In Special Operations we were very paranoid. And it’s not being paranoid if everyone is indeed out to get you. Writers tend to be paranoid also. I’ve been riding the indie publishing wave for a while now and it’s been great.
So what’s going to go wrong?
I stayed alive in traditional publishing by always looking at least three years ahead and being one spec manuscript ahead of what I was under contract for. Thus, even though I was under contract to deliver three books in a year, I wrote four.
There seem to be two camps in publishing: the trads and the indies. Are rarely do the two agree. Lately, indie authors have been talking about how their market is ever expanding (can we say Kindle Fire?) and therefore, naturally, their sales will increase accordingly.
For me, I don’t believe that’s true. In fact, I believe that if I don’t change my business plan, my sales will drop off, even with new titles coming out. I think for an indie author like me to believe the current level of sales will not only continue, but increase, is poor business planning. Also, to think that the current business environment will stay the same and that traditional publishing will not morph into something that embraces eBooks is burying my hand in the sand.
I recently had two interesting developments at Barnes & Noble.com that has made me take a hard look at eBook sales and sustainability. First, the good. I released The Jefferson Allegiance on 30 August exclusive to Nook. They were kind enough to feature the book in their blog. It exploded, rising to #2 in sales overall during Labor Day weekend. Great. But over the weekend before last, my Area 51 books, all of which had been in the top 100 in science fiction ‘disappeared’. I mean the individual pages were still there if you knew exactly where to look, but if you did a keyword search simply for Area 51 they didn’t show up (when I had always been the #1 result, even over the recent NY Times bestseller in nonfiction with the same title). If you did a keyword search for my name and Area 51 it didn’t show up. Most critically, they didn’t show up on the scifi bestseller lists any more where I’d had 13 of the top 100 titles and Area 51 had been in the top 10 since April. A simple glitch in the system. But that glitch caused those books to drop precipitously in sales and off those bestseller lists. We went from selling hundreds a day to selling a handful. But it indicates the criticality of product placement.
Several writers have called it the publishing pie and talked about how much of a slice indie authors could take. There is a fear that the pie will grow so big, that an author will disappear into the morass and readers won’t find them. I think this is true for me if I don’t do things differently.
Traditional publishing had finite shelf space. That’s not a problem with eBooks. Infinite shelf space. BUT: finite room on lists and in placement. So, while shelf space isn’t a choke point any more, placement is with eBooks. There can be millions of books available on Amazon but only 100 titles can be in the top 100 in a genre or overall. Only so many titles can be featured on a screen or in those emails Amazon and Barnes and Noble send out. Just as shelf space was a choke point in trad publishing, placement is a choke point in eBooks. Your eBook can be out there but if no one finds it, it does you no good. Amazon’s search engine is all right, but it is slanted toward books that have the sales numbers. Just because Joe Schlob writes the next DaVinci Code, Amazon isn’t going to link it with “you like this, you’ll like that” on the DaVinci page unless Schlob has the sales numbers to justify that link. Which brings up the Catch-22 of you need sales to get more sales. People have to taste your slice of the pie in order to like it and since the pie is getting larger, there are more pieces to taste, which does indeed hurt the author. This is similar to traditional publishing where an honest person in the publicity department will tell you: We’ll give you publicity and placement, when you’ve sold enough to earn the publicity and placement. (BTW Let me know if you’ve found an honest person in the publicity department at the Big 6 who would tell a midlist author that).
I used to go: Huh? That makes no sense. But it does in a Darwinian sort of way. And let’s face it, trad or indie, it’s survival of the fittest out there.
