OK, they say a change is as good as a rest, and so I decided this blog needed a facelift. Not so much that I needed a rest from it, but I needed an incentive to write it more often!
When I started the blog, my most recent novels were written under my Olivia Ryan name - but now that isn't the case. I use my own name much more than the Olivia one, so it seems to make sense to write the blog as Sheila Norton.
I can manage most of the technical things an author needs to do ... but like many of us 'of a certain age', that only applies if they're things we do regularly. Show me how to work my own CD player, for instance, and I'll probably have forgotten again by next week. So I was quite pleased with myself when I discovered, almost by accident, that it was possible to change the name of the blog without any difficulty. Farewell to 'Olivia's Oracle', long live 'Sheila Norton: the Blog'. That's if I've done it right - obviously I'm not sure now how I did it.
But sadly I can't, for the life of me, discover how to change the name of the 'author' which appears under 'about me'. I can apparently add another author - but only if you send them a request. It seems a bit batty to send myself a request but maybe that's the way to go. Any technical genius, or blogging genius, reading this is very welcome to give me the benefit of their wisdom if they have any ideas!
Meanwhile I hope that, as if by magic, putting the blog into my own name will remind me to publish my snippets of chat and useless information on here more often. I already have a couple more things to tell you ...
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
Friday, 28 June 2013
Short stories - the long and the short of it.
I haven't been very good at keeping up this blog, have I! Every spare moment these days gets devoted to writing the novels - pretty much at the expense of everything else. As well as neglecting the blog, I've also more or less given up writing short stories. And talking to one of my friends from the Essex group of the RNA yesterday over lunch, I realised I'm not alone in that.
Years ago, before I ever had a book published, I was quite a prolific short story writer. My acceptance rate was good and I earned some decent money from it. This was in the days of Woman's Realm, and when the other magazines mostly published a lot more fiction than they do now. I was still working full-time at my day job, dreaming of writing a novel but never actually managing it (I did eventually, of course!), and at times I actually thought I'd give up trying and instead just devote my spare time to writing short stories for the rest of my life.
It was when Woman's Realm - my best and most lucrative market - went out of publication that I decided to try more seriously to complete a novel, so in a funny way I have to thank them for that. But throughout the following years I did continue to write short stories too, and continued to have a reasonable percentage of them published.
Over the years, though, my success rate with short stories has dipped, (and to be fair, so has my output - I now prefer writing novels). There's no doubt it's harder than ever now to be successful in the women's magazine market. Although there are those writers who still do remarkably well, the competition is huge and the requirements ever more exacting. And to be honest, sometimes I've felt that the eventual fee (if you're lucky) is no longer worth the amount of time and effort taken, especially if the editor asks for re-writes.
I'm sure many writers will disagree, and I appreciate that I'm fortunate now to have the option of writing and selling my novels. As we all know, this is equally fraught with uncertainty, any success being almost surely temporary! - and despite being with a traditional publisher for the first eight books, it was never very financially rewarding until I began to self-publish on Amazon. Now the e-books are doing well, and at my age I don't feel inclined to go on investing time on something I've been finding increasingly frustrating.
So unless I have some amazing short story ideas which absolutely demand to be written, I'm calling a halt to that side of my writing 'business' - at least for now. I've still got two stories out on 'spec' - submitted last year, still waiting for responses (that's part of the frustration too!) - so if either of them were to be accepted it'd be nice, but the fact that I'd almost forgotten they were still 'out there' speaks for itself.
It's sad in a way, because I once got so much pleasure from crafting and selling short stories. When I decided to have this break from them, I looked back through my file of published stories and re-read some of them, feeling quite proud, and enjoying reading them again - and that gave me the idea of re-publishing some of my favourites as a Kindle anthology. I decided to choose twelve stories with a common theme - they're all about travel or holidays, so I've called the collection 'Travellers' Tales'.
It's now available (under my real name, Sheila Norton) on Amazon for only 77p - click here to have a look: Travellers' Tales - Sheila Norton . I like the fact that I've been able to bring these stories back to life again and maybe I'll publish a further volume some time.
Or ... of course ... maybe one day I'll change my mind, give up writing the novels and go back to short stories again! Who knows.
Years ago, before I ever had a book published, I was quite a prolific short story writer. My acceptance rate was good and I earned some decent money from it. This was in the days of Woman's Realm, and when the other magazines mostly published a lot more fiction than they do now. I was still working full-time at my day job, dreaming of writing a novel but never actually managing it (I did eventually, of course!), and at times I actually thought I'd give up trying and instead just devote my spare time to writing short stories for the rest of my life.
It was when Woman's Realm - my best and most lucrative market - went out of publication that I decided to try more seriously to complete a novel, so in a funny way I have to thank them for that. But throughout the following years I did continue to write short stories too, and continued to have a reasonable percentage of them published.
