C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

12/09/2013 • 10:12 PM 10

Brainstorming better book titles (and what can kill a good one)

1. The tone of the title should match the genre. If your thriller’s title makes potential readers think of young adult romance, keep brainstorming.

2. Non-fiction titles tend to be linear promises to provide solutions to a problem you have identified. Deliver.

My luckless hit man is a funny guy in big trouble.

3. Intriguing is good. Confusing is not. That’s a fine balance. I loved the titles Bigger Than Jesus and Higher Than Jesus. However, it’s pronounced “Hay-soose” and it’s about a funny, hardboiled Cuban hit man. Titles you (and I) have to explain (endlessly!) are not good titles. The cover treatment by Kit Foster of Kit Foster Design saves me from readers who buy my crime novels thinking they are religious books. Also, I do have another solution to this problem. I’ll explore that next year, after a couple more books are written. In the meantime, I remain an idiot for thinking those titles would serve me better than they did.

What? You thought I write these blog posts because I get everything right the first time? Ha! No.

4. When you’re brainstorming, think in terms of keywords. A short, killer, catchy title can be helped a lot by a more explanatory subtitle. Don’t go overboard with keywords, though. If you run out of breath, forget the rest halfway through, or can’t cram the whole title on the cover, rethink. We’ve got to be able to read the title without squinting, so don’t cram it.

5. Generally try to avoid titles that are very long. After catching the title in a wisp of conversation, the potential customer has to remember it all the way back to their computer or the bookstore so they can order it.

6. What’s the central theme, promise or event that’s crucial to your story? Brainstorm titles out of that.

7. Think in terms of brand and series. Can you connect titles in some way? A is for Alibi is already taken, but think about what might fit. I have two new series planned for the end of next year that connect tangentially to existing books.

8. Come up with a bunch of titles and throw out a bunch. Don’t get too attached to a title early on. Some authors feel they need a title before they can begin to write. Your story may change, so just keep that WIP title tentative and to yourself for now.

9. You can take titles from phrases from the Bible or Shakespeare or be completely original. Go for memorable. However, don’t let the absence of a title stop you from beginning to write. It will probably emerge from the manuscript organically. Use a focus group of trusted friends or fellow writers to save you from your worst impulses.

10. Build a brand around your author name, not your title. I don’t want people more excited about my title than they are about me writing another book. That’s why the name “Robert Chazz Chute” is so big on the cover. Make them want to buy the next [insert your name here], not the title. I don’t really like the title, Doctor Sleep, for instance. But it’s Stephen King! Of course I want to read it!

I’m convinced that titles really don’t matter quite as much as we’d like to think.

I can name a lot of titles that shatter these ten well-meant suggestions. It’s like naming a band. Lots of band names sound pretty stupid or obtuse at first, but if the music is any good, people don’t even think about it much. I doubt everyone was enthused about the name The Beatles or Led Zeppelin on their first encounter (before hearing the songs.) I didn’t like the title Fight Club. The book is about so much more than that. However, I got over it quickly.

It’s true for TV shows, too. The first time I heard the name MASH as a little kid, I thought the TV series had something to do with potatoes. The Pink Panther? I didn’t know it was animated, so I pictured an actual pink panther skulking through the jungle. Without seeing it (and hearing its musical theme by Henry Mancini) I had no idea it was destined to become so iconic.

To sell more books, what’s ultimately more important than the title? Your graphic artist.

A good graphic artist can build on an awesome hook. A bad cover can sabotage even your most clever title.

A great title doesn’t matter if no one can see it. Don’t undermine that title you’ve put so much thought into. You need an excellent graphic artist to support your efforts. A great cover maximizes the power of your title and your author name. That’s why I use…wait for the shameless, enthusiastic plug for my Scottish buddy…

Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com

Check out his portfolio for powerful images

that pump up all the authors he serves.

