Tag: Barnes & Noble

A decision, of sorts, and not reached lightly

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

After much thought, and thanks to some very thought provoking conversation — both in the commentary, as well as among friends — I’ve reached a decision, kind of.

I am going to look carefully at the agents I’ve discovered through http://querytracker.com.  I owe myself the investigation of those agencies, at least, as well as owing any of you excited about seeing these books out — simply put, I’d rather you had more ways to get them, unless I get an overwhelming response that you’d rather have them now from one e-store than a year from now in 1000 stores physical and online alike.

I’m being highly selective.  I’m carefully considering the agent‘s “what I accept” list juxtaposed to her list of titles and clients to be sure that what they think they mean is what I think they mean.  Also, there’s the inescapable fact that all too many agents seem to say “oh, it’s most important that it’s a great story!” but their client list indicates they’re looking long and hard for “the next best way to cash in on the latest hit trends”.  I don’t believe any of the agents I queried before are as bad as that, or bad at all, but such agents exist and I intend to skip them over.  I’m also being selective on another front:  I’m going to try to see how well known, how well selling their client list is.  I’m not looking for an all-star cast, who’s who of the NY Times Best Sellers list, but if she’s got 50 titles under her belt and they’re every one of them the picture of obscurity … I can do obscurity tomorrow and keep the 15% commission for myself!

If I find a promising agent, I shall query further.

I reached this decision after much agonising and arguing with myself and others.  I was finally won over on this ground:  I want this book to be accessible.  If I can reach more hand, more eyes, and more minds with an agent and a publisher, then I should like to have an agent and publisher.  If I could convince myself, or if I could hear a compelling argument from another, regarding that visibility from self-published I’m certainly open to it and would self publish the story June first.  I will say I don’t believe it matters if I’m on a Barnes & Noble shelf or exclusively with Amazon, iBooks only or in every ebook seller offered as part of Smashwords‘ premium catalogue.  I mean, the whole word of mouth matter.  Suffice to say, with an agent and a publisher I’ve got more mouths saying more words on my behalf and any words I can pass on my own.

I do and don’t want to do this.  Frankly I hate writing query letters.  It’s tedious, it’s also terribly difficult — I’ve no self-esteem where they’re concerned.  I also hate waiting; I’ve got a story, and I’m anxious to share it.  I still may self-publish.  For one, I may decide against querying any more agents, if that’s the case … I’m giving myself until 31 May to have queried even 1 agent.  If I have, then the publish date will move to either 1 September, or the “hear back by” date of the last agent submitted a query — whichever is longest.  I’m going to give them time to make up their minds before I make up mine.

I’m sorry.  I know if I said:  if it’s not picked up by 20 May it’ll be published 1 June.  Still, there also hasn’t been any voices crying out in disappointment and sorry “No!  Jaye, please, stop this horrible internal contention and give us the rest of your story!”  I suppose that means I’m not really disappointing anyone but myself by changing my mind.

In the mean time, I want to try something different for Ready or Not.  I’d like to select some … in fanfiction they’re often called “Beta-readers” but I seem to recall there’s a niftier and classier term for it that most fiction writers use, but it escapes me right now.  I’d like to select 3 people to be my guinea pigs for book 2.  Given that the series is written such that one book flows to the next to some degree a selected reader will get a free ebook copy of Love or Lust to give them some reference and establishment.

How to be selected?  Nominate yourself.  The means to do this?

  1. Comment on this post
  2. Go here and send me
    1. Your name
    2. Your email
    3. Your file preference — ePUB, MOBI, PDF
    4. Your three favourite scenes/lines/parts of the sample chapters and what it is you liked about it (if it just tickled you or some other thing that boils to — I don’t know, I just do — fine, you just do.  Say so).
    5. Why?  Just answer whatever you think I mean by asking it.
  3. Wait until 11am EDT the 2nd of June for me to announce the ones selected.
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So much for agents?

