once, passing them around in a round-robin as we finish them (and give them away or sell them to a second-hand bookstore when I am tired of reading them), buying ten e-books acquires them for _me_ to read — no one else can read them without having the reader in their possession, which deprives me of its use for the other books stored on the reader, and I am unable to pass the copy onto anyone else. An e-book is therefore of much lesser utility as part of a library of books than printed editions of those books are, so being expected to pay the same (or, in some cases, higher) price for the e-book is perceived as price gouging.
Unfortunately, the same aspect of e-books that lower their incremental production cost (a copy of an electronic document is fast and cheap) also effectively destroys the characteristic of a printed book (tedious and expensive to copy) that has made them reasonably secure against unauthorized copying for centuries, which is a problem that still has no good solution.
I am wondering if anyone has thoughts about self-publishing in genre fiction versus self-publishing in literary fiction. Most of the self-publishing discussions I've seen originate from genre writers and readers. I wonder if genre readers have different book-browsing habits? Different book-buying habits? For example, did Bryan target genre readers on Amazon (does Amazon have these targeting functions?)? Do genre readers tend to read MORE books in a shorter amount of time (they do call them page-turners, after all) and thus download lots of free and $1.99 books at once?
It seems to me that genre writers have a headstart on self-publishing skills/strategies, but that literary writers will need to follow suit soon enough. The literary mid-list seems to be shrinking alarmingly fast: no more building up of a writer over time; if it doesn't make the publisher money NOW, then they're unlikely to publish any more of your books.
Bryan– the break point is somewhere between $1 and $2. I almost always get the Orbit books that are $1 (they offer one title a month that way) unless I can tell it's just not a genre I would read. Another thing is, it has to be a book available through the Kindle store so I can use the wireless and not have to download first (I am very lazy). The exception is Fictionwise, where they added a "Send to your Kindle" function.
Above $2 I don't buy it without getting a free sample first.
Good luck with this project. Publishing is changing. It's exciting!
Bryan, thanks for the great post. I'm a fellow journalist and writer. My previous books have come out with traditional publishers, so when I decided to create a Kindle edition for my latest novel, Finding Juliet, I was hungry for advice from others who've tried it and found success. Your pricing information has been priceless, and helped me get off to a good start. Also, posting a couple free chapters in the discussion section of my product page should help.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002BNKOPK
Wishing you continued success and am interested in reading more about your Kindle success strategies.
I have only used kindle on the iPhone. I am an avid reader and do not consider a dollar or two less than print acceptable. With one exception, if I am stuck in an airport with no bookstore I will consider it. Incidentally, this was the entire reason I got the kindle app in the first place…..
Excellent post. I had results similar to those described by Bryan after posting my first book to Kindle and lowering the price to 99 cents (Unbroken Hearts).
Just 3 days ago I uploaded the sequel (Untamed Hearts), available at a somewhat higher price.
This is the best way for a new author to gain exposure.
Mr. Gilmer.
Thank you for starting this informative thread, and thanks to all the posters for expanding on it. I have always had dreams of becoming published author, but the process of becoming published is a little intimidating. The uprising in e-books seems to be the perfect answer for people like me.
I am a professional in a field completely unrelated to writing, so the money doesn’t really concern me, but it would be nice feel that if I pour my time and energy into producing work, that there is a reasonable chance that someone may actually get to read it. it is amazing to me think that these stories and ideas that I have been nursing in my mind for so many years may actually find someone. The only hurdle left to leap is my own laziness! My only conern now is that I will be, as Mr. Konrath puts it, “self-pubbed crap,” but I guess that wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Many thanks to everyone.
On Monday morning (tomorrow) I am going to decide whether or not to contract for services from a self-publishing firm for my “Sophie and Sam Mystery” series. I’ve chosen the one, but having just reread this thoughtful conversation am left wondering if I need those services — or perhaps some others not in packages. I have spent 40 years making a living as a marketing writer. I think I’ve passed the test on readability, etc., and of course got encouragement for my storytelling from the assigned reader from the press I am considering (cost only $35). None of the participants in this discussion have discussed hiring a designer. I want a good cover. I can get an illustrator to do that. One person wrote about the ongoing promotional challenge and that’s where I think there’s a lack of continuing help from most self-publishing organizations. Yes, I can get on Facebook and promote myself but where, for example, does a self-publisher get help to find a reviewer? I just opened my Kindle two days ago and am halfway through a Donna Leon — love the Kindle, and am convinced other people my age will, too, once they try it. I’m targeting the over-65s.