By the way, Crack the Indie Author Code 2nd Edition is out in paperback at $9.99. Smaller format, with jokes.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. With my serial, This Plague of Days, I’ve written two bestsellers. However, my catalogue of my inspirational errors in the early going will tell you more about the challenges of being an indie author. Get Crack the Indie Author Code. I don’t scold you and it’s actually pretty funny. The 6 x 9 print version is about ten bucks and Christmas is coming, so get on that or Christmas is cancelled and Santa’s elves will turn into goblins. It’s up to you to save Christmas from rampaging goblins. It’s up to you and you alone. No pressure.

Filed under: author platform, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, authors, book covers, book titles, books, brainstorming, Christmas, Doctor Sleep, good book titles, how to make a good book title, Kit Foster, Kit Foster Design, kitfosterdesign.com, Literature, publicity, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, Shopping, Stephen King, writers, writing

10/28/2013 • 5:47 PM 0

This Plague of Days: Season One arrives in paperback! (Plus stuff for you)

Special thanks to Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com for his kick-ass cover skills!

If you’re looking to get a cover, I always recommend Kit! Plus, he’s Scottish!

Have a look at the beauty below (i.e. buy it) and be sure to check out his portfolio.

This Plague of Days, Season One teaches Latin proverbs and brings you into the mind of a very unlikely hero on the autistic spectrum. Zombies attack and royal Corgis are in big trouble. Maybe the Queen, too. (That’s my motto: Give the people what they want.)

This book makes a great Halloween gift, Christmas present or something to scare the bejeebers out of friends, family and enemies. If you’ve been waiting for the paperback, here you go. Working on getting Season Two out in print next.

Serialization pros and cons

Not into my books but want more about publishing in savvy ways?

Season 2 is the quest. Expect big trouble in Ireland and Iceland because I think countries beginning with I are narcissistic and need to be taken down a peg or two by bloodthirsty zombies.

Okay, if you came for the pithy stuff about the downside of serialization and why I collapsed to the haters and won’t serialize Season Three of This Plague of Days, you’ll want to check out this post:

Why I won’t do this again

The contest that challenges you to find a secret hidden in plain sight

Yes, there’s also an intriguing contest going on and your immortality is at stake.

Find the secret, win a life everlasting in book and audio form.

I love a mystery wrapped in an enigma concealed in a burrito, don’t you?

~ Robert Chazz Chute is…writing in the third person again. Get your NaNoWriMo inspiration and hope for the publishing future by reading Crack the Indie Author Code in paperback and ebook. Just kidding about the Ireland being narcissistic thing. You know I love the land of my ancestors. But Iceland? Well, you’re on notice for realsies, Icepops!

This Plague Of Days, Episode 4, Season Two is out! (and why I won’t do this again) (thisplagueofdays.com)
This Plague of Days: Explaining Serialization to Readers (thisplagueofdays.com)
Season 2 of This Plague of Days: Behind the scenes in the final polish and hitting #9 (thisplagueofdays.com)
#Podcast The Harder They Fall Edition (allthatchazz.com)
Q & A for This Plague of Days (PART 4) (thisplagueofdays.com)
This Plague of Days Q & A (Part 2) (thisplagueofdays.com)

Filed under: Amazon, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, This Plague of Days, Amazon, apocalyptic, Autism spectrum, book, book contest, Christmas, Contest, dystopian, Gift, horror, horror serial, Ireland, Kit Foster, kitfosterdesign.com, Latin, paperback, Plague of Days, post-apocalyptic, prizes, reading, reviews, Robert Chazz Chute, Season One, Serialization, Shopping, supernatural, This Plague, This Plague of Days, vampires, Zombie

05/29/2013 • 11:59 AM 2

Set Your Internet to Ignore (Psst! The fun is in the parentheticals)

Comment threads and reviews are interesting windows to the human heart. Well, maybe not always the heart. Sometimes the comments come straight from the toe jam.

If you want to be disillusioned with the future of the human race, read YouTube comments. You won’t have to read much before you actually welcome the massive meteor that will destroy Earth this Friday afternoon around 2 pm EST. (Wear a sweater.)

Recently some fool seemed said anyone who criticized a single Amazon policy was against capitalism. No point worrying about people who conflate one thing with a different thing. (“Brainless communists are behind every rock and tree!” is so ’50s.)