Published on by Jaye11 Comments
George Takei on the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Pr...
George Takei on the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Pride 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is thursday of the final week of waiting for agent responses. Sadly, as I recall, all the remaining agents are the sort not to guarantee a response one way or the other — only promise a reply if they’ll take the novel. Tomorrow I suppose I begin sorting everything out to self-publish Now & Forever.

My earlier post was a none-too-sublte attempt to garner some feedback to decide if I should keep searching for agents — I did recently find about an hundred more. So I’m asking outright for advice and opinions.

For those of you reading who aren’t authors and, therefore, (potentially) unaware of the grand dilemma here, please allow me a moment to elaborate. Those who already know exactly why this is a rough decision, feel free to skip down to the comments and throw in your voice on the matter.

For the uninitiated here are the pros and cons of publishing presented in juxtaposition between self and traditional publishing.

  • Self published I can have the book out tomorrow (though it won’t actually be until June, because I’m a perfectionist and want to tidy up a few things first, and will spend a lot of time agonising over the position of the pages in the print version). Traditionally published, it’s liable to be, at least, another year before the first book comes out — and regardless when I finish the other 3, assume at least a year between them
  • Self published I get 60-70% royalties, as opposed in the traditional model of approximately 2-5%, minus the agent’s 15% from that 2-5%. BUT There’re these lovely things called an advance where the publisher (with a little prodding from an agent) decides that the royalties for the first printing of the book ought to equal X and so cuts a cheque (though, these days more like 3, one on contract signing, one later on, and another even later than that) for that amount. Agent gets 15% of it, and I walk to the bank with something that’ll buy some groceries.
  • Self published has no true advertisement but word of mouth. I would, very literally, be relying on those who read or stumble on this blog, those who stumble upon and (praying to God) read the book to tell their friends and family about it. Yes, yes, Project Wonderful, Google AdSense, etc. Tell me, honestly, how often do you click those? Hmm? Not often, do you? Or you do, but how often do you buy? You’re not unique you know. Traditionally published books, don’t exactly get TV spots in the halftime show for the Super Bowl, but they are advertised and marketed to book buyers. Unless you get your paycheque from Barnes & Noble, or own a mom & pop bookshop you are not a book buyer — book buyers are the folks who decide what’s going to be on the physical store shelves, and then buys them. Tell me — how many books have you bought from an author you’ve never heard of from the bookstore versus an online retailer? Getting a picture?
  • Cover art. This one gets fun. As a self-pub author I control the art. I can say “this is amazing, this sucks, etc.” For those who don’t know, an author with a publisher has no say in the cover art (normally, some publishers might ask the author’s opinion, notice I didn’t say value or listen to it). Now, in all honesty this is both a thrilling and horrifying thing. The publisher would find a professional artist (not of my choosing, but hopefully someone with a modicum of talent) to make up a pretty cover for me that’s formulated and market researched to make people buy the book. Sadly, sometimes this means a cover that has no basis in the story whatsoever. Sometimes this doesn’t detract, and helps (Twilight is apparently a fine example of this — though, personally, I always walked right past those covers without a glance). The upshot, however, is that with a traditional publisher I get a, theoretically, unique cover design from a professional. By myself, I get whatever I can put together with a mix of photoshop bungling, some creative commons searching/begging for donated art from artistic friends/scrounging up hundreds or thousands of dollars to purchase some art.
  • Distribution. In this day of the internet, who needs think of distribution?! Just put it up as an eBook and it’s worldwide in 24hrs. Again, I ask, when was the last time you bought a book from an unknown author when you weren’t browsing the shelves of a bookstore? Distribution is important. And face it, it’s the biggest weapon in the arsenal of a traditional publisher, and one that most self-published authors have no means to enjoy. CreateSpace‘s book sizes will often be a mark against many stores carrying them — 6×9 is a trade paperback, yes, but many stores won’t carry the hardback and trades of an unknown. Good ol’ pocket paperback 4×6 or 3×5 is more likely to carry and isn’t offered. Lightning Source, Inc does, but that’s out of budget for many authors — and LSi, offers far better distribution options than CreateSpace ever comes close to.
  • Other promotion: as a self-published author I’m unlikely to be able to have ads for my books show up in any media. Some magazines do carry ads for books — notice how none are from self-published writers? Ever wondered how much that little ad cost? Books might be mentioned on some TV shows and radio programs. For example, in a hypothetical universe, I am picked up by McMillan publishing, their PR guy takes one look at my book, looks up at the TV and thinks, I got it! And calls up the folks in charge of Ellen’s show and gets the book mentioned there, interview with the author (way too shy to talk to a camera, but this is a hypothetical universe where maybe I wouldn’t be) and … you get the picture. Self published? I might be able to get George Takei to mention it on his Facebook page — curiously enough, in both of these cases it’s all back to word of mouth. In this case the mouths of a pair of celebrities whose opinions on such matters folks are wont to listen to. And, y’know, the Takei thing might not be such a bad idea now I’ve said it. Other promotion might also include reviews. Many professional reviewers won’t touch self-published, that’s right, they refuse it outright. So I’d be down to relying on GoodReads and Amazon Reviews. Hmm … there we go again with word of mouth.

