He who gives over his rights to his electronic books to the Big Six is in for a world of hurt and financial loss. Read on from one who knows as this past year I have had it both ways - self pubbed as Indie Author on Kindle and watched as HarperCollins pubbed three of my titles as ebooks. Guess which one of us is making money and which is failing to as a result of stupid corporate greed?
Think of it, please, all youse guys who think that publishers getting into ebooks is a good thing; with their practices in the paper world, do you expect them to change such things as KEEP the sales numbers secret for six months to a year? A secret from the author? My three HC books that are up now, I have SEEN no sales figures for whatsoever in a year's time. Why? Because I have no access to my own figures--a fact that has always been the case with dead tree publsihing (DTB)....and now it carries over to ebooks.
Same will be true and is true of my HC "so-called" team - PR, Marketing -- I see NO backup or help for the books on e-platform anymore than I saw in the non-virtual world for these titles. The titles are also effectively killed by another practice brought over from the paper world - too high a price. These publishers, and Dorchester is among the worst for poor royalty statements, unreadable contracts, etc., ripping off writers, etc., YOU can bet have not changed their spots.
At first I thought the folks at HC just did not know any better, that eReaders are not so dumb as they want to believe, so I wrote to them explaining no one is going to by an ebook set at same price as a paperback, but it is not just that they do not listen to the author, they are greedily married to an old model, an economic model that does not work in the online world (a circumstance wherein an author can make far, far more money on a title set at 2.99 than he can make on a $25 dollar hardback). So eReaders, not wishing to be tagged as stupid refuse outright to purchase a book online that is set at the same price or higher than the same book out here in the tangible world where hardcovers have become door jams.
Joe Konrath is the Pied Piper here on this subject of becoming an Indie Author and championing the author's causes rather than those of the publishers who have not given us authors a raise since Johnathan Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables was penned. Joe Konrath is the Pied Piper and the rats he is running out of town are the publishers, and I am close enough to Joe that he allows me to trumpet for him but you need to clue into his blog on this issue now if you are an author, whether a newbie or an old pro like me. Go to The Newbie's Guide to Publishing found at: http://tinyurl.com/236en6k
Whereas my HC titles are sitting like stones due to the stupidity of the publisher's decison-makers and committees, the titles numbering 40 that I have up and I control are earning out enough now for me to pay my rent and go on a trip and feed my family and buy the occasional shoes and tie. I have made more in the past month on ebooks than I have in the past three years on paper books. But my three HC titles on Kindle have earned me not a dime in a year's sitting there at 7.99 and 6.99. Sad really as in my estimation these books represent my best work to date alongside Children of Salem, my bestselling title on Kindle which sells a hundred copies a month. So will publishers -- who once considered ebooks as a losing proposition -- help or hurt authors by taking their electronic rights, running off with them, taking a big cut on books they sell online? That is IF they can sell online at all? Given their poor track record so far, I'd say no if a publisher insisted on suddenly ebook rights being a deal breaker on a contract -- as those rights in your hands mean dividends for you and not a waste of time orchestrated by them!
Would love to hear your thoughts on this. I have lost my rights to certain titles during my career, and I would hate to hear that you have made the same mistakes I have in this business. As in a casino, the stakes are against us but for now ebooks has historically given us a much, much better percentage than ever before in the world of publishing. Now that whole NYC agencies are putting up their clients backlists and whole NYC publishers are making ebook rights a boiler plate clause in the contracts....BEWARE of who you are dealing wtih and as one agent cautioned me in 1980, "These people, Rob, are not your friends."
Sorry to take the tone of the cynic but who made me so? Born of experience and it is borne out.
Robert W. Walker
free sneak peeks of Children of Salem and Titanic 2012 here:
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
Showing posts with label eBook sales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eBook sales. Show all posts
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
eBook Descriptions Crucial to Sales
I have always believed that novelists can learn a great deal from film script writers, and visa versa; I feel the same way about novelist who have to create a sales pitch to sell their book to an agent, an editor, the publishing house AND now an ebook description to sell an ebook to a customer. That backflap on a paperback or a hardcover we can all learn from--the art of writing good copy. Same with reading descripts for ebooks. Read enough of them and you will see the good, the bad, the ugly, and the great and effective pitch for the customer's dollar. If it excites, it will sell. Of course cover art, price, title, blurbs, reviews all figure in along with name recongition or lack thereof, but the description on an ebook is hugely important to customers trying to decide.
Compare the two descriptions of my early title below; the first is the copy on the original paperback and used for the ebook sales page on Amazon.com/Kindle. The other comes from my query letter to sell the book, my pitch to agents and editors. You tell me which one would most likely sell the book? Version one or version two?