In another thread that was very anti-indie, a snarky commenter replied to an indie’s post by correcting a minor typo. The indie made great points about the industry, but the message from the traditional author was clear: A single typo invalidates your argument. (I almost commented, “Bitch move, traddy.”)

**But then it occurred to me, I am not a lone genius. If I see it, everyone sees it.**

When you read an illiterate one-star review or when someone slips into a screed about unrelated topics, everyone sees it for what it is. That’s a good feeling isn’t it? I’m even starting to regret that meteor strike burning up all the planet’s oxygen before the next Game of Thrones. (Perhaps I should cancel the order. Hm.)

This week a person of my acquaintance was criticized because, at the end of his post…wait for it…he dared to point out that he sold stuff for a living. As if that’s a bad thing. (Wait! Maybe Communism is coming back, after all.)

Stop worrying

These comments don’t hurt you as an author or blogger. They hurt the snarker. I’ve gone out of my way to block people who are mean to others. I report abusive reviews that libel the author instead of talk about the book. I know who’s naughty and nice. If the offenders are authors, they are banished and I never buy their books. I’ve gone out of my way to purchase books because of egregious reviews.

Here’s the math:

Idiot reviewer hates book + nastiness + condescension (+ possible libel) – a kind thought = it’s probably not a book nasty, condescending idiots enjoy < I’d like to think I’m not an idiot, therefore, I give that book a try. (Was that condescending?)

Don’t act like a knob

No, you don’t have to be sunshine and sweet cakes all the time, but if you’re going to be mean, you better be twice as smart and savvy with facts. (For instance, Scalzi, Konrath and Wendig can be cutting, but they’re always smarter than they are savage.)

Act like a knob and you’ll be treated like a knob should be treated:

I won’t give you more thought.

I won’t think you’re clever.

I’ll set the Internet to Ignore.

~ I am Robert Chazz Chute and I sell stuff.

How To Not Write a Shit Blog (indifferentignorance.com)
How To Say It Sucks (gettingsomethenovel.wordpress.com)
The End of the Bestseller List? (onehandedwriters.com)
Win friends and influence people online (stuff.co.nz)
8 Tips on how to help out an Indie Author (vincentstrangecraft.wordpress.com)
5 Effective Ways to Minimize Typo Errors on Blog Post (webnite.wordpress.com)
Does the retail price of your Ebook matter? (aliisaacstoryteller.com)
Indie Authors You Should Know (followthepull.com)
How smartly to recover social media typo (socialnomics.net)

Filed under: author platform, authors, book reviews, ebooks, publishing, Writers, Amazon, Arts, Author, blogger, blogging, Criticism, dealing with reviews, E-book, Humor, internet, Literature, minor typo, review, Shopping, snark, traditional author, writer, writing, YouTube

03/10/2013 • 1:51 PM 5

Amazon: Throttled Part 1

In today’s mega post, Part 1 of 3, I explore Amazon’s change of Terms of Service that throttles free ebook promotion and what it might mean to you.

Or, skip to Part 2, where I give new, pointed advice about book promotion dos and don’ts (and some of it is not very nice )

Or skip to Part 3, where I invite you to join me in a new way to reach readers who would otherwise never know you or your work.

Amazon’s Terms of Service have changed.

Amazon sent out this decree recently:

“In addition, notwithstanding the advertising fee rates described on this page or anything to the contrary contained in this Operating Agreement, if we determine you are primarily promoting free Kindle eBooks (i.e., eBooks for which the customer purchase price is $0.00), YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO EARN ANY ADVERTISING FEES DURING ANY MONTH IN WHICH YOU MEET THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and
(b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks.”

Ed Robertson broke down the numbers and some possible implications here.

Free is throttled.

That’s okay. For most of us, free was in a coma, anyway.

From the flaking, protective teflon coating of your brain pan to the tip of the peak of Despair, indie authors everywhere wonder, “Amazon is discouraging websites that publicize free books? What Next?” Amazon doesn’t make emotional decisions. It makes business decisions. Now it’s time for us to make business decisions, too. I come to praise Amazon, not to bury it. (I’m relieved Free is over or at least reined in, but that’s because of Parts 2 and 3 of this thought train. If you only depend on KDP Select free days to promote your work, it’s time to get new egg baskets.)