The brand name authors will continue to dominate eBook sales. They do now and they’re using agency pricing. What’s going to happen when pricing becomes more reasonable? The rich will get richer and occasionally someone will strike gold and break through. Just as in the bookstore they kept racking every Tom Clancy that comes out instead of a new thriller author, Amazon and Nook are going to keep featuring the same brand authors as they publish new material (plus these brands are getting the marketing money for placement). The #1 advantage indie authors hold right now over the traditional authors is pricing. Sooner or later NY is going to accept the eBook as the new mass market paperback and price them accordingly, around $5 to $8 but definitely under $10. To me, that’s the greatest threat to my current success. I’m not naïve enough to think I’m outselling WEB Griffin in the War genre on Amazon because I’ve got more readers than him—it’s because my eBooks are $2.99 and $3.99 and his are agency priced.
Also, NY has the money to do placement, which is why quite a few indies are signing with Thomas & Mercer and other Amazon imprints including Encore, to take advantage of their marketing programs. Of course, most are taking a royalty cut and having to be exclusive for that so they’re also paying for placement, which is normal business. This is why I’m taking every single dollar I’m earning the rest of this year, and it should be a lot, and putting it into promotion, placement, and publicity. If I can– which is the problem I’m running into since KDP allows no paid advertising or placement.
In fact, let’s look at it realistically. How many indie authors who’ve had success are still 100% indie? I keep seeing the same names bandied about as indie authors successes and every single name has gone with a Big 6 or Amazon imprint. Not to beat a dead horse, but Locke’s millions sales at .99 (brilliant marketing) don’t equal in profit my ebook sales for July, August and September. We’re talking a PW GOOD deal each month.
If Indie was so great, why have some signed with the Big 6 or with agents that publish, or with Amazon imprints? Why are they giving up a slice of profit? Yes, for those things that you have to outsource anyway, but I submit, many because they are already realizing they’re going to need some marketing muscle to sustain their success. They have to partner with a publisher/agent/ebook distributor to increase sales. I’m not slamming it or them, in fact I think they are making very wise moves. Every author has to make the smart business decisions for their own situation.
While things are great now, I’m not counting chickens while I still have eggs. Because I do think there is a very good chance that the eBook midlist can go the way of the mass market midlist unless the author busts their hump to keep it moving forward, a point I make all the time: the best promotion is a good book. Better promotion is more good books. But people have to find the books. That is the rub.
I think if you have a dedicated readership of decent size that will buy whatever you put out, you can continue indefinitely, but people have short memories. Unless they set alerts for your books coming out, you might fade from their minds. And their attention span is getting shorter.
In essence, in indie publishing, just as it was in traditional publishing, I must become a brand to succeed. This has caused me to radically rethink my business plan and I’ll blog more about that as I change and adjust.
Write It Forward!
I look forward to reading your future posts about what’s next for you in indie publishing. Life is pretty good now but things are always changing and it’s good think ahead.
The best friend an author can have is an active and interesting website that attracts a large and loyal following. The best portal for such a website is social media. Then I’m independant no matter what I do because I have my own highly popular screen space.
I must admit that I did not expect either you or JA Konrath to come to this so soon, and to be honest about it as well
So many have banked on trends in what they write, how they publish and what they believe is the best way to “get around” the Big 6 or find ways in the back door of traditional publishing. If you were at the beginning or even the middle of your publishing career you might take another path or at least take pause not to follow blindly what blogs and “experts” believe is the bottom line. Since you have the experience of being a successfully published author, you can use that knowledge to weave and bob through the short jabs and hard punches. For me the future might be unclear, but I have at least the long memory of those who predicted the demise of The Big Apple since Kotch launched that campaign. Give me a break. Some of our giants might have fallen, but NYC, like traditional publishing, regrouped, took a deep breath and after the dust cleared, it was a great as ever 
I look forward to your take on how those who are still at the gate might proceed.