And therein lies the problem. If you didn’t notice, the pros and cons are, actually, fairly balanced. I can reach my readership faster and with greater control of cover art, timing, pricing, etc. But I can reach more readers with a traditional publisher. The promotion and advertising — well, the biggest Truth in marketing is that word of mouth is the only guaranteed to work, everything else is guess work; educated guess work but still guess work.

If I knew that the release of my book on Amazon’s Kindle wouldn’t be swallowed by, and I wish I were exaggerating, 13 (I counted) pages of pre-orders going out nearly 15months! For those not in the know, self-published writers and many small press/indie press publishing houses don’t get this option with any online retailer except Apple’s iBooks — not even Smashwords is so respectful to its users. So I would be buried under the Jo Rowlings, the latest adventures of Drizzt, or Junie B Jones.

Round and round, it’s like watching my dog chase the flea that just bit his tail, poor thing, but I watched him just now and realise that it’s a perfect analogy to my problem. Shrug off the rejections by the agents and do it myself, or keep trying? Which has the greatest gain? True, I write for the love of writing, but I also live in a world that relies on money — I’m not going to spend a year or more carefully grooming 140000 words into an enjoyable tale and hand it out with a cheery wave. I’d like to, and if employers in this country felt obligated to pay enough to live on, I actually would — it’s save the headache — but they don’t so I don’t. In a sense, yes, this is about money, but it’s in a “I’d really rather be writing than answering phones all day” kind of way.

So, please, do comment — feedback helps. I have authors following, I know. If you’ve any anecdotes to share, please do. Readers? What’s your answers? Do you prefer to browse the samples of iBooks, Kindle, and Nook to decide who and what to buy? Do you browse past a dozen pages of pre-orders to see what you can get right now? How many of you talk to your friends and family about what you read — how many of you are excited enough by the prospect of reading Love or Lust to recommend it to them or even gift it to them?

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My opinions of eBook services

Published on by Jaye3 Comments

There are, these days, nearly as many places online to buy eBooks as there are ads for cheap genital enhancements.  Most are fly-by-night operations; here at breakfast and gone by brunch.  In all there are only a few: Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), and Apple (iBooks). Honourable mentions might go to Kobo, Smashwords, and Google Play Books.

On these I’d like to share my experience in dealing with them.

First, the good.  All are free.  All but Google Play Books is perfectly easy to use.  Google loses here because it’s been months and their sign up function to access the seller area to upload your book has been down (in fact I’ve just checked it and it still doesn’t work).

The bad.  Well, Google’s afore mentioned brokenness.  Smashwords’ meatgrinder is a nightmare as are other aspects of their required formatting.  And all but Apple treat you as something lesser than the big publishers (well, I suppose Smashwords, too, is an exception … but it’s hard to say so given certain aspects of their format guidelines).

That’s the point, in the end. All but Apple’s system feels amateurish, even a bit insulting in spots.  A trait I can, sincerely, overlook if I had full option services, but I don’t.

What options?

Well, how about the ability to arrange a pre-order?  Apple, yes.  The others?  No.