Why Amazon’s bad news is a good thing and what we can do about it in three parts:

You’re going to hear a lot of uproar about free days going away. It’s understandable. Websites promoting free ebooks won’t be getting those juicy affiliate commissions anymore, so there are fewer choices in promoting our books. Authors need help to get the word out about their books. Some thoughts on our predicament:

1. For some, Free rocked as a short-term strategy. Free was always a poor long-term strategy. It undermined the market. Many readers, feeling entitled and smug, filled their kindles but never got around to reading all those hoarded books. I sure couldn’t read them all. Aim a 500-pound-per-square-inch fire hose at a teacup. That teacup will not retain a lot of water. Our overly full kindles are teacups.

2. Free was over, anyway. Everywhere I look, someone’s offering a giveaway but I’m already overloaded. I’m giving Six Seconds away as gifts to get honest reviews, but I’m not trying the scatter shot of Amazon free days anymore. Free helped for a short time. The biggest bumps came in the earliest KDP Select Days. If you got in early, you had a good shot at making money. After the algorithm changed? For most of us, the answer is “much less so”.

3. Some people still made money, and will continue to do so, with Free. These sturdy outliers have good books, but just as important, they have marshalled forces to get the word out about their books without relying on those throttled websites to spread the word. I know a couple of authors who did so well with free listings that they don’t cower one bit at paying a bunch for advertising their books. They’re happier because we can expect more signal and less noise since free ebooks won’t crowd out the paid ones as much.

4. Some of those free ebook websites will continue without the affiliate sales. Amazon is like the cops announcing it’s time to shut off the stereo, end the party and go home. Some other sites will simply shrug and start referring their subscribers to non-Amazon platforms.

5. Some websites will adapt well. The TOS changes were pretty much met with a shrug at Digital Book Today because their business model doesn’t rely on free book links to make them rich.

6. Fore sites that do rely heavily on those affiliate links, far fewer free ebooks will be pushed and it will be harder for us to be among the chosen few. For many of those sites, it was already darn hard to get your giveaway listed anyway, so many authors won’t notice a difference.

7. Cheap books can be pushed without punishment, therefore 99 cents is back in play. The “I’d buy that for a dollar!” price point is back. It had a brief spike before Free rose up to crush it, but now 99 cents looks fresh and ready for vengeance. Thirty cents or so isn’t an impressive pay out to authors. It is more than zero, but the bad news is you’ll still have to sell whatever tattoo space that is left on your body on Fiverr.com to pay for a can of beans to share with the other hobos under a bridge.

8. The good news is that there’s a huge gap in the buyer’s mind between free and cheap. With that tiny investment, you’ll get fewer one-star reviews from disappointed people who mistakenly grabbed up your book in a free book spree. (You know the sort. They blame you for their unwillingness to read a product description.)

9. We’re going to have to adapt more. Even more. Sure, you probably aren’t making money and this profession is usually a glorified hobby that disappoints your parents. Your friends make encouraging sounds with their mouths, but their sidelong glances say they’re worried about you. Nonetheless, this is the game. Calling this a game suggests this is play. That might help you get through this. Take it too seriously and you’ll be out here with me on a ledge worrying about bills. If you’re a worried indie author out on a ledge, take comfort in the fact that (look left, look right) twas always thus and plenty of traditionally published authors are out in the wind contemplating doom, too.

10. KDP Select has less and less to offer. Are those library sales worth it? Are five free days (over 90-day, exclusive commitments) going to pay off when you have a harder time promoting them? Probably not, in most cases. It’s a reasonable guess that Amazon throttled back on free because they were paying out too much for those affiliate referrals. Will Amazon come up with another program to address our problem created by their solution? I don’t know. No one knows (but I do doubt it.)