Over the years, though, my success rate with short stories has dipped, (and to be fair, so has my output - I now prefer writing novels). There's no doubt it's harder than ever now to be successful in the women's magazine market. Although there are those writers who still do remarkably well, the competition is huge and the requirements ever more exacting. And to be honest, sometimes I've felt that the eventual fee (if you're lucky) is no longer worth the amount of time and effort taken, especially if the editor asks for re-writes.
I'm sure many writers will disagree, and I appreciate that I'm fortunate now to have the option of writing and selling my novels. As we all know, this is equally fraught with uncertainty, any success being almost surely temporary! - and despite being with a traditional publisher for the first eight books, it was never very financially rewarding until I began to self-publish on Amazon. Now the e-books are doing well, and at my age I don't feel inclined to go on investing time on something I've been finding increasingly frustrating.
So unless I have some amazing short story ideas which absolutely demand to be written, I'm calling a halt to that side of my writing 'business' - at least for now. I've still got two stories out on 'spec' - submitted last year, still waiting for responses (that's part of the frustration too!) - so if either of them were to be accepted it'd be nice, but the fact that I'd almost forgotten they were still 'out there' speaks for itself.
It's sad in a way, because I once got so much pleasure from crafting and selling short stories. When I decided to have this break from them, I looked back through my file of published stories and re-read some of them, feeling quite proud, and enjoying reading them again - and that gave me the idea of re-publishing some of my favourites as a Kindle anthology. I decided to choose twelve stories with a common theme - they're all about travel or holidays, so I've called the collection 'Travellers' Tales'.
It's now available (under my real name, Sheila Norton) on Amazon for only 77p - click here to have a look: Travellers' Tales - Sheila Norton . I like the fact that I've been able to bring these stories back to life again and maybe I'll publish a further volume some time.
Or ... of course ... maybe one day I'll change my mind, give up writing the novels and go back to short stories again! Who knows.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
A very worthwhile long wait!
As we all know - all those of us who've ever been a writer of any sort, published or not, successful or not - things are slow to happen in the world of writing! In the early stages of my writing life I became so used to waiting for months, even years, for responses to submissions, that when I was finally a published novelist I really didn't expect things to move any faster - and of course, they didn't! That's just the way things were.
In some ways, all that changes when you decide to self-publish. Using Kindle Direct Publishing, once a book is ready to publish, it happens so fast you can hardly blink. But as with any form of publishing, it's one thing having a book 'out there', and quite another thing selling it!
Well, I'm here to tell you never to give up hope of those sales happening. After nearly two years of being available on Amazon, my Kindle edition of 'The Trouble With Ally' (published under my real name, Sheila Norton) has suddenly started to sell so well, that during its best week so far, it got very close to Amazon's top 100, and was in the top 20 of their 'women writers & fiction' category! All the more surprising as 'Ally' was the first of my published novels - first published in book form 10 years ago.
I have no idea what kick-started this sudden massive increase of sales after so long, but obviously I'm thrilled, and the nice thing is that I'm also seeing increased sales in the other books (as hopefully, people who enjoy 'The Trouble With Ally' are going on to buy others).
I've also had a flurry of new reviews - nearly all of them very complimentary, and I'm sure that helps too. Reviews are so important, and it's so nice when readers take the trouble to tell me (and/or tell the world!) they've enjoyed one of my books. And some reviews give constructive criticism (for instance, I had one, otherwise very favourable review, which pointed out some errors and formatting glitches. Mortifying, but at least it enabled me to take action, make corrections and re-publish).
So: to sum up, I'd just say to any writers who might be feeling fed up waiting for anything to happen - for a response from an editor or agent, or for something that's been accepted to actually appear in print, or for payment to arrive, or for a book to actually start selling a decent amount of copies - take heart from 'The Trouble With Ally'. I wrote it, and started submitting it, in 1999.
It was accepted for publication in 2002, and published in print form in 2003.
Now my Kindle edition is selling in thousands!
So thanks to Amazon, thanks to my previous publisher Piatkus who started the process, and to all the readers out there making it happen. And now I'd better get on with writing book number 11!
In some ways, all that changes when you decide to self-publish. Using Kindle Direct Publishing, once a book is ready to publish, it happens so fast you can hardly blink. But as with any form of publishing, it's one thing having a book 'out there', and quite another thing selling it!
Well, I'm here to tell you never to give up hope of those sales happening. After nearly two years of being available on Amazon, my Kindle edition of 'The Trouble With Ally' (published under my real name, Sheila Norton) has suddenly started to sell so well, that during its best week so far, it got very close to Amazon's top 100, and was in the top 20 of their 'women writers & fiction' category! All the more surprising as 'Ally' was the first of my published novels - first published in book form 10 years ago.