Promo codes for give aways?  Apple and Smashwords, yes, the others?  Not a chance.  Now to be fair, a not even big enough for honourable mention, DriveThruFiction.com, is also good for this.  Admittedly, Apple doesn’t give discount codes, it’s a free copy code, but let’s face it … when’re you going to want to give a limited audience sale versus a limited audience freebee?  If you want the book to be half price for a little while why not just lower the price for a few days/weeks?  Still, discount codes exist in some form with these.

Priority professional response to issues: Apple shines here. It took less than three hours to get a reply to a message about a technical issue I was having and it was detailed, and carefully written in the same way you might expect them to respond to the representative for Penguin Books.  Nook and Kobo were helpful, but less prompt.  Smashwords’ support I’ve no basis for sample.  Google is dead last, I’ve never heard back about the login issue and I’ve contacted them more than once.  Amazon … they’re not terribly prompt, except when they are, and while their replies are courteous and clear, they do not always strike me as having carefully read the message to which they’re replying nor do I feel very pleased with some of the rather severely dated shortcomings of their eStore (did you know Amazon doesn’t have a simple method to receive or even know about an update to an eBook you buy from them?  There isn’t.  You have to contact them and request the update be made available for download, then delete the item from your app/device, then redownload it.  Versus everyone else who you can just redownload from to get the update, and the other big boys having in device/app update alert).

All-in-all I find Apple to be the best, though once you get past its very old school look (and ignore that you could ask twenty people in a row and likely not a one will have ever heard of the place) DriveThru is pretty great too.

Nook’s PubIt is next best, it has far better preview functionality than Kobo and is rather more intuitive.

Kobo ranks third, it’s awkward to get to the WritingLife service which is their indie/self publishing service, and while not unintuitive is not exactly intuitive either. A mark in its favour is the ability to preschedule your publication, sadly this is an internal autoprocess and in no way a pre-order option.

Next is Smashwords and Amazon, both of whom are usable and have some things to recommend them, but I find them a bit … arrogant?  KDP has a lot of quirky loopholes, like the 35% vs. 70% royalty option and the radical way they differ if/when Amazon does a price match, the unavailability of the 70% at certain prices (for a feel of how really bizarre this is, all others are 60, 65 or 70% depending the store regardless of price).  I also really find the Kindle and its .MOBI to be anything but impressive.  Smashwords has a rather amateur feel, and annoyingly many arbitrary, utterly unnecessary requirements to get the book past their file quality, and admittedly unnecessary thing if you only want to use them and not their premium catalogue option (they act as agent and put your book on other services like iBooks) but it still gives you the error messages.  There’s also the fact that your book is made instantly available upon upload, which doesn’t seem a problem at first … until you realise you’ve selected the wrong file by mistake.  I also think they push their premium catalogue to an unseemly extent which gives them a cut of your sales though OTHER online book sellers, all of whom you could have set up with free and gotten full royalty or.

Last is Google.  I’ve said all I can about them.  I can’t seem to actually use them, and so they quite simply land at the bottom of the pile.

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If you want something done right …

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

Two posts in one night. My, but I’m in a mood tonight, neh?

If you missed any earlier mentions I’m self publishing my work. Some will applaud this, some will bemoan and decry it. C’est la vie.

I will not presume to tell any their business. If you prefer the traditional publishing route and have the patience for it, and the luck to succeed at it, by all means go for it.

For me, it’s simply not a desirable option.

Simply put I don’t want to put up with the crap for less than 5% royalties. It’s insulting.

The trick is to know what to do yourself and when to ask for help.

Plenty of books put through a major publisher see no real promotion, and no serious editing. Simple fact. Think to any major published work you’ve read lately that came out recently. Typos, grammar goofs, etc. And how did you know about it? NY Times best seller lists don’t count. I mean The Other Stuff.

So. Some things I’m learning.