Despite the TOS change, a lot of authors are still stuck in KDP Select until their 90-day term is over. It happens I have only one book left in KDP Select and I used up all my free days before Christmas as I launched Murders Among Dead Trees. Lucky timing. If I was stuck with all my books in KDP Select now, I would be very annoyed at being in that canoe without a paddle.)

11. Kobo and Apple smell opportunity. Draft2Digital rises and maybe Smashwords will, at least and finally, update their look. The great migration across other platforms had already begun. KDP Select has been steadily turning off authors since last spring. Now there’s more reason for us to explore our options. Perhaps the #2 contender, Kobo, will offer a new program to lure us to their lair. Or maybe you’ll get around to selling books straight from your website.

12. As detailed in Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire, the only book promotion tool I have confidence in (that isn’t unethical) is: Write More Books! I amended that decree with: Write shorter books. And more of them.

But what else can we do to promote our books?

I have some ideas about what we can do and

some strong ideas about what we shouldn’t do.

CLICK HERE FOR

PART 2: THROTTLING YOU (AND SOME OF THIS ISN’T VERY NICE)

SKIP TO PART 3: What we can do about this, together.

Amazon Squashing Affiliates who Promote Free Kindle Books (goodereader.com)
Authors face change as Amazon tightens affiliate policy on free Kindle books [GigaOM] (paidcontent.org)
Amazon May Have Just Have Completely Killed Free eBook Promotions (the-digital-reader.com)

Filed under: book marketing, publishing, advertising, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Author, book, book promotion, books, Business, Digital Book Today, E-book, ebook, Ed Robertson, Internet Marketing, Kindle eBook, Kindle eBooks, Kobo, Mark Coker, Marketing, Shopping, Terms of service, website

09/09/2012 • 12:18 PM 8

Quote Art: A new way to promote your books

**This is not a book cover. It’s Quote Art for my suspense novel, Bigger Than Jesus. The quote is pulled from the book. The art is by Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com.**

Jesus Diaz is my luckless Cuban hit man in the first of the Hit Man Series: Bigger Than Jesus. (It’s pronounced “Hay-soose”.) Follow his exploits as he tries to escape New York’s Spanish mob with a fortune in stolen mafia money and the lovely Lily Vasquez.

Great book covers sell books. Now picture a quote pulled from your book with another compelling, related image. See it on Facebook, as a Twitpic, on your author site or as a poster at your next book signing. Quote Art is a different way to promote your books to new audiences. It’s a clue about your characters and another chance to intrigue potential readers. Why try to grab them with just one image when you can hold their attention with more using a new, integrated and savvy marketing tool?

Click it to grab the paperback or the ebook. Thanks!

Kit is my graphic designer. If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve already sung his praises. Now I’m complimenting him for his innovation in doing something a little different to help me spread the word about my books. Thanks again, Kit!

To find out more about his book cover designs and to see samples of his art,

go to KitFosterDesign.com.

**Want another marketing tool to build buzz?**

I need a couple more volunteers for my Next Big Thing Blog Hop post. If you have a work in progress you want to build some buzz about, I have two more spots available for this event. All you have to do is answer ten quick questions about your WIP and post them on your blog a week from Wednesday. You link back to me and I link to you and the word spreads farther. Volunteer at expartepress@gmail.com and I’ll send you an email with the blog hop specs.

I’m doing another blog hop in the near future, so watch this space.

Book cover troubles and solutions (chazzwrites.com)
The Tire (allthatchazz.com)
How to talk with your graphic designer about your book cover

Filed under: publishing, book, Book cover, book marketing, book promotion, book signings, Business, Design, Facebook, Graphic design, graphic designer, illustration, Kit Foster, kitfosterdesign.com, publicity, Quote Art, Shopping, Twitpic

11/20/2011 • 11:08 PM 3

Here’s a trailer for my books.

Did this on iMovie today. I’d never used iMovie before, but it was fun to play with. Just took a couple of hours, two cans of diet pop and half a bag of salt and vinegar chips…well, those last items might not have been altogether necessary. Books, book trailers, the Self-help for Stoners podcast on iTunes…I’m multimedia now!