The days of the reclusive author writing from his lonely garret are pretty much gone. eBooks hit us like a tsunami and right now the publishing industry is mostly trying to find the high ground as best it can. Authors are the guerrilla fighters in this war and unlike the generals for the Big 6, we don’t have large formations of heavily equipped publicists, editors and marketers to march around trying to make order from the chaos. We indies should look at SEAL team tactics for our inspiration. Since our resources are fewer, we have to learn to get the absolute most from the energy and resources we expend. Communication is essential. If we don’t share information, we all get picked off one by one. The Big 6 don’t really want to publish stuff aimed at some of the relatively small audiences some of us have nurtured as independents, but they would prefer for us not to be there so they can sell the next best thing to them – something that reaches a wider audience. Thanks for your contribution, Bob. You give us hope.
And if you figure out what happened with the search engine and how to fix it, we look forward to any intelligence you could share. Nothing kills an Indie quicker than disappearing from the web and most of us don’t know how to address that issue when it happens.
The problem with searches happened inside the Barnes and Noble Website. Keyword searches were not working, but even more the issue when you searched for Area 51, our book did not show up. Barnes and Noble had to fix it. It was nothing we could control. We had to contact them and they did fix it. But leaves the question how often do we do searches on specific sites for our books? We all Google ourselves, book title, etc to see what comes and and do what we can to make sure our website, etc are at the top of the page for these searches. We all go look at our books at Amazon and B&N. Check reviews and other things. But do we do keyword searches on these sites, or try to figure out how readers will find us if they don’t know our name, or know the title of our book? I was in Utah this past weekend teaching a class on Self-publishing and when I started talking about some of the various little things you can do, like search inside the book at Amazon, and how important title is now just for searches, I could see the wheels turning. We only found out about the problem because we check regularly, but its very time intensive. Again, we go back to the email Bob sent me the other day saying he feels like he has 2 full time jobs.
All I can say is, I appreciate your honesty. You take the facts, boil them down and write about what you find. Thank you for telling us like it is, or in this case, like it probably wil be in the future.
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Bob, again, very insightful food for thought. Interesting to watch the evolution of this “genre” of publishing as you charge through it as a leader of the A-Team, with background, fitness, study and informed, comprehensive planning…
All amazing for a newbie.
Being a sponge with active transport.
Thanks for enlightening so many.
Regards from NZ,
Lizzi
Bob, the conclusions about which you blogged hit me about a month ago. I’m a big believer in the “Who Moved My Cheese” tenets. I’m trying to come up with an addendum to my ebook business plan now too so I’ll be interested to see what you have to say about it.
Publishing a new work does wonders to increase sales throughout one’s list, but how often can a new work be published? I’ve put 6 out so far that have done fabulously well. Though they also have slid off all the lists, they continue to sell. However, there’s something addictive about being on all the lists. After that, just selling isn’t enough. You want to sell big like before. *LOL* No pressure, right?
Wow, glitches and monkey wrenches sure can throw us for a loop. Thanks for sharing your insight with us. I’m looking forward to hearing more.
Very interesting perspective, Bob, and I think it’s beginning to play out just as you describe. Traditional or indie publishing, the conundrum remains the same: how do we as authors find and hang onto our readerships? I look forward to more of your thoughts
Thank you for articulating my fears. I have two marketing proposals out, requested by the acquisition editors (Thank you God, no querying involved), because of my sales on Amazon and having a movie option & purchase contract.
I love self-publishing my eBooks, but the reality is–market placement. I had a marketing glitch too, (ongoing–Amazon is addressing it) and I saw my books’ rankings drop (they always pop back up and I’m still in the top ten for my genre).
However, I would like the presence having a house behind me can provide.
Discoverability is key. I’ve always compared search engines to walking through stacks of books in a hoarder’s house. If you are not on an aisle along the path, in a stack only a foot tall, and are instead buried five rows deep, in a stack that goes to the ceiling, it doesn’t matter how good your book is–the reader is never going to search for it.
With the rising popularity and viability of self publishing, this platform has become an alternative to traditional publishing especially those aspiring authors who are not as fortunate as others who land themselves a publishing deal.
To succeed in anything, a good plan would be very helpful. This puts things in perspective.
