Before you read this article about author rankings, a quick heads up: I’m inviting you to something fun that could help you in your writing endeavours. The link at the bottom of this article will take you to ThisPlagueOfDays.com for a post you’ll like about the advantages of serialization. At the bottom of that post, click on The Link for the Curious to get a secret (not a spoiler!) about This Plague of Days.
Episode 4 releases today!
Go to Author Central and have a look at your author rank. This shows you how you’re doing compared to other authors on Amazon. That’s not very useful information, but there is something to be gleaned from these charts.
Author rank on Amazon is interesting or depressing, depending on your score. However, the public never sees your author rank unless you’re in the top 100. As you click through and look at charts, the blue points are your highest rank on any given day (not your average for the day). The orange point is your placement right now.
These rankings are based on sales figures of digital, paper and audio. (So, as I’ve mentioned in this space, if you aren’t exploring your audio options yet, get on that.)
It’s good to own a genre if you can
If you’re really smart, you picked a genre and tried to dominate it. All or most of your books will be in one category and you won’t have many charts to click through. I’m not all that smart. I think focussing all your energy in one genre is probably a good idea. It is good advice I couldn’t take. I bubble over with ideas for books in various genres. Many of us are cursed that way.
For instance, I came up with an insta-book on doing business with the Vine app simply because (a) I was so enthused about the new app, and (b) I was working on the gargantuan This Plague of Days and felt like it had been too long since I’d published anything new. Not wanting to be forgotten, I wrote and published Six Seconds in one week. (Publishing gave my other books a bit of a boost, too, so there’s that.)
Gleaning what’s good to know from Amazon’s author rank
I have three books in non-fiction (business and publishing).
For the Hit Man Series, I ranked higher in mystery than I did in thrillers, though I ranked consistently higher in action/adventure and science fiction and fantasy.
I don’t consider myself a sci-fantasy writer. However, This Plague of Days fits neatly in the sci-fi subcategory of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic.
According to my author ranks, I rank best as a horror writer. I have several books of short stories on Amazon, but since they’re under the too vague “literature and contemporary fiction” categories, my rank there is weaker. Too general doesn’t help. I could and should put Murders Among Dead Trees under the horror category, too. It fits the tone for that collection.
Beware, however, of drilling too deep into a stagnant subcategory. The Hit Man Series sells better when categorized as action adventure and mystery. Hardboiled is a stagnant subcategory Bigger Than Jesus and Higher Than Jesus languished in too long. They were ignored because I messed up my category choice.
The mind virus is created. Spread the infection. Each of five episodes is only 99 cents each. Get the whole Season for the discount at $3.99. (And if you already have read it, please review it.) Thanks! ~ Chazz
Bonus hint
How can you tell if a subcategory is too small or dead? Check out a few forums on the genre. If the board has few members or the most recent posts aren’t in the current calendar year, uh-oh!)
Don’t major in your minor
People major in their minor all the time. They’re lousy at formatting but they spend days on a task they should farm out to someone else. They should be writing but since they don’t want to delegate, they’re doing something other than writing and revising. The author ranking by genre shows us what we do best by identifying what books people want more.
Author ranking gives us clues how we should categorize our books on Amazon for greater discoverability and tells us what our major is. You could look at bare book sales, but with author rankings by genre, Amazon does that for you in a clearer way that doesn’t allow you to fool yourself with short-term variables. Look for trends across categories for clues to optimize your books’ chances.
What the clues from author rankings told me
1. As I studied my rankings, I was reassured that I made a good choice to pursue the horror category.
2. I have two more books in the Hit Man Series in the chamber, but I won’t pull the trigger on those until things slow down with my plague serial. This Plague of Days, Season Two hits in September, so Jesus Diaz fans will have to wait just a bit longer while I major in my major.
3. As I write the next book about my loveable but luckless Cuban hit man, I’ll amp up the mystery so it fits more comfortably in that category.
4. For the books that perform less powerfully, I have some ideas that will breathe life into old titles as I create new ones.
5. The work that stands alone doesn’t perform as well. I knew this, of course, but I can see it in the charts. This is bad news because I have another huge book that was to be a one-off. Then it occurred to me. This is good news. It’s so huge, I could serialize it as I’m doing with This Plague of Days.