Will a book trailer make a difference in sales? Doubtful, from what I’ve researched, but it might draw more attention to my blog and author profile on Goodreads and that’s why I did it. The exposure on YouTube might not hurt, either. I’m sure I’ll do something more elaborate (but just as short) in the future and make each trailer book-specific. For now? This makes me happy.

Book trailers: Problems and solutions (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
What if I don’t have a book trailer? (usaukwoods.wordpress.com)
YouTube Book Trailer Category? (diamondpublicationz.wordpress.com)
The Book Trailer (beaturvey.wordpress.com)

Filed under: book trailer, Publicity & Promotion, book trailer, books, Goodreads, iMovie, Shopping, Trailer, YouTube

10/05/2011 • 1:15 PM 3

On judging books by their covers

Thank you to everyone for your input on the covers for my book, Self-help for Stoners, Stuff to Read When You’re High (available on all e-readers Nov. 1, cha-cha-cha!)

The input has been put in. By a huge majority, the votes are for the bright orange cover (below). When it’s on a shelf, digital or wooden, it will stand out. It was an interesting experiment to see how people reacted to the covers. The happy thing is that, even among people who weren’t so sure about the orange cover, most of them still thought that cover could be effective. The other aspect about book cover colors is a little more inside baseball: The rule of thumb is that, unless it’s a golf or gardening book, green covers don’t sell very well. (It’s one of those weird little details I learned from the Banff Publishing Workshop. It was reinforced by years of selling books for multiple publishers. I’m not sure about much, but that tidbit is pretty consistent except for The Celestine Prophecy.)

Soon you’ll be hearing from my graphic designer, Kit Foster of www.kitfosterdesign.com. Kit’s a novelist, too, and very talented. Someone told me the other day how impressed he was with Kit’s covers. They do look like they’re from a large publishing house, not my tiny kingdom of Ex Parte Press. We’re all told we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we all do. Without a solid cover, no one will pick it up or click on it to discover the tasty treats inside.

The process of working with a graphic designer: When Kit and I started a dialogue about book covers, the arrangement evolved organically. I described what I had in mind and sent him a sample of the manuscript. He suggested a few things and I saw his wisdom and asked for some tweaks. He sent me a cover and we narrowed it down with another round or two or three of tweaks. His input was invaluable. I have no idea how he does what he does and I bowed to his experience with graphics. Even though I have a deep background in selling books, my focus was the words. Kit came up with the images to sell the words. With Sex, Drugs & Romeo, the final graphic is very close to his original proposal. With Sex, Death and Mind Control (for fun and profit), we went back and forth a bit more, but Kit was always patient and helpful. The only element I knew I wanted to keep was the author tag. I wanted it to be consistent across the bottom in cherry red on all the covers so my books would be instantly identifiable for cross-promotion purposes.

Kit’s great at what he does and a photographer friend of mine is also awesome. I’m going to ask them to guest post and drop some science on us about the art of book cover creation. In the meantime, rethink your green cover and ask for a poll from your network of writer friends and readers. People will often help if you dare to ask.

Bold book covers (ask.metafilter.com)
Ebook-specific cover design #4 – shape, by Piotr Kowalczyk (teleread.com)
From the Design Desk: New Vintage Covers (chroniclebooks.com)
Ebook cover awards: good or bad idea (teleread.com)
Ugly Covers Competition – Week 1 (leeswammes.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Books, ebooks, self-publishing, What about Chazz?, Art, Book cover, books, Business, choosing ebook covers, ebook covers, ebooks, Graphic design, graphic designer, publishing, self-publishing, Shopping

07/08/2011 • 7:18 PM 0

Shocked yet not surprised: Indigo halves its bookshelf space

Here’s the link to Five Rivers publisher Lorina Stephens’ excellent post on how Indigo is changing its returns policy (45 days and you’re out!) and cutting its space for books in half. So much for anybody whose name isn’t Rowling, King, Meyer and whoever the guy is who came up with Go the F**k to Sleep. This stirs up a lot of questions for people whose names are not those names. For instance, how many scented candles does anyone really need to buy in one lifetime? And how will traditional publishing cope?

