by john | Jun 8, 2011 | Writing
I talk a lot with other writers, both online and in real life (because that’s where the beer is!) about what makes an e-book sell. After all these discussions and head-scratching, I’ve come up with one simple, unquestionable answer.
We have no frickin’ idea.
I don’t have any idea what makes a book take off, while better books languish. I have no idea if it’s a cover thing, a blurb thing, or a marketing thing. But I do know a few things that will contribute to good sales, and in this series of posts I’m going to share what I think I know with you. But first, a disclaimer: this works for me, today. It may not work for you, and nothing I say may have any validity six months from now. The world is changing rapidly, and anybody that tells you they know exactly what is going to be happening in publishing a year from now is either a liar or an idiot, and you’re probably well-served to run away from them.
But we’re going to start with two things that I know are important – covers and blurbs.
That old saying “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is very nice when talking about things other than books, but the fundamental truth is that we can, and do judge books by their covers all the time. The cover is one of the most important things about a books, and that’s why a lot of really good writers spend a lot of time agonizing over their covers.
It’s also not something I’m very good at. Frankly, I love the covers of my first two books, but they do absolutely nothing to tell you what the books are about. As much as the cover of The Chosen is exactly what I had in my head when I got started working with my artist, it says nothing about angels, devils, immortals or saving the world. And Hard Day’s Knight is no better.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the HDK cover is beautiful, but look over at the sidebar and tell me that it says anything about funny vampires to you. Yeah, me neither. So I have cover issues, and I really didn’t come to that realization until this weekend at the HeroesCon, where I realized that people would glance at my covers, the covers didn’t speak to them, and they’d move right on. So at some point I’ll redo all the covers. Right now, I have good enough blurbs to get my sales cooking online, and online is where most of my sales come from, so I’m not going to spend the cash right now. But at some point by the end of the year, I’ll redo all the covers. I want a unified theme for all the Black Knight Chronicles books, and I want The Chosen to have a more fantastical feel.
So there’s one thing about covers – they need to reflect what your book is about, at least on some level. Here’s a better cover example, but one that still has a couple of issues in today’s market.Another thing that some folks miss when designing covers is the fact that they don’t just need to look good in mass market paperback size, they need to look good in the thumbnail, too.
Without picking on anyone’s covers, there are few things I notice with covers that take away from the impact.
1) Author’s name – it’s either too small to be legible, too big for the layout of the page, or the color of the lettering makes it impossible to read online.
2) Text – there seems to be a race to find our just how many blurbs, quotes and stats can fit on a cover nowadays. They’re almost always impossible to read online, so strip them off the file! If it’s fuzzy or illegible, cut it out! Move all that information to the blurb, where you have plenty of room to write all that stuff.
3) Overused royalty-free images. This is kinda limited to self-pubbed and small press books, but I’m tired of seeing the same chick looking through her hair at me from the cover of a book. There are a bunch of images out there, please at least look through YOUR GENRE bestsellers before using one that has been used a couple dozen times.
I’m out of space, so next time we’ll talk about blurbs. Leave your favorite cover gaffes in the comments.
by john | Jun 7, 2011 | Appearances, Comics, Writing
I’ll post more from HeroesCon/