The mind virus is created. Spread the infection. Each of five episodes is only 99 cents each. Get the whole Season for the discount at $3.99. (And if you already have read it, please review it.) Thanks! ~ Chazz
I’m teaching my son hand-to-hand combat. He’s such a friendly, funny, sweet little guy, I’m sure his character will keep him out of lots of fights. However, there are things to learn that are applicable to the forces you and I combat. For instance, it’s often easy to predict who will win a street fight. Similarly, I can tell you why some authors will win the fight to have their work discovered.
The bigger person usually wins the fight.
The fighting analogy is obvious, but it applies to our book ventures, too. If you have published many books, you’re in more Also boughts. More shelf space means easier discoverability. The longer your book is available, the more sales it will eventually accrue. (My bestseller is still my first book.)
If you aren’t big yet, write more good books.
The person who strikes first usually wins the fight.
I’d rather my son run from any fight, but if threatened with no escape route, hit fast and hit hard and hit first. End it before the drunk gets a head of steam on the courage he got from a bottle.
If you got into self-publishing early (i.e. before the Amazon algorithms changed) or if you were a popular traditionally published author, you have the advantage of experience and legacy. You had a profile. You still have an advantage now. You hit early, hard and first. You’re still feeling the benefits of throwing the first punch.
The person who is better prepared wins the fight.
A trained fighter has an obvious advantage over a novice. The trained fighter will be less likely to panic when things go wrong and will know how to compensate for a temporary reversal of fortune. After losing sparring matches in training, the experienced fighter has knowledge that will allow victory.
Similarly, if a writer has written a long time, he or she will not lose confidence at a temporary setback. Sometimes you have no idea what happens next in your story and you’ve written yourself into a corner. Once you’ve written yourself into a corner many times, you don’t give up so quickly when you meet the problem again. You recognize opportunities or make new ones.
The person who is willing to do what it takes to win, will.
Most people are unwilling to do the nasty things you do to end a fight decisively. Most fights start when an idiot tries to intimidate someone, but the bully often doesn’t really want to fight. There’s a good reason no one really wants to fight. It hurts. Even if you win, you’ll very likely have tooth marks on your knuckles.
You guessed it. Many people who say they want to write, don’t. Experienced writers get bored when someone complains they don’t have enough time to write or they have writer’s block. In most cases, that’s the sound of someone unwilling to put in the time to write, edit, revise, polish and publish.
Serious writers grapple with issues of craft, marketing and business. Serious writers have much more challenging time management problems than merely beginning to write. We do what we have to do. That always means sacrifice.
The fighter with more muscle usually wins.
Even a trained, experienced fighter can be taken out by a shot with heft behind it.
For the writer, skills are our muscle. We know what a gerund is and how it relates to passive voice. We can avoid a lot of problems because we have an ear for dialogue or paid attention to basic grammar rules in school. These skills keep you in the fight for readers’ attention longer.
The first rule of Fight Club is: Do not talk about Fight Club!
Fighters don’t build up to the fight. That’s macho posturing and a sign of a silly bully, not a fighter. Talking is not where our energies are best employed (unless we’re being kind to each other.)
Let’s not talk about Armand Rosamilia and the horror books everyone knows. Let’s talk about the secret Armand Rosamilia no one knows.
1. What’s the scariest movie you ever saw and why?
I always tell everyone Beaches with Bette Midler, but it’s really Breakin’ 2: Electric Bugaloo.
2. Why do you write about horror when you could be writing about unicorn and puppy erotica?
Who says I don’t use a pen-name for that stuff? But I hate puppies so I don’t write that crap.
3. What’s your secret to being so damn sexy and does that get in the way of your writing career or help your fame grow?
Being so damn sexy is actually a curse. I can’t even go through the McDonald’s drive-thru and order three McDoubles (plain, please) without someone asking for my autograph on the credit card receipt.
4. If you could remake a horror movie with two iconic monsters, which ones would you put together on screen and who would win?
This might be my first serious answer… hmm. Tom Cruise (with creepy smile) against the C.H.U.D.’s. I would like to see the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground
Armand Rosamilia
Dwellers win.
5. What stars would you cast in the movie of Dying Days (note: Not all characters can be Richard Simmons.)
Since you took the obvious answer away from me… Alyssa Milano as Darlene Bobich, even though she doesn’t look like her… I just want to finally meet my next ex-wife. And then a bunch of dudes I have no use for. Like the dreamy Drew Carey and Orlando Bloom (who people mistake me for all the time).