Really interesting article. I have just released my first novel and have found the Indie world to be a scary place. I tweet and facebook, I chat and throw out the occasional link, but at the end of the day I only have a feeling that I have fallen further behind. I blog and while the numbers aren’t vast, (approx 10 a day) it is still regular, but I don’t see how that relates to the rest. I wonder what it is I am doing wrong, but reading this artciel I understand that maybe I am doing nothing wrong. It’s just that the Indie world isn’t a piece of cake but a tough place where the strongest survive and the weak fall behind. … Interesting
“This has caused me to radically rethink my business plan and I’ll blog more about that as I change and adjust.”
We’re waiting with bated breath!
Paranoid or not, I like your forward thinking! Very interesting post.
As always we are completely on the same page. It’s nice to see someone else out there that is reading the tea leaves as I am.
Robin Sullivan | Write2Publish | Ridan Publishing
Everything is changing. I read today where the Chief Digital Officer for HarperCollins is leaving to become CEO of Pottermore. One more chess play in a game of changing strategies. Where authors, trying to create a self-contained fan base and interact directly with their readership, offer web-based direct sales to their reader in a more imaginative offering that past web site attempts Will this be a successful end-around move to compete with Amazon, B&N, and others? Will this have an impact on the importance of Amazon rankings? You are right, Bob. Authors need to be thinking several moves ahead, and not accept what might be generally accepted by others.
But as my blog two posts ago shows, Pottermore is a mess because they didn’t do it right and its opening has been delayed. So everyone is scrambling.
As always, thanks for telling it like it is, Bob. There are so many people championing only one side of publishing that it’s refreshing to hear the thoughts of an author who understands both routes. I’m going both traditional and indie routes and hoping for the best, but it’s a new world every damn day, isn’t it?
Good point about having a dedicated fan base, Bob. To me this means, making sure to get readers on your mailing list, and also to write the best book you can. It’s not enough to write a book that someone will buy for .99 cents. You need to write a book that people will remember.
I’m skeptical on your predicted death of the midlist author, Bob. This is s a death that has been occurring for the last 10 or so years and just keeps gurgling along. Maybe the poor midlister is on life support but I think he may hang on.
Things are changing and changing fast, so constantly rethinking your plan is smart. If you guessed right though, 5 years ago, about what would happen in publishing, honest to God, you are the only one I know who did. Not to seem to skeptical but I doubt all of our prognostication skills.
Where I do share your worries is the non-existant tools we are given for promoting KDP published novels. Amazon seriously needs to rethink that. If they would consider giving tools to novels that reach even a certain minimal level (since I don’t see their doing it for everyone) they would do themselves and their authors a favor. I think the same about the non-existent KDP customer service. They could tier things with no flexibility and ability to buy placement for no sales, reach say 1 or 2 sales a day average and you’ve earned a little, reach 100 and more, 1000 and you get a lot.
But I doubt Amazon is listening to me. *shrug*
Interesting as always even if I’m not sure about some of your conclusions. I am very interested in hearing more about your business plan though. There is no denying you’re smart.
I did 20 years as a midlister when you could switch from house to house. I’m sure midlisters can survive now, but I’m not sure how they will do that. Perhaps pen names. Perhaps more titles. But I do think KDP has to figure out a way to let indie author pay for placement.
I get the feeling that if Amazon did more to help the authors utilizing their KDP program, royalty rates would go down (you know, rather akin to NY publishers and advances/placement vis-à-vis low royalty rates).
Wow – what a fantastically insightful post. As an indie author about to publish my first book on Kindle et al, not really what I wanted to read – but I have a feeling it’s completely on the money. Need to look at that business plan again…
Thanks Bob
Thanks for the straight talking, Bob, and I couldn’t agree with you more on this. I’ve been watching it happening for some time, with my own sales numbers and with others who had success earlier this year. The ever-increasing sales is a myth and more than ever there’s pressure to put out new books regularly and frequently to remain in reader’s minds. Nothing much has changed in the shift from trad to indie publishing really – a midlist author is still a midlist author struggling in the sea of other midlist authors without marketing muscle behind them. Thanks for the refreshing, logical post.