THE MUTANT
In a secret laboratory beneath L.A.'s streets, a group of top scientists worked on the ultimate biological weapon... daring to create what humans were never meant to know...
THE MONSTER
Then the earthquake hit. It's epicenter: downtown L.A., a city now filled with twisted steel and mangled flesh- and terror. Because from it's sterile laboratory, something unspeakable had been freed...
THE PLAGUE
Dr. Mike McCain and lovely Dr. Casey Sterns worked feverishly to save the earthquake survivors mysteriously dying from a new, alien disease. But no disease could account for some of the corpses--mutilated, headless, horrible. And no medicine could stop the thing hiding in the rubble, watching, reaching out with bloodstained claws for the unsuspecting, the injured... or for you.
(This 80,000 word novel was originally published in paperback. It also includes an excerpt of Abaddon by Robert W. Walker, and Origin by J.A. Konrath.)
Version 2 --
AFTERSHOCK (*now a Kindle ebook title)
An LA earthquake rocks a Level 4 Containment laboratory beneath the city, and a deadly virus attacks all in the lab, killing everyone save two people in biohazard suits, but as the suits are being eaten away and these two are crazed, one becomes a feeding machine, a creature that devours the other. The virus makes a monster out of what little of this human survives, a creature that feeds on human flesh, and as it moves about the city, it spreads its own disease. Our hero and heroine must find a way to destroy the creature and contain the disease.
Now lets try this experiment with another recent eBook title with Version one being the ebook description on Amazon.com/Kindle and the second version being the core of my query letter years ago to sell it to an agent or editor. Compare and Contrast the two versions here:
KILLER INSTINCT = DR. JESSICA CORAN
A brilliant and determined FBI medical examiner, she was an expert student of the criminal mind who thought she could face anything.
That was before Wisconsin. Before she saw one of his victims...
THE VAMPIRE KILLER
The FBI agent had a special code name for his unusual method of torture: Tort 9, the draining of the victims blood. The newspapers called him the Vampire-Killer. But his own twisted love letters were signed "Teach"... and were addressed to the one woman he wanted most of all: His hunter, his prey, Dr. Jessica Coran.
(This book is first in Robert W. Walker's Instinct series. It was previously published in paperback. This ebook also features an excerpt of WHISKEY SOUR by J.A. Konrath.)
Now compare the other copy/description for Killer Instinct:
KILLER INSTINCT (*now an ebook on Kindle) introduces Dr. Jessica Coran, a newly appointed FBI forensics expert, who has been recruited from the Washington DC Medical Examiner’s office. No neophyte, she is immediately called into the field to investigate a rash of murders in the Midwest, the epicenter being Chicago. She soon learns that the killer has more than a passing acquaintance with blood-letting as he is a Tort 9 level killer who drains his victims of their blood while they are alive. The tool he uses to drain the blood, his method of extraction, and what he does with so much blood is at the heart of the mystery. His reasoning is equally elusive.
This book introduces Mad Matthew Matisak who survives the weight of four Instinct titles. And who figures heavily in Absolute Instinct, next year’s installment, even though he is long dead. Matisak, for those who read the Instinct series, is the villain we love to hate and is in the vein, so to speak, of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lechter.
What makes the descripts for the ebooks superior? Simple. In each case the reader is handed the Who, What, Where, Why, and How of the story. We get character names, names of people, places, and things. We get the name of the setting. Names have power to give us bright images in our heads. The less powerful version lacks focus, detail, names. They fail to take names and kick butt; they have a certain verve but fail to cough up the details so necessay for those Kodak moments in the mind of a reader that go off as a result of specifics.
That said, it also does not hurt to associate my books with Joe Konraths by arranging for a dovetail of his first chapter at the back of my book and visa versa--Joe's idea. He's a marketing genius but this is an old idea taken from paperback publishing.
So you see how damnably important the descriptions on the ebook page are whether you publish with Smashwords or Kindle. Many people are thrashing round now trying to determine what sells ebooks, and according to Joe and I it is the descripts which must be flawless and without the least error as well as compelling--the most compelling short story you will ever write--the story about your story. Difficult to write so it is imperative you read fifty or so backflaps or ebook descripts to get under the hat of the copyeditor so as to pull off excellent descripts for your ebook or ebooks.