6. Celebrity author death match: Dean Koontz versus Stephen King in a cage at the Superbowl half-time show. The soundtrack is the fight music from the original Star Trek Spock versus Shatner fight to the death. What weapons do Koontz and King use? How does the fight go down and who wins?
Koontz uses his toupee as a secret weapon, using it at the last minute to break off King’s giant choppers and forcing them down his throat. King’s Ramones t-shirt is ineffective against Koontz.
7. In your spare time I understand you’re an internationally recognized belly button lint sculptor. How did you get into that and what’s your favorite piece of lint art?
My Abraham Lincoln is frighteningly life-like, but my Mel Gibson sculpture of his belly button lint from Lethal Weapon 2: Electric Bugaloo is also amazing.
8. What was your personal, secret, behind-the-scenes role in bringing down Mitt Romney in the last US election?
I actually went out for a few banana bread beers with him and told him, truthfully, ‘Westeros will have an election next year. Hold out for there, or Margaritaville. Either place could use you.’ Then he got into his spaceship with Bigfoot and they went to hang out with Elvis and Fatty Arbuckle.
9. What does “Rosamilia” translate to?
In Italian the literal translation is ‘Man with Giant Penis Who Knows How To Use It’. Or thousand roses. I forget which one.
10. If you weren’t a horror author, obviously you’d be bent on world domination. What would your plan to become our overlord be?
First thing I would do would be to sink Canada (sorry, Chazz) back into the Hudson River, and then destroy the New York Yankees with a meteor (sorry, um… idiot Yanks fans) and then all radio stations would only be allowed to play Steel Panther or Bloodhound Gang songs. Then I would ban all literature except my books and Watership Down. And then we’d turn the pyramids upside down and make them giant swimming pools and I’d charge $5 per swim. And then… OK, I got nothing.
The mind virus is created. Spread the infection. Click the image to purchase.
Welcome to young Jaimie Spencer’s world.
See the collapse of America’s heartland through the eyes of a boy on the autism spectrum. Watch the rise of the zombies destroy London. Two forces. One collision course.
This Plague of Days, Season 1 is like two books in one.
Terrorists release a deadly virus: Sutr-X kills 60% of the world’s population. It mutates. Now Sutr-Z is coming for all of us. Watch how ordinary people react when everything they thought they knew is ripped away.
Look around.
Your power? Your conveniences? The gasoline for your car and all that food to choose from? Gone.
The food chain is changing. The virus is spreading. Your world is falling apart and you are meat if you can’t run, fight or hide.
This Plague of Days is a horror serial that will surprise you.
Latin phrases, contemplations on the nature of God, cannibals in the streets and a strange boy who is a selective mute with an obsession for words. Don’t miss this one.
I’m up to my alligators in the final revisions and polish of This Plague of Days. Still, other stuff must be juggled when I take a break from the “real” work. Keeping the engine of the author platform going is very important. Without it, who will find and read my books? Fortunately, it’s all fun or I wouldn’t get to it. Here’s what else I did today:
1. Fired off weird interview questions for a future author appearance on this blog.
2. Answered weird interview questions for another blog, prepping for promoting This Plague of Days. (If you want me on your podcast or blog, email me at expartepress [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
3. I posted the story pitch and beta reader feedback for my horror book and serial at ThisPlagueOfDays.com.
4. I wrote about the Vine app’s huge update on my blog about Six Seconds. Vine is used by 13 million people. Today, a whole new group of people, Android users, may be pulled to check out the book, buy it and use it.
5. I posted multiple vines (little videos) to my Vine account. That cascades to Facebook and Twitter. I welcomed the new Android users and interspersed that with several funny vines about the Android update and using my how-to book about the Vine app, Six Seconds. (I’m “Robert Chazz Chute” on Vine. Follow me there and say hi!)
6. I posted on my weight loss blog early this morning at DecisionToChange.com. Got some great feedback on that piece and I’m growing another audience segment there. That blog competes with this one as my fastest growing blog, though it’s very new and this is my third year posting on ChazzWrites.