This has been my thinking for the past several months too, Bob. Placement packaging is operative at the e-stores but available only to the few, just as co-op ad dollars are in the traditional realm.
How did authors get past this? By production, quality and some hustle. And then what got them to the next level was word of mouth. That’s what every author has waiting, if they can deliver.
It was only about ten months ago that people talked about the e-world as a “gold rush.” And a lot of folks sold their worldly goods and took off from Ohio. Some found some nuggets, but most are still working the streams and hillsides. Which is fine. It’s better than sitting on a porch waiting for Wells Fargo.
But the reality is that it takes time to build a great enterprise, yet if one is purposeful and can deliver the goods (the latter being most important) one might be able to earn a decent buck or two doing this thing.
Nice analogy, particularly since during the Gold Rush the people that made the real fortunes sold picks and shovels, etc. I think we’re seeing that to some degree now. The folks making money with indie publishing are people who make good cover art and do e-book layout in numerous formats, to some degree the copyeditors.
Sure, some people are getting rich writing indie. But the whole thing feels like the ’90s Internet boom to me.
I think the folk who are looking at self-publishing through a hard business lens and mapping out their 1-year, 3-year and 5-year plans are all coming to this conclusion. I’ve posted similar concerns on my blog over the last few months but no one wants to hear news that isn’t as rose-colored as some self-pubbing evangelicals would have us believe. Hope is great, but not something to hang a business plan on. Seems like everywhere I raise my voice I get shouted down when I talk about midlist e-authors, the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots relating to sales, and the fact that just because everyone CAN publish a book doesn’t mean every book is equal on the digital shelves.
The only thing I see here that I’m not sure is accurate is the statement KDP allows no paid advertising or placement. It’s accurate that YOU can’t pay for advertising and placement, I’m sure. But larger publishers? I’m betting many, if not most, of those deals and promos we see are paid placement. Money will talk tomorrow the same as it did yesterday.
The refutation I usually hear pertaining to advertising on Amazon is that customers won’t stand for it, without recognizing Amazon is already playing fast and loose with marketing. Those Also Boughts are already skewed toward better-selling titles, as you alluded. Yet I’m amazed at the number of indies who wonder why their books aren’t in the Also Boughts of bestselling titles.
Ultimately, I think the indies who don’t understand the game and who can’t or don’t change as the rules change will fall by the wayside.
In the meantime, pass the pie, will ya?
Technically, the statement about KDP is accurate because KDP is the self-publishing arm of Amazon eBooks. We recently asked about buying placement and the response was pretty straight forward. KDP does not do paid placement or paid advertising. The Big 6 do not use KDP to “upload” their books. The way they do it is completely different process than the way indies do it.
It makes sense that KDP won’t do paid placement. They want to deal with publishers or their own titles for placement. It’s not much different than the way physical bookstores worked. I think it would be very hard for an “indie” author to get racked at the front of Barnes & Noble regardless of how deep their pockets were.
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Great post. I’ve been saying for a while that the self-pub train won’t keep steaming ahead forever without changing tracks. Adaption is key to success. As authors we all need to keep moving forward.
I don’t take anything for granted in this business, and I regularly reinvest a portion of the money I make on promotion/exposure. I also work 70 hours a week to keep up with everything I need to do, including staying informed. Fortunately, I love what I do, and faithful readers keep supporting me.
Great information as always Bob. It definitely makes the decisions for the new authors even harder. Do we try to tie ourselves to a big publisher, do we try and get their attention through indie routes, do we just go it alone? Not something that is clear to me. I’ll focus on writing for now and get those three books written, as you recommend.
Excellent post Bob! I especially love the point you made about placement being the choke point in e-book sales.