I have no idea what kick-started this sudden massive increase of sales after so long, but obviously I'm thrilled, and the nice thing is that I'm also seeing increased sales in the other books (as hopefully, people who enjoy 'The Trouble With Ally' are going on to buy others).
I've also had a flurry of new reviews - nearly all of them very complimentary, and I'm sure that helps too. Reviews are so important, and it's so nice when readers take the trouble to tell me (and/or tell the world!) they've enjoyed one of my books. And some reviews give constructive criticism (for instance, I had one, otherwise very favourable review, which pointed out some errors and formatting glitches. Mortifying, but at least it enabled me to take action, make corrections and re-publish).
So: to sum up, I'd just say to any writers who might be feeling fed up waiting for anything to happen - for a response from an editor or agent, or for something that's been accepted to actually appear in print, or for payment to arrive, or for a book to actually start selling a decent amount of copies - take heart from 'The Trouble With Ally'. I wrote it, and started submitting it, in 1999.
It was accepted for publication in 2002, and published in print form in 2003.
Now my Kindle edition is selling in thousands!
So thanks to Amazon, thanks to my previous publisher Piatkus who started the process, and to all the readers out there making it happen. And now I'd better get on with writing book number 11!
Friday, 1 February 2013
New competition
There’s a new book giveaway competition on my Sheila Norton website this month. It's very easy to enter, and there's no need to buy anything – you
just need to go to the ‘Contact Me’ page of my website – www.sheilanorton.co.uk , and put ‘Competition
entry’ in the ‘Comments’ box, followed by your answers to these three
questions:
1. Sophie and Debra have a
younger sister, known to everyone as Millie. But what is Millie’s real
name? (You’ll find the answer on the website).
2. Which of my books have you
enjoyed the most, and why?
3. Finally, if you’re the winner
this time, please choose whether you'd like a free signed paperback copy of ‘Sophie Being
Single’, or ‘Debra Being Divorced’ as your prize?
Please fill in your postal address as well as
your name and email – I’ll need this to send your prize if you’re the winner. I
promise your address will never be used for any other purpose.
By entering, you'll also be given the opportunity to receive occasional email newsletters from me updating you about my books. Your email
address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the newsletter and it will never passed
to any third party.
The first completed response, with the correct answer to
Question 1, having been drawn at random after the closing date of 9 March,
will win a paperback copy of whichever of the above two books they have
chosen. UK entries only, I’m afraid.
Good luck!
Saturday, 26 January 2013
What's it worth?
When I wrote my series of blog posts, last month, about my experiences with self-publishing, I made the comment: 'I could write a whole other blog post about the pricing of ebooks.' So that's exactly what I thought I should do now!
I went on, after the above comment, to say that people expect ebooks to be as cheap as chips, or in fact cheaper. I'd go further and say that applies to print books too. How has this come about, and how does it affect us - not only as authors, but as readers too?
To be fair, we all like a bargain, don't we! Who wouldn't grab a new book priced at £1, for instance, if it was a book you really wanted to read? But would you necessarily buy it just because it was only £1, even if you weren't sure whether you were going to enjoy it - rather than a book next to it on the shelf priced at £5 which was by an author whose previous books you'd loved, or whose books had been highly recommended to you by a friend?
Since the start of the ebook revolution, how many of us can honestly say we haven't occasionally gone for a bargain at 99p or less which has left us wondering why we bothered? I suppose it's easier to shrug it off because it didn't cost the earth, but the feeling of disappointment remains. We all know that self-publishing, especially of ebooks, has enabled lots of good writers to reach a readership previously denied them - but has also opened the floodgates to other books which perhaps might have been better never seeing the light of day! So maybe, as readers, buying the occasional dud is the price we have to pay for wanting cheap books.
As an author, I priced my self-published ebook editions reasonably low, mainly in order to compete in a cheap marketplace. But I have mixed feelings about the concept of giving ebooks away for literally next to nothing. I do realise that there are no physical costs involved in the publication of ebooks - no paper, no printing, no cover or binding costs, no distributor or shop premises to pay for. But the item for sale still represents a year of my hard work; the intellectual property is mine. Why would I give it away (other than in an occasional free promotion in the hope of generating more sales)?
I think the expectation of free (or very, very cheap) ebooks came about in much the same way as some people expect free music downloads. They can't see a physical book, or CD, on a shelf - the item being offered is just 'out there' floating in cyberspace, and there seems to be a belief that because of this, it should be available for whoever wants it.
A similar feeling seems to have evolved about print books, in this case I think because very cheap paperbacks are readily available second-hand, not only from traditional second-hand bookshops (it's harder to feel aggrieved when these are supporting worthwhile charities!) - but also now on Amazon, for instance, where you can sell your own books second-hand, and of course on EBay. New books are also very heavily discounted in the big book store chains as well as in supermarkets. Gone are the days when the printed price on a book was what you paid for it!