7. Email correspondence. Confirmed a story meeting with a friend who’s an expert on logistics and hiking for Season 2 of This Plague of Days. He’ll help me plot details of the journey in Season 2 and he’s okay with getting paid in coffee.
8. Listened to a Self-publishing Podcast over the course of getting my daughter to the dentist and taking her to gymnastics.
9. I appeared on the Podcaster’s Roundtable Sunday night. We talked about dealing with negative feedback, reviews, haters and trolls. I made some good jokes. I had permission to spread the word and post the video, so I stuck the YouTube video up on my author blog at AllThatChazz.com today.
10. My friend Kim Nayyer alerted me to news of indie membership in The Writers Union of Canada. That post and link appears below this one.
11. This blog post is written. It’s 9 PM.
Tonight I’ll do the dishes and walk 5 km. Then I’ll probably polish another episode of This Plague of Days. Projected bedtime: 1 PM. And I’m very happy with that.
To do:
I’m appearing in a sketch on Inverse Delerium, a very cool comedy podcast. That went over so well, they sent me another script (and I get to plug This Plague of Days between the laughs). More revisions, that logistics/story meeting, a fresh reading for the All That Chazz podcast, posting a new Cool People Podcast with author LeRon Barton about drug culture and the drug war in America, incorporating new beta feedback as it arrives, consultations and prepping the TPOD cover and TPOD promo and t-shirt graphics with my friend and uber graphic designer Kit Foster.
They call us “indies” and it doesn’t take an army. It takes a platoon and total commitment and time management.
~ This weekend, in between podcast interviews and, of course, more editing, I now have a YouTube Channel dedicated solely to Ex Parte Press books and podcasts. I expect this channel will grow quite a bit as I incorporate much more video into my author platform. (For instance, I want to use it so you can not only hear the Cool People Podcast on iTunes and Stitcher etc, you can also see the interviews if you wish. My interview with Shermin Kruse about the Middle East and US politics is the first Cool People video cast.)
I’m currently adding a scene to This Plague of Days in which Queen Elizabeth’s Corgis get fed to rampaging zombies as an appetizer before the main (royal) course. As I move through the day, fueled by coffee and rage, I stop to take care of details: Fun details, critical details, tiny details. Here’s the last few days:
1. Sent uncorrected ARCs of This Plague of DaysEpisode 1 to a bunch of people. The early reviews are happy ones.
2. Published a new Cool People Podcast. I interviewed Renee Pawlish about her strategies for writing and selling books. Good stuff and of particular interest if you read this blog regularly.
3. Updated several plugins across my five blogs, but the change to the Image Rotator Widget screwed up so the covers of my books were displayed in too huge a fashion. Sigh.
4. Sent off a couple more suggestions to Kit, graphic designer extraordinaire, for promotional T-shirts, prizes and giveaways. I plan to sell the shirts in the future, too. Fun, dark and brilliant designs by my man Kit. I knew he was great at book covers. He’s got an impressive flair for t-shirt designs, too. (Hint: hire him for your next book cover, website header, Zazzle product, etc.,…)
5. Commented on some blogs on a few Facebook posts and blogs of interest. Posted to my own blogs. (There are five now. I post to DecisionToChange.com almost daily.)
6. Wrote several new scenes for This Plague of Days and posted some excerpts as teasers. A novel is slightly different from a serial. I’m a teasing, surprising, cliffhanger guy anyway, but to keep the readers moving from one episode to the next, I added new material for extra punch.
7. I recorded a new All That Chazz podcast. I have to edit it and publish it later this weekend since that’s behind schedule. Sickness and book launch prep has eaten into my podcast time, but something had to give.
8. Emailed back and forth with future guests on the Cool People Podcast. People are asking to be on, so it’s picking up.
9. Did some promotions on Vine and performed an experimental giveaway with Murders Among Dead Trees. Hit #34 in free on Amazon on the short story collection list with one day of promotion. Lessons learned: Get a higher profile on Vine and post more often. Most of the people who picked up the freebie came through my friends on Facebook.
10. Did some research on book sales and picked up Chuck Sambuchino’s new book Create Your Writing Platform. I also listened to the Self-Publishing Podcast in which the hosts believe free on Amazon is dead (as is the 99-cent price point.)
Bonus 1: I just learned that the plural is Corgis, not “Corgies”.