Any thoughts?
This post is very informative and has renewed my enthusiasm for trying the e-publishing route, despite disappointing financial returns from the musical equivalent, which I have been involved with since its inception. I fear literary publishing may go the same way as music, i.e. simply a surfeit of content (good and bad).
However, as a European I am frustrated by Amazon’s insistence on a US bank account. This appears to bar me from the Kindle-based system, and hence from the iPhone audience. Has anyone found a way round this, e.g. does a Paypal account qualify?
Great thread!
I’m an unpublished author of a short novel for young teenagers. I’m also a very busy person, and finding the time to pursue conventional publishers is an intimidating prospect. I understand that for a new author, finding a publisher is a matter of weeding through many rejections to find a publisher who is interested. I accept that fact… but I simply don’t have time right now to go out there and start getting rejected.
However, I do hold out hope that at some point, I will be able to search out a conventional publisher. Does anyone have any thoughts on what impact Kindle publishing would/could have on my ability, later on, to establish a relationship with a conventional publisher? (Assume, if you don’t mind, that my work is not to be classified as the aforementioned “self-pubbed crap”)
Also, does anyone have any insight into the size distribution of the Kindle market for different age groups?
Finding this site and reading all the comments has inspired me to publish my novel (Bad Girl No More) on Kindle. I have been writing for years, but had no luck in finding an agent or a publisher. Since time marches on, I decided to stop banging my head against the wall and do this. I love the whole idea and am waiting to see what happens. Even if I don’t make much money, I love the idea of my writing being “out there”…visible to whoever chooses to read it. Thanks so much and good luck to us all!
You mentioned that reviews would act as a sort of screen for much of the self-published drivel, that hasn’t been edited well. (My words)
But I’m not sure that reviews will really tip readers off to the very bad. What I’d like to see Amazon do is change the Kindle review ratings from stars to stars with equivalents in dollars.
For example, five stars might mean a reader recommends that this title is a good read for five dollars. 4 stars recommends a price of 4 dollars, and so on.
Of course, that does assume that the best fiction for self-published kindle books would have a maximum price point of five dollars. I think it’s a good compromise, since this is still half of the $10 max price that Amazon has instituted against the publishing houses.
Also, I’m a little dismayed with 35%. True, it’s more than the 10% in many normal contracts, but think of the money this generates for Amazon. And for doing what? Setting all of this in motion? Thankfully the Kindle won’t be the monopoly in digital self-publishing for long. If ever there was a wonderful argument for the Iphone. I hope everyone who can afford to buys one, and then another savvy business man decides to cut authors a 50-50 split.
Following your advice and moving my price down from $4 to $1.99. We’ll see how it goes. I’m from Raleigh NC orginally and went to UNC for a semester. I’m a huge Heels fan! Ended up transferring to Belmont University in Nashville, however as they are one of the few schools with a Music Business major. I’ll put your book on my “to read” list.
Hi,
as a software developer I’m shocked at the terms of the Amazon kindle deal. If Apple is making an enormous amount of money giving the developers 70%, so should Amazon. Letting the authors do with half is NOT ok. I do hope the iBook-store will have better terms. At least that should force Amazon to shape up…
Does self-publishing on Kindle stigmatize or blackball you with traditional print publishers? If you publish on Kindle, will the traditional publishing houses then not touch your work?
Thank you so much for such an in-depth article. I must say as a Kindle reader (and soon to be owner of the Kindle 3), I haven’t even received my first Kindle yet, but thanks to the Kindle for Android app, I have already been a busy little bee reading several novels. Some are from the big publishing companies, books that I just could not do without. I even purchased some books for the Kindle that I already have in paperback or hardback. I just wanted to be able to read them anywhere, because I love them dearly. But I have also bought several novels from folks on there that are doing what I am about to venture into… self publishing.