That price, printed on a paperback's cover, is nowadays normally about £6.99 or £7.99, and I actually think that's very reasonable and realistic. I've heard people gasp 'I'm not paying that!' for a book, and yet pay almost as much for a magazine - and then pay the same for just two or three birthday cards. Is that really how little they value a book by one of their favourite authors? Mind you, I've also known people who believed I, as a published author, was receiving the whole £6.99 from each sale of a copy of one of my books! Oh, how I wish!!
My new self-published print books, 'Sophie Being Single' and 'Debra Being Divorced', are currently priced at £6.62 on Amazon and trust me, I receive even less per copy for these than I received from my traditional publisher for my other books!
I do think they're worth the money - but then, I suppose I would! I wish I could sell them cheaper - because I'd like to sell more of them. But it's not possible, so I can only sell to people who are interested in the books themselves, rather than in a bargain for a bargain's sake.
Meanwhile 'Tales from a Honeymoon Hotel', the third book in my Olivia Ryan 'Tales from' series, is being released as an ebook by my publisher, who has priced it at £4.49 on Amazon ... roughly four times the price of my self-published Kindle versions of the other two 'Tales from' books. Again - I think it's worth it - it's the latest Olivia Ryan book, still available in print, and I don't believe £4.49 is an excessive price for a commercially published ebook from one of the big publishers.
Here it is. If you haven't yet read it on Kindle it's available for pre-order now, and published later this week.
Tales from a Honeymoon Hotel
What do you think is a reasonable price for an ebook? And a paperback?
I went on, after the above comment, to say that people expect ebooks to be as cheap as chips, or in fact cheaper. I'd go further and say that applies to print books too. How has this come about, and how does it affect us - not only as authors, but as readers too?
To be fair, we all like a bargain, don't we! Who wouldn't grab a new book priced at £1, for instance, if it was a book you really wanted to read? But would you necessarily buy it just because it was only £1, even if you weren't sure whether you were going to enjoy it - rather than a book next to it on the shelf priced at £5 which was by an author whose previous books you'd loved, or whose books had been highly recommended to you by a friend?
Since the start of the ebook revolution, how many of us can honestly say we haven't occasionally gone for a bargain at 99p or less which has left us wondering why we bothered? I suppose it's easier to shrug it off because it didn't cost the earth, but the feeling of disappointment remains. We all know that self-publishing, especially of ebooks, has enabled lots of good writers to reach a readership previously denied them - but has also opened the floodgates to other books which perhaps might have been better never seeing the light of day! So maybe, as readers, buying the occasional dud is the price we have to pay for wanting cheap books.
As an author, I priced my self-published ebook editions reasonably low, mainly in order to compete in a cheap marketplace. But I have mixed feelings about the concept of giving ebooks away for literally next to nothing. I do realise that there are no physical costs involved in the publication of ebooks - no paper, no printing, no cover or binding costs, no distributor or shop premises to pay for. But the item for sale still represents a year of my hard work; the intellectual property is mine. Why would I give it away (other than in an occasional free promotion in the hope of generating more sales)?
I think the expectation of free (or very, very cheap) ebooks came about in much the same way as some people expect free music downloads. They can't see a physical book, or CD, on a shelf - the item being offered is just 'out there' floating in cyberspace, and there seems to be a belief that because of this, it should be available for whoever wants it.
A similar feeling seems to have evolved about print books, in this case I think because very cheap paperbacks are readily available second-hand, not only from traditional second-hand bookshops (it's harder to feel aggrieved when these are supporting worthwhile charities!) - but also now on Amazon, for instance, where you can sell your own books second-hand, and of course on EBay. New books are also very heavily discounted in the big book store chains as well as in supermarkets. Gone are the days when the printed price on a book was what you paid for it!
That price, printed on a paperback's cover, is nowadays normally about £6.99 or £7.99, and I actually think that's very reasonable and realistic. I've heard people gasp 'I'm not paying that!' for a book, and yet pay almost as much for a magazine - and then pay the same for just two or three birthday cards. Is that really how little they value a book by one of their favourite authors? Mind you, I've also known people who believed I, as a published author, was receiving the whole £6.99 from each sale of a copy of one of my books! Oh, how I wish!!
My new self-published print books, 'Sophie Being Single' and 'Debra Being Divorced', are currently priced at £6.62 on Amazon and trust me, I receive even less per copy for these than I received from my traditional publisher for my other books!
I do think they're worth the money - but then, I suppose I would! I wish I could sell them cheaper - because I'd like to sell more of them. But it's not possible, so I can only sell to people who are interested in the books themselves, rather than in a bargain for a bargain's sake.