Bonus 2: I learned a blog post about publishing with the word “enema” in the title, gets a lot of traffic.
Question:
How about it? Is free dead to you? Does 99 cents mean the book is inexpensive or just crap? The guys on the Self-Publishing Podcast advised putting your stuff out on all platforms. I’d feel better about that if the other platforms sold more and had a more active review culture. What do you think?
And now back to edits with The Little Things by Danny Elfman as my soundtrack…
~ Follow Chazz on Twitter @rchazzchute. If you’re feeling down, go make a kale smoothie and dance sweaty. If you’re feeling up, make sure you have permission and then get sweaty.
One of the movies we love here in the secret bunker is The Incredibles. I love a good Bond movie and The Incredibles is superheroes in a Bond movie. It’s a lot of fun, though, for me, the most effecting scene is where the missiles close on the plane with kids on board. Having kids makes you cry easily and I’ve cried during that scene several times over.
Kind of a Spoiler
In the original plot for The Incredibles, the plot called for the plane to be piloted by an ordinary human — a sweet old man and friend of Elastigirl — who gets killed in the explosion. That was revised when they decided it was too dark a turn for a kids’ movie.
The best scene
For my wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, the scene she always brings up first is the attack on the city.
Samuel L. Jackson, primed to defend innocents and come out of retirement, really sells it when he sees the devastation and shouts, “Honey! Where is my super suit?!”
His wife’s reply: “Oh, no you don’t! I have been planning this dinner with the Robinsons for weeks!”
“Honey! Where is my super suit?!”
The juxtaposition of the mundane with a superhero’s clothing needs is funny, but it doesn’t stand out as much for me. She Who Must Be Obeyed is not wrong. (That can never happen.) However, it underlines that we can’t predict how our writing will be received. We must write for ourselves and hope others of like mind will find us (or we must find them). When I wrote for magazines, I was often surprised which bit of a column provoked outrage and what spurred letters of admiration. People won’t necessarily unpack your book the way you thought you sent it.
And then…
Yesterday I read one-star reviews of a few of Shakespeare’s plays. One star. Really? I know it’s a subjective universe, but The Freakin’Bard only gets one star?
Write more. Worry less.
You could concern yourself with the trend of reviews. Report the abusive reviews. Consider correcting fallacies in reviews (like author Elle Lothlorien). Refuse to read your reviews (like author JA Konrath).
Reviewers are not your boss. You are your boss. Being boss is one of your best reasons to write. Don’t give it up. Write! Like a boss!
Stop worrying so much and just write your next best thing. The next best thing could be your best book ever (which someone will load down with a one-star review). Just write. Not everyone will love your book or they’ll love different parts of your book for different reasons. Those who dislike your work aren’t your readers of the future, so they don’t matter. They don’t pay you for your books so they literally don’t figure into the accounting.
Before I tell you about this helpful editing program…
I have to tell you there are other editing programs that aren’t nearly so helpful. They aren’t as good as human eyes (so always keep some human eyes in your pocket.) You can subscribe to these programs at varying rates, from cheap to expensive. Some are better than others. I tested one and it told me there were 43 areas of concern in the first paragraph. Of course, even a terrible writer probably doesn’t have 43 areas of concern in one paragraph. It wasn’t even a very long one! I shuddered, cursed and looked closer.
The problem was the program threw up red flags (as in vomited red flags) everywhere. In an effort to be thorough, it overshot into ridiculously unhelpful. The grammar problems weren’t grammar problems. The spelling suggestions were all just alternative words. Stylistic choices were only that. Of the 43 problems, I found two things I might change. Might! I get that from rereading any paragraph!
The signal to noise ratio was clearly way off in the program. If I ever hate a writer with OCD, I’ll be sure to gift him or her a subscription. We’ll never hear from them again and they’ll never write another book.
So, to the “new” suggestion
It’s not new, but it is useful. I write in Scrivener (which I love). When I find quotes and snippets I want to reveal as appetizers at ThisPlagueOfDays.com, naturally I post it into WordPress. I’ve found the WordPress editor has helped me reconsider some things. It suggests neither too much nor too little. It’s elegant, free and easy to use for that little added polish to make you feel excited about getting to your last draft and publishing your book.
Grab a chapter from your WIP, paste it into WordPress, test it and consider adding it to your editorial production process. I like it.
C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m 