For me personally, this is not a big deal because I am not in the least surprised. As I’ve been saying, this is not an if. It’s just about when. Blockbuster is battered senseless and HMVs are shrunk to nubs. I am so the opposite of an early adopter of new tech I’m nearly Amish and I don’t go near the Busted Block nor do I buy CDs anymore (though I understand some people still make them, everybody’s just picking the songs they want off iTunes.) I anticipated this boostore shift and consider it to be The Half-Measure of Doom on the Road to Bookstore Apocalypse.

Ahem. Pardon the hyperbole, but I’ve encountered a bunch of resistance from people who are convinced that my sole focus on ebooks was career suicide. No matter what I said, the doubters were sure a book had to be in a bookstore to be “real” and “worthy” and “made of paper and stuff.”

And I said, “What’s a bookstore?” Now I’m doing my “Told you so” dance and though I should be ashamed of myself, to be honest, I’m not feeling it.

But seriously, bookstores are literally farther and fewer between. As they cut down on shelf space to make room for doodads to dust, yo-yos and novelty pens, there will be no shelf for indies. You want choice, variety and a taste of the new? Go look online because you won’t find it in a bricks and mortar chain store.

But enough from me and my reactionary delusions of grandeur. Lorina says it all in detail in her usual reasonable, convincing tone, so do go read what she has to say.

Filed under: authors, Books, ebooks, Useful writing links, Bookselling, Business, E-book, ebooks, indigo books, Kobo, publishing, Publishing and Printing, Shopping

03/18/2011 • 4:04 AM 10

Sell your books. For a long time.

Image via Wikipedia

Movies focus on the opening weekend. Books have a month to hit big or get returned. At least, that’s the way it was for all books. That’s changing in a big way.

Recently I read an agent talking about how digital books extend the life of sales of paper books. Essentially, the message was very much “the status quo is still the status quo” and “E-books are an add-on. Publishing hasn’t substantially changed.”

I don’t agree. First, the extent to which traditional publishing isn’t changing is part of its problem, not its solution. True, many people prefer paper books to e-books, but that’s changing, especially since there are far fewer places to shelve paper books. Bookstores are closing up. It’s not happening overnight. It won’t happen to all bookstores. But e-books are where to place your bets for the future and the future’s coming faster than any of the experts predicted. (Of course, it’s all so new, I’m not sure if anyone really is an “expert.” Maybe that’s a title for someone to claim years later, not in the middle of a history change.)

The agent asserted that most people by far don’t even own e-readers. Yes, and a lot of people still don’t own telephones. That doesn’t mean utility stocks, like Ma Bell, are a bad bet. A lot of people will never own e-readers, but that won’t matter to the book industry because most of those people aren’t big readers anyway. Power users (power readers) are responsible for buying a lot of books—power users, like me. For instance, I bought The 4 Hour Body electronically. Then I decided I wanted to own it in paper as well because it’s a reference book. Then I kept downloading.

The agent’s point about e-books extending sales really stuck with me. The game has changed with e-books. Distribution is cheap and easy. It’s so easy, authors can sell their books themselves through distributors and their own websites. Authors know that their books are not stale to new readers. Every book is new to anyone who hasn’t yet read it.

This is the “long tail” of sales. And now it’s for everybody. The game has changed. What’s weird is that not everybody sees it yet.

Paper book nostalgia (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Bookstores: How sick are they? (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Writers: TOP 10 Objections to Self-Publishing (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
The Expensive e-Book: The Illogical Reasons Why Paper Books Can Sell for Less (scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org)
How I went from traditional to ebook publishing (and started selling again) (teleread.com)

Filed under: publishing, Writers, writing tips, 4-Hour Body, Amazon Kindle, book, Bookselling, E-book, Publish, Sales, Shopping

11/25/2010 • 7:56 PM 0

What books are you buying this Christmas?

The New York Times has some suggestions:

100 Notable Books of 2010 – Holiday Gift Guide

Do you have any recommendations? Must-haves? I’m especially interested to hear if you have a little-known book that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Also, since they can be the most difficult to shop for, what gift ideas do you have for young adult and children’s books?