Meanwhile 'Tales from a Honeymoon Hotel', the third book in my Olivia Ryan 'Tales from' series, is being released as an ebook by my publisher, who has priced it at £4.49 on Amazon ... roughly four times the price of my self-published Kindle versions of the other two 'Tales from' books. Again - I think it's worth it - it's the latest Olivia Ryan book, still available in print, and I don't believe £4.49 is an excessive price for a commercially published ebook from one of the big publishers.
Here it is. If you haven't yet read it on Kindle it's available for pre-order now, and published later this week.
Tales from a Honeymoon HotelWhat do you think is a reasonable price for an ebook? And a paperback?
Friday, 7 December 2012
Self-publishing for Amazon: Part 4 - Summary
So now I've given you the dubious benefit of my pearls of wisdom about Kindle and CreateSpace publishing - I'll answer the thousand-dollar question: do I think it's been worthwhile?
From the Kindle point of view - I'd say it's a definite yes. Worthwhile from the point of view of personal satisfaction, from hopefully gaining some more readers, and from making ... some pocket money. As I've said already - I didn't do this in the hope of becoming wealthy, so I haven't been disappointed! But then again, I'm pretty realistic about such things, having been published for quite a few years in the traditional way and never having become anywhere near wealthy from that either!
I'm really glad I got 'on board' with Kindle just as it was really taking off. It's been an exciting experience. I've loved the feeling of being in control of my own destiny - of being able, within reason, to set my own prices, to experiment with reducing them and even offering free promotions, and watching the sales figures and Amazon rankings to see the effects. None of this was possible with a traditional publisher - the decisions were out of my hands, and I only found out what I'd earned every six months when I got my royalty statements.
The free promotions, which you can do by joining KDP Select, have I think definitely been worthwhile. Some authors don't like the concept of offering your work free, and up to a point they're right ... ebooks may not have a physical production cost, but my books still represent about a year of my hard work, and who would be prepared to work for a year for no pay? Yes, it irritates me when readers say they don't expect to have to pay for ebooks at all (?!) or that they refuse to pay more than the absolute minimum (so maybe they lose out on some of the best books?). But a free promotion of just a couple of days - you can do up to five days at a time with KDP Select - is an interesting experiment. The first time I tried this, I watched in amazement as about 1000 copies of the book were downloaded in a day, even in the USA where my books don't usually sell so well. All free! But the point is, none of the people who downloaded it free were ever going to pay for it. And having read it, they might well go on and buy one or more of the others. AND, the biggest surprise was the increase in sales of the book during several weeks AFTER a free promotion. So I've done several more since, with different books.
The most annoying problem I've encountered with KDP is the way royalty payments from the USA are made. The UK payments, as long as the £10 threshold has been achieved, are paid into my bank account every month and that's great. But with the US earnings, you have to achieve a threshold of 100 dollars - which took me a while, because I sell far less books over there than in the UK. And then - the only options are payment into a US bank account (needless to say, I don't have one and couldn't use it if I did), or by a cheque in US dollars. When I got the first cheque of just over $100 I was pleased ... until I tried to pay it into my bank. The bank charges are so high, for a relatively small cheque, they refused to handle it. I tried other banks - discussed with other people - all agreed it's a real problem unless you're earning bigger amounts (in which case the charge is a smaller percentage of the amount). I ended up asking Amazon to void the cheque, and hold my royalties until they mount up to something more worthwhile so that the bank will agree to handle it. I also asked them why they won't consider paying by PayPal or even payment into my Amazon account. (Surely that would benefit them too). They pretty much told me to 'watch this space', but nothing has changed. So I've not received a cent yet from the USA ... and to think I went to all the trouble, including a trip to the American Embassy in London, to get myself certified for not paying US tax!!
As for CreateSpace - it's really too soon for me to say whether it's worthwhile as I've only just created my first paperback with them. I'm pleased with the finished result, although the cover is a bit flimsy. The paper is good quality, the print is good and clear. But I'm not sure whether it was such a good idea to produce a trade size paperback, as a mass-market size would presumably be cheaper and attract more sales.
So far my sales have been minimal but I didn't expect to sell in shedloads and that was never the reason for doing it. The royalty is poor, but then again the service is free so it's hard to be too critical of that. Kindling is also free, easy to do, and the returns very much better so I don't think there's any doubt the ebook is the way to go for self-publishers. But to give your readers a paperback option too, CreateSpace makes it possible and relatively easy.
The most annoying thing with CreateSpace was that author price copies are currently only available from America. By the time I'd added shipping costs to the price of a reduced copy from the States, to say nothing of waiting for it to arrive, I decided I might as well pay full price from the UK website - but I'm not happy about it. I took this issue up with CreateSpace, and their reply was:
The point, for me, is that until or unless I'm able to order author price copies from the UK, I will not be buying a stock of books to sell myself. This is a great pity, as I normally sell a few books whenever I give a talk, and could have offered copies of this book for sale if I could have bought them at a slightly reduced price. To buy a quantity, at full price, with no guarantee of selling them and no chance to offer anyone a slight discount, is just not worthwhile.