Thanks for hanging with me and do leave a comment so I don't feel so lonely.
rob walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.makeminemystery.com/
Compare the two descriptions of my early title below; the first is the copy on the original paperback and used for the ebook sales page on Amazon.com/Kindle. The other comes from my query letter to sell the book, my pitch to agents and editors. You tell me which one would most likely sell the book? Version one or version two?
THE MUTANT
In a secret laboratory beneath L.A.'s streets, a group of top scientists worked on the ultimate biological weapon... daring to create what humans were never meant to know...
THE MONSTER
Then the earthquake hit. It's epicenter: downtown L.A., a city now filled with twisted steel and mangled flesh- and terror. Because from it's sterile laboratory, something unspeakable had been freed...
THE PLAGUE
Dr. Mike McCain and lovely Dr. Casey Sterns worked feverishly to save the earthquake survivors mysteriously dying from a new, alien disease. But no disease could account for some of the corpses--mutilated, headless, horrible. And no medicine could stop the thing hiding in the rubble, watching, reaching out with bloodstained claws for the unsuspecting, the injured... or for you.
(This 80,000 word novel was originally published in paperback. It also includes an excerpt of Abaddon by Robert W. Walker, and Origin by J.A. Konrath.)
Version 2 --
AFTERSHOCK (*now a Kindle ebook title)
An LA earthquake rocks a Level 4 Containment laboratory beneath the city, and a deadly virus attacks all in the lab, killing everyone save two people in biohazard suits, but as the suits are being eaten away and these two are crazed, one becomes a feeding machine, a creature that devours the other. The virus makes a monster out of what little of this human survives, a creature that feeds on human flesh, and as it moves about the city, it spreads its own disease. Our hero and heroine must find a way to destroy the creature and contain the disease.
Now lets try this experiment with another recent eBook title with Version one being the ebook description on Amazon.com/Kindle and the second version being the core of my query letter years ago to sell it to an agent or editor. Compare and Contrast the two versions here:
KILLER INSTINCT = DR. JESSICA CORAN
A brilliant and determined FBI medical examiner, she was an expert student of the criminal mind who thought she could face anything.
That was before Wisconsin. Before she saw one of his victims...
THE VAMPIRE KILLER
The FBI agent had a special code name for his unusual method of torture: Tort 9, the draining of the victims blood. The newspapers called him the Vampire-Killer. But his own twisted love letters were signed "Teach"... and were addressed to the one woman he wanted most of all: His hunter, his prey, Dr. Jessica Coran.
(This book is first in Robert W. Walker's Instinct series. It was previously published in paperback. This ebook also features an excerpt of WHISKEY SOUR by J.A. Konrath.)
Now compare the other copy/description for Killer Instinct:
KILLER INSTINCT (*now an ebook on Kindle) introduces Dr. Jessica Coran, a newly appointed FBI forensics expert, who has been recruited from the Washington DC Medical Examiner’s office. No neophyte, she is immediately called into the field to investigate a rash of murders in the Midwest, the epicenter being Chicago. She soon learns that the killer has more than a passing acquaintance with blood-letting as he is a Tort 9 level killer who drains his victims of their blood while they are alive. The tool he uses to drain the blood, his method of extraction, and what he does with so much blood is at the heart of the mystery. His reasoning is equally elusive.
This book introduces Mad Matthew Matisak who survives the weight of four Instinct titles. And who figures heavily in Absolute Instinct, next year’s installment, even though he is long dead. Matisak, for those who read the Instinct series, is the villain we love to hate and is in the vein, so to speak, of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lechter.
What makes the descripts for the ebooks superior? Simple. In each case the reader is handed the Who, What, Where, Why, and How of the story. We get character names, names of people, places, and things. We get the name of the setting. Names have power to give us bright images in our heads. The less powerful version lacks focus, detail, names. They fail to take names and kick butt; they have a certain verve but fail to cough up the details so necessay for those Kodak moments in the mind of a reader that go off as a result of specifics.
That said, it also does not hurt to associate my books with Joe Konraths by arranging for a dovetail of his first chapter at the back of my book and visa versa--Joe's idea. He's a marketing genius but this is an old idea taken from paperback publishing.
So you see how damnably important the descriptions on the ebook page are whether you publish with Smashwords or Kindle. Many people are thrashing round now trying to determine what sells ebooks, and according to Joe and I it is the descripts which must be flawless and without the least error as well as compelling--the most compelling short story you will ever write--the story about your story. Difficult to write so it is imperative you read fifty or so backflaps or ebook descripts to get under the hat of the copyeditor so as to pull off excellent descripts for your ebook or ebooks.
Thanks for hanging with me and do leave a comment so I don't feel so lonely.
rob walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.makeminemystery.com/
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