Bob,
This was a provocative piece, but it leaves a few points unclear. Curious to hear your thoughts.
You suggest that placement is critical to selling, and point to the importance of being on a top 100 list, or being mentioned in the “also read/liked” space on another best-selling author’s page. Without this kind of exposure, the sense is that you’ll disappear into the ether, with no way for readers to find you.
But are there not other ways to reach readers (in sizeable numbers) — aside from being well-placed on Amazon or B+N?
I have in mind Mark Coker’s survey at MobileReads a week or so ago, looking at how readers find new ebooks. He said he was “surprised only 3% of respondents looked first to the bestseller lists, which scored just as poorly as print media reviews. [...] I was also surprised that retailer recommendations, such as the “people who bought this bought that,” scored only 5%.”
About a third of respondents said they found new books through word of mouth on forums, blogs and message boards. Another 20% look first for books by their favourite authors.
My point is that being on a top 100 list on Amazon or B+N is obviously great for sales. But is there not a profitable middle ground between being at the top of the long-tail and being buried somewhere at the end?
I saw Mark’s survey and I have great respect for both him and what he’s doing. But I took course on research and surveys in graduate school and I feel his survey did not find a representative sample. Also, there was the Hoffman effect of the survey itself, where people had to think about how they bought books. I submit that they answered how they would like to think how they bought books, not how they really did.
The vast majority of readers buy authors they know.
The issue for those who aren’t brands is how do readers find you?
I think there are ways other than lists. There’s niche marketing, social media, and viral promotion. So there are great opportunities now for authors that didn’t exist before, but it’s a lot of long hard work as LJ Sellers notes above. In fact, LJ, I and several other authors will be launching a marketing attempt this week called Readers Rule.
Part of what being on those lists on Amazon is exposure. When we advertise we are not necessarily looking for an immediate sale. The more a book cover and the more an author’s name gets “placed” in front of the reader, the more likely they will remember the author and perhaps the next time they “by chance” see it, they might buy it. The higher up those lists, or the more lists you are on, the more likely you are to get seen by a reader. Lists do another thing. It’s perceived value. When you look at amazon and look at those rankings, they mean something to the reader. They mean others are buying the book. The subconscious picks up on that. If others like it, I might like it too, especially since its the flavor I enjoy. From experience, we can tell you that if you fall off lists, or the books featured placement is over, the sales drop, drastically.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. There isn’t that one thing you have to have in order to make a buck in indie publishing, but there a combination of things you have to have in order to get past the hump.
I beleive the most important part of your post was the need to create a brand. Indie authors can succeed, but like all businesses the most successful are those that are able to create an emotional transference to the product. It has been my experience that the most enduring brands are those that come from a genuine passion, skill or technology. In the case of writing, it is important for the writer to know why he or she is writing and let that purpose flow through his or her works. Once I did that, the words kept flowing.
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This makes it scary to self-pub, now. I was prepared to market my book myself, but now I realize I need some power and a longer reach to market well enough. So, maybe I need to go with an Amazon imprint right out of the gate with my 1st novel, just for that extra oomph. Right?
It’s the Catch-22– Amazon is basically publishing authors who already have numbers. I’m not even sure they have a slush pile. I kind of doubt it. They’re letting the readers sort the KDP pile out, then skimming the top.
Good discussion!
I agree with Bob that the Big 6 will eventually find a way to leverage ebooks. It might take another book chain bankruptcy or change of management to get them to see the light.
I am hardly a success at self-publishing and hardly boasting, but my first self-published ebook was consistently ranking in the Top 100 Best Sellers in political fiction on Amazon.com. I am a nobody with a zero marketing budget. My ebook isn’t perfect and I am working to get some things fixed (I hired a great copyeditor/reviewer), but reviews have been positive and hopefully I’m building a base for the next two books. I know I am not going about this the traditional route, but my writing has a personal mission and I want control over the message and brand. I’ll look back ten years from now and see how I did.