With either option, as with any self publishing (and indeed even if you're traditionally published, nowadays), the promotion is all down to us, as authors - and I've tried to tread a fine line between telling people about my new editions via Facebook, websites, author newsletters, etc - and irritating the life out of everyone by overdoing it - bombarding them and talking of nothing else. But you obviously do need to make readers aware, somehow, of what you're doing!
Despite everything, if I get the opportunity to be published by a mainstream publisher again, and the conditions are right, I'll still go for it. In fact the rights of my most recently traditionally-published book, 'Tales From a Honeymoon Hotel', are still with my publisher and they are planning soon to publish their own ebook version. I'm going to find it very interesting indeed, comparing its progress with that of my self-published Kindle versions of the other two titles in that series.
But I'm really pleased I've had the experience of self-publishing, now that it's so much easier, cheaper (or free) and more 'respectable'. I've definitely enjoyed it and will be doing it again. Good luck if you plan to give it a go yourself, and I hope these posts have helped a little!
From the Kindle point of view - I'd say it's a definite yes. Worthwhile from the point of view of personal satisfaction, from hopefully gaining some more readers, and from making ... some pocket money. As I've said already - I didn't do this in the hope of becoming wealthy, so I haven't been disappointed! But then again, I'm pretty realistic about such things, having been published for quite a few years in the traditional way and never having become anywhere near wealthy from that either!
I'm really glad I got 'on board' with Kindle just as it was really taking off. It's been an exciting experience. I've loved the feeling of being in control of my own destiny - of being able, within reason, to set my own prices, to experiment with reducing them and even offering free promotions, and watching the sales figures and Amazon rankings to see the effects. None of this was possible with a traditional publisher - the decisions were out of my hands, and I only found out what I'd earned every six months when I got my royalty statements.
The free promotions, which you can do by joining KDP Select, have I think definitely been worthwhile. Some authors don't like the concept of offering your work free, and up to a point they're right ... ebooks may not have a physical production cost, but my books still represent about a year of my hard work, and who would be prepared to work for a year for no pay? Yes, it irritates me when readers say they don't expect to have to pay for ebooks at all (?!) or that they refuse to pay more than the absolute minimum (so maybe they lose out on some of the best books?). But a free promotion of just a couple of days - you can do up to five days at a time with KDP Select - is an interesting experiment. The first time I tried this, I watched in amazement as about 1000 copies of the book were downloaded in a day, even in the USA where my books don't usually sell so well. All free! But the point is, none of the people who downloaded it free were ever going to pay for it. And having read it, they might well go on and buy one or more of the others. AND, the biggest surprise was the increase in sales of the book during several weeks AFTER a free promotion. So I've done several more since, with different books.
The most annoying problem I've encountered with KDP is the way royalty payments from the USA are made. The UK payments, as long as the £10 threshold has been achieved, are paid into my bank account every month and that's great. But with the US earnings, you have to achieve a threshold of 100 dollars - which took me a while, because I sell far less books over there than in the UK. And then - the only options are payment into a US bank account (needless to say, I don't have one and couldn't use it if I did), or by a cheque in US dollars. When I got the first cheque of just over $100 I was pleased ... until I tried to pay it into my bank. The bank charges are so high, for a relatively small cheque, they refused to handle it. I tried other banks - discussed with other people - all agreed it's a real problem unless you're earning bigger amounts (in which case the charge is a smaller percentage of the amount). I ended up asking Amazon to void the cheque, and hold my royalties until they mount up to something more worthwhile so that the bank will agree to handle it. I also asked them why they won't consider paying by PayPal or even payment into my Amazon account. (Surely that would benefit them too). They pretty much told me to 'watch this space', but nothing has changed. So I've not received a cent yet from the USA ... and to think I went to all the trouble, including a trip to the American Embassy in London, to get myself certified for not paying US tax!!
As for CreateSpace - it's really too soon for me to say whether it's worthwhile as I've only just created my first paperback with them. I'm pleased with the finished result, although the cover is a bit flimsy. The paper is good quality, the print is good and clear. But I'm not sure whether it was such a good idea to produce a trade size paperback, as a mass-market size would presumably be cheaper and attract more sales.
So far my sales have been minimal but I didn't expect to sell in shedloads and that was never the reason for doing it. The royalty is poor, but then again the service is free so it's hard to be too critical of that. Kindling is also free, easy to do, and the returns very much better so I don't think there's any doubt the ebook is the way to go for self-publishers. But to give your readers a paperback option too, CreateSpace makes it possible and relatively easy.