Editor, have two, kind of. Sweet talk, or marry, a grammar nazi. Or pay, but we’re going to operate on the assumption that authors don’t have money. It’s statistically more likely. Have them proofread your work, but first do it yourself. Have some friend read it too. Someone to give feedback. The friend is kind of like a line editor and a sense checker. Their purpose is not to say, “in the second paragraph here you used the inverse third person conjunctivitis on your pluperfect nominative glass widget in duck sauce” (grammatician I most assuredly am NOT, most of my grasp of English grammar comes from my Latin II class); instead his job is to say “Jaye, great story so far, but just why is it, exactly, that when they went to the mall in Chapter 2 they summoned a daemon to ransack the Starbucks during that zombie uprising?” so that you can scratch your head and go “they were SUPPOSED to just buy shoes and grab some pizza. I’ll take a look at it.”

The important thing, though, is that it’s your story. Generally, take the grammar advice, but if it interferes with the narrative voice and is a subtle thing that doesn’t detract from the clarity, only the technical accuracy, ask yourself if you really want to change it. You can say no. Same goes for the mall scene. Maybe your friend is an idiot, or maybe it CAN be interpreted as a daemonic zombie invasion if you read if certain ways, but you’re fair sure the average reader will see shoes and pizza, then leave it.

Even if you speak perfect lit geek, and grammar is not an esoteric occult thing to you, still have an editor. She doesn’t know what’s supposed to be there. She’ll see what you did not.

Cover art: have it, but don’t go mad. Trends don’t mean much. Pay for a pro to make your cover if you can, by all means. But if you know a friend handy with a pencil, then ask him. Maybe you and a friend are handy with Photoshop. Search Creative Commons’ engine for an image that is befitting and doctor it up. A cover needs to catch the eye. As long as it does that and conveys something meaningful about the story, like genre, then you’re probably okay.

Look at a pro book and try to decide what you do or don’t need, and make sure to have that. Copyright notice pages, dedications, other works by this author list, etc.

Finally, get it out there. I don’t put much stock in single stop services like Smashwords. I just don’t think they provide a sufficient service to warrant the percentage they keep; not considering the nuisance their conversion software is. Others are hardly better. Use them, or not, is always your choice. Personally, though, make your own ePub in Pages or InDesign or similar, and upload them to places like Kobo and Barnes & Noble yourself. Make your own mobi for Amazon. Then a PDF and some patience with a good print on demand service. Lightning Source, if you have some money, or CreateSpace if you’re broke.

You may not get an advance, and you may have to learn to arrange your own book signings, but you get more per sale, so fewer sales to make the same money. No one arranging for you to sign books if you don’t like interacting with people or arranging them somewhere you don’t want to be. Pros and cons, it’s all the same in the end; even the praise vs the loathing. Some will like you better for being self pub others will deride you, the opposite is certainly true.

In the end don’t let anyone tell you what to do. It is and always will be your story. If you don’t agree with the advice an editor or agent is giving you, find another one or put the book out yourself. If you are in no hurry and want the peace of mind of a contract and an agent to do all the heavy lifting for you, then go for it. Just always approach with caution, and always remember they’re asking you for the rights to your work. No matter what they may try to make it sound like they’re not the ones doing you a favour, you’re doing them one – if they don’t have books to sell they don’t make a dime. I’m sure you can extrapolate from there.

Good night all.

Ah me, but publishing is such a slow process

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

I think it’s taking longer to edit the book than it did to write it.  It hasn’t, actually, not yet anyway.  Still Love or Lust is still on track to be out before Christmas, though I don’t think before Halloween.  Thanksgiving, perhaps.

Ready or Not is proving interesting.  Just got done writing a bit I didn’t see coming.  It’s proving an interesting ride to write that one.

To note Love or Lust will absolutely be available in Trade Paperback through Amazon, as well as for Kindle, and from Barnes & Noble for their Nook the day it’s published.  Apple‘s iBookstore with luck will be the same day or shortly after – but depending on various factors could take a month or two.  Same goes for getting a print copy outside of Amazon.

Why?  Going self-publish.  The big boys are impossible, and given the girl-meets-girl nature of Now & Forever, I’d be pretty well relegated to rather niche publishers whose books aren’t normally on store shelves.  Way I figure it, if I’m going to have limited distribution either way, I might as well do it myself and save myself some hassle.