Bob, what is the real risk of self-publishing? Just because an author is published by a big house doesn’t seem to necessarily increase sales alone? Is it that agents and the Big 6 will consider you “tarnished” and not work with you in the future to exact their revenge? Perhaps, but based on the way the traditional industry is going, there might be even fewer agents to work with.
Thank you for this post. Great food for thought.
BTW, I recently picked up Area 51 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I look forward to reading more of your work.
As I new writer trying to get that first publishable novel ready for market, I find this discussion invaluable. I have followed publishing for years now and have seen the growth of self-pub and ebooks agree that it is the future and I also believe more than ever that authors need to market themselves.
What I see as the biggest challenge is juggling the time it takes to establish the web presence and marketing with the time needed to write good books and still have a life.
Thanks Bob for the straight forward, no holds barred post. Some points were tough to take on board but I appreciate that they were necessary to know.
I have linked to this post in my blog weekly roundup…hardly a fortnight goes by without something from Bob Mayer getting in there…
Maureen
New Zealand
As I was reading your point, I kept thinking–how can people not know this? It just seems common sense. Obviously the book publishing world didn’t start out the way it is today. It evolved over time, so too will indie books. I’m interested to see the results of authors that are working with Amazon (And any monopoly lawsuits that come out of it)
Bob,
Thanks for writing a post that makes people think. While I’ve been enjoying great sales on my sweet historical Western romances, I do see a downward slide since September. I know I need to get the next book out.
I think it’s scary that a B&N GLITCH can have that kind of impact on your sales.
I’m not doing nearly the promo that I should. I already have two jobs, and I’m grateful that my books hit the top 100 and also boughts so they’re selling themselves.
I think it’s important to use any money you make that you don’t reinvest in your writing business to bolster your current financial position–pay off debt, save, etc rather then doing things like buying a house on the basis of your current book sales.
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Great post, Bob. I think your blog goes a long way in establishing your brand.
I enjoyed your post, Bob, not least because I recently blogged about the “window of opportunity” for Indies closing up: it’s just not credible that the Big Six are going to continue their price policy (staying above $10) for ebooks when, on top of everything, they’re also facing a class action and anti-trust accusations for their “agency model”.
Plus the fact that it’s so easy to publish digitally that there are even pirate/writers who produce and publish hundreds of books under different names and titles, literally flooding Amazon!
The two aspects combined do not bode well…I found your comments about the Smashwords survey on how people buy books very interesting (the Hoffman effect). Still, I have a feeling that buzz and what people talk about it reading communities is more important than any other marketing method.
Yes, I know John Locke talks about “loyalty transfer” but I’m not sure it really works for fiction writers. What loyalty are you exactly going to transfer? It worked for him because he’s in a definite genre and has used Twitter to great advantage, siding with his readers on particular issues…
I’m curious about your next marketing plans. Are they going to be based on some variant of loyalty transfer?
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You know an independent publishing company any publisher could learn from? Hay House. Just attended their conference. They allow the authors to be more accessible to people which would make people buy books, too.
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So true & it’s good to see someone looking ahead realistically. I’m just starting my indie journey, while my agent is trying to sell a novel, and it’s better than sitting on my bum just waiting, but even though I have a solid (if modest) social networking presence, it’s going to be a long hard haul to get any sort of placement based on numbers. I seem to do a lot of promoting for others, but they’ve yet to do the same for me.
I think that self publishing is a great way for an upcoming writer to get their work heard. I have been doing it for a while now and have gotten so much more recognition than i have ever expected.
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This was an excellent article. The information is invaluable to both indie authors and traditionally published authors in my humble opinion. Popularity sells, regardless of genre, and regardless of the industry. Selling books is a business, and until you’re able to break through into being hugely popular, and your name sells your book. You most certainly have to be business minded. Because never will writing books be a business as an industry.