The most annoying thing with CreateSpace was that author price copies are currently only available from America. By the time I'd added shipping costs to the price of a reduced copy from the States, to say nothing of waiting for it to arrive, I decided I might as well pay full price from the UK website - but I'm not happy about it. I took this issue up with CreateSpace, and their reply was:
'Member orders are currently printed in the U.S. We
understand that improving shipping time lines and cost for our international
members is important and want to assure you that this is a priority.'
The point, for me, is that until or unless I'm able to order author price copies from the UK, I will not be buying a stock of books to sell myself. This is a great pity, as I normally sell a few books whenever I give a talk, and could have offered copies of this book for sale if I could have bought them at a slightly reduced price. To buy a quantity, at full price, with no guarantee of selling them and no chance to offer anyone a slight discount, is just not worthwhile.
With either option, as with any self publishing (and indeed even if you're traditionally published, nowadays), the promotion is all down to us, as authors - and I've tried to tread a fine line between telling people about my new editions via Facebook, websites, author newsletters, etc - and irritating the life out of everyone by overdoing it - bombarding them and talking of nothing else. But you obviously do need to make readers aware, somehow, of what you're doing!
Despite everything, if I get the opportunity to be published by a mainstream publisher again, and the conditions are right, I'll still go for it. In fact the rights of my most recently traditionally-published book, 'Tales From a Honeymoon Hotel', are still with my publisher and they are planning soon to publish their own ebook version. I'm going to find it very interesting indeed, comparing its progress with that of my self-published Kindle versions of the other two titles in that series.
But I'm really pleased I've had the experience of self-publishing, now that it's so much easier, cheaper (or free) and more 'respectable'. I've definitely enjoyed it and will be doing it again. Good luck if you plan to give it a go yourself, and I hope these posts have helped a little!
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Self-publishing for Amazon: Part 3 - CreateSpace
This part of my feedback about the self-publishing process is probably going to sound a little less confident - because I've only recently taken the plunge with the CreateSpace arm of Amazon myself. But you might find my 'beginner's' experience interesting.
Having self-published seven of my backlist, and two brand new books, as Kindle editions, I was being asked by some of my readers for print editions of the new books. Not everyone has a Kindle, and I was quite keen myself to see the books in print. My decision to self-publish with CreateSpace was based on this, rather than on any real hope of improving my financial situation!
Self-publishing through one of the many companies set up for this purpose can be very expensive, so when I heard about the free service through CreateSpace, I decided it was worth a try, especially as I'd been pleased with the results of Kindle Direct Publishing. So I've started off with 'Sophie Being Single'. Here's the finished result on the Amazon page.
In much the same fashion as I started experimenting with Kindle, I started looking at the CreateSpace website expecting to recoil with fear and confusion ... but once again, I found the process easier than I expected. I'm glad I was already experienced with 'Kindling' because the process is quite similar and felt more familiar than it would have done if I'd jumped straight into CreateSpace.
One thing I found surprising was the size of book recommended - trade paperback size (6x9), bigger than the usual mass-market paperback. I'm not sure why they recommend this size, but being a newbie, I went along with it, although other sizes were on offer. I now wonder whether it's such a good idea as it's obviously a slightly more expensive option for readers to buy.
Someone who'd already used CreateSpace had given me a couple of tips, including changing the text of my Word document to single spacing before uploading it. I hadn't needed to do this before uploading my Kindle editions, (I presume that was part of the conversion process), but followed the advice, to be on the safe side. It's then necessary to make sure every chapter still starts on a fresh page.
I used the same blurb, and the same cover image that I'd used on my Kindle edition of 'Sophie', so those two processes were already sorted; but because the cover of a physical print book has to wrap around the spine and the back (obviously!), you have to do more than just upload an image. CreateSpace gives you a good choice of cover templates so you can drop in your image and get the text in the right places provided, and I used one of these. There was also room, on the back, for the blurb and an author pic.
Once you've completed the book, it has to pass through Amazon's review process. This isn't a review of the book itself - but a check that it's all uploaded properly and that there aren't any 'issues'. I had a couple of minor problems flagged up at this stage which were easy to rectify - eg a chapter starting halfway down a page, which I'd missed, and the fact that the text of the book started on a left-hand page ... it should start on a right-hand page, so if necessary you have to put in a blank page first, after your title page, 'about the author', copyright lines and whatever else you want.
You then have to proof the book. This can either be done on-line, or by buying a physical proof copy. As my book had been edited and already published on Kindle, I opted for the former, but checked it very carefully, especially the pagination again.
The big headache, for me, was the pricing - and much more so than with Kindle. Depending on the size of your book, CreateSpace specify a minimum price below which you can't go. In my case, this was set at £7.04 for the UK market. The royalty per book, if I'd priced it at £7.04, would have been 2p! So to make slightly less of a pointless exercise, I priced it a little higher, at £7.35, still giving me a very small royalty, which is why I've said it's not a money-making project.
I realised this price might sound prohibitive to some Amazon shoppers who are used to bargains! But CreateSpace obviously have to cover the cost of print-on-demand, and make a profit - and after all, the cover price of a typical mass-market size paperback is usually now about £7.99. I could write another whole new blog post about whether books are being sold for a realistic price - but that's another story!
I was stunned by how quickly the book appeared on Amazon - after only a couple of days, which is much sooner than they said. But irritatingly, a week after publication, and after I'd done a lot of promotion about the book, giving its price as £7.35, Amazon in its capacity as retailer discounted the book to £6.62. (So there's a bargain for you!). I checked with CreateSpace that this doesn't affect my royalty, but thankfully not - unlike traditional publishing, where my royalty was reduced on discounted copies. With CreateSpace, the author's royalty remains as it was set at the time of publication.
In the final part of this series, I'll give you my summing-up on what I think of both the Kindle and the CreateSpace publishing.
Having self-published seven of my backlist, and two brand new books, as Kindle editions, I was being asked by some of my readers for print editions of the new books. Not everyone has a Kindle, and I was quite keen myself to see the books in print. My decision to self-publish with CreateSpace was based on this, rather than on any real hope of improving my financial situation!
Self-publishing through one of the many companies set up for this purpose can be very expensive, so when I heard about the free service through CreateSpace, I decided it was worth a try, especially as I'd been pleased with the results of Kindle Direct Publishing. So I've started off with 'Sophie Being Single'. Here's the finished result on the Amazon page.
In much the same fashion as I started experimenting with Kindle, I started looking at the CreateSpace website expecting to recoil with fear and confusion ... but once again, I found the process easier than I expected. I'm glad I was already experienced with 'Kindling' because the process is quite similar and felt more familiar than it would have done if I'd jumped straight into CreateSpace.
One thing I found surprising was the size of book recommended - trade paperback size (6x9), bigger than the usual mass-market paperback. I'm not sure why they recommend this size, but being a newbie, I went along with it, although other sizes were on offer. I now wonder whether it's such a good idea as it's obviously a slightly more expensive option for readers to buy.
Someone who'd already used CreateSpace had given me a couple of tips, including changing the text of my Word document to single spacing before uploading it. I hadn't needed to do this before uploading my Kindle editions, (I presume that was part of the conversion process), but followed the advice, to be on the safe side. It's then necessary to make sure every chapter still starts on a fresh page.
I used the same blurb, and the same cover image that I'd used on my Kindle edition of 'Sophie', so those two processes were already sorted; but because the cover of a physical print book has to wrap around the spine and the back (obviously!), you have to do more than just upload an image. CreateSpace gives you a good choice of cover templates so you can drop in your image and get the text in the right places provided, and I used one of these. There was also room, on the back, for the blurb and an author pic.Once you've completed the book, it has to pass through Amazon's review process. This isn't a review of the book itself - but a check that it's all uploaded properly and that there aren't any 'issues'. I had a couple of minor problems flagged up at this stage which were easy to rectify - eg a chapter starting halfway down a page, which I'd missed, and the fact that the text of the book started on a left-hand page ... it should start on a right-hand page, so if necessary you have to put in a blank page first, after your title page, 'about the author', copyright lines and whatever else you want.
You then have to proof the book. This can either be done on-line, or by buying a physical proof copy. As my book had been edited and already published on Kindle, I opted for the former, but checked it very carefully, especially the pagination again.
The big headache, for me, was the pricing - and much more so than with Kindle. Depending on the size of your book, CreateSpace specify a minimum price below which you can't go. In my case, this was set at £7.04 for the UK market. The royalty per book, if I'd priced it at £7.04, would have been 2p! So to make slightly less of a pointless exercise, I priced it a little higher, at £7.35, still giving me a very small royalty, which is why I've said it's not a money-making project.
I realised this price might sound prohibitive to some Amazon shoppers who are used to bargains! But CreateSpace obviously have to cover the cost of print-on-demand, and make a profit - and after all, the cover price of a typical mass-market size paperback is usually now about £7.99. I could write another whole new blog post about whether books are being sold for a realistic price - but that's another story!
I was stunned by how quickly the book appeared on Amazon - after only a couple of days, which is much sooner than they said. But irritatingly, a week after publication, and after I'd done a lot of promotion about the book, giving its price as £7.35, Amazon in its capacity as retailer discounted the book to £6.62. (So there's a bargain for you!). I checked with CreateSpace that this doesn't affect my royalty, but thankfully not - unlike traditional publishing, where my royalty was reduced on discounted copies. With CreateSpace, the author's royalty remains as it was set at the time of publication.
In the final part of this series, I'll give you my summing-up on what I think of both the Kindle and the CreateSpace publishing.
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