To answer the price issue… yes, I do feel I have spent some mega bucks on this little electronic device, and with that being said, I shouldn’t have to pay more than a paperback’s price for a popular novel. Unfortunately thanks to Steve Jobs, the prices went up after his little holdout, and so they now price books like Twilight, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and all other bestsellers between paperback price and hardcover. Seeing as we don’t receive a hard copy of this book, why should we have to pay like we are?
To answer the issue of unknown authors… I’ve run across some really wonderful authors in the under $1.99 category. I’ve also read some really horrible novels in that too, and that was a fairly popular novel that was just absolute garbage. If you want, you can read my critiques of novels that I’ve read thus far, on my kindle blog that I put in the website link. The best way to find out about a novel is to do two things. Kindle allows you to preview the book, do that. Trust me, I didn’t do that on two books and I completely regretted it. The second, read the comments. You have to learn to pilfer through some of the inane comments, and some of the ones that are just five starring for the heck of it. I suggest click on the one and two starred comments first.
I look forward to reading my Kindle for years to come, and yes, I look for the inexpensive novels first, because the way I figure it, at least they know what it’s like to be poor. Unfortunately, HarperCollins just doesn’t get that, and that’s why I’ve for the most part just added their books to my wish list as I wait for the price to come down.
I’m just about to self publish something on Amazon, and although there have been some formatting hassles, it’s really only taken a few days, so I can’t complain. I’ll be updating my progress at http://kerkhoven.wordpress.com/
I was wondering, if anyone knows, now that the 70% royalty has been around for several months, if there has been an exponential increase in the number of self-published novels, and therefore lower sales individual authors. The change from 35%, I would imagine, would have had a profound effect on the number of submissions.
I dont own a kindle because of the dilemas that some of the comments above have faced me with. A kindle i can carry with me anywhere, its easier to hold while doing other things and it gives me access to almost any book i want almost instantly. My problem is i love books. So for authors i follow and read everything by it seems odd to me to by both (because i would) so for me a very cheap e book is a way for me to read the book anywhere while still having the actual book at home to keep and share etc. to by two of the same book.. for about the same prices just doesnt help me.. so i refuse to buy a kindle and i miss out on new and upcoming authors.
Excellent post. I’d love a little more detail or information on the kind of PR strategy you outlined. The price point information is useful, but to a non PR person, I’m afraid I have no idea how to create interest.
Cheers.
The traditional publishers have had it their own way long enough. All aspects of media eventually have to fend off healthy competition. Now, the writers have a little power in their hands – and some control over their work. Ebooks may open the sluiceway for some trashy writing, but I feel many gems are about to be discovered that would likely languish in some huge slush pile for all eternity.
I was a doubter like many, but ebooks are here to stay.
Just an add on after reading some of the posts. I understand authors feeling fearful of being ‘marked’ by traditional publishers if they have gone down the ebook route. Believe me, if you have attained thousands of downloads over a period of time – I tend to think they might sit up and listen . . .
I actually had the opposite experience of many who’ve commented.
I put my mystery novel, DEAD IN THE WATER, on Kindle for 99 cents and sold 0 copies. Then I raised the price to 2.99 and it started selling. Granted it hasn’t been up that long and it’s not selling in huge numbers – but the numbers are growing every week.
I’m thinking the 99 cent market is becoming over saturated and it’s harder for people to find your books at that price. Just a theory
I think that it’s fair to say that the Paretto principle will sort out the majority of writers who decide to self-publish digitally. It’s great to hear a success story and here we get two for the price of one – Brian and Joe. It clears up a few things for me especially when it comes to pricing.
I expect to self publish myself within the next six months, first digitally and then perhaps a year or so later using POD. I have set out a model for myself where I can produce between four and six short digital novellas yearly which will form a series. Upon completion of the series I intend to publish each of the digital editions in one paperback novel perhaps with some extended chapters/features.
It is nice to hear that other writers are already working on similar models and using pricing structures that effectively attracts the attention of readers. (Always the most important thing) At least now I have a better idea of what pricing structure I should use.
Anyway Brian, well done and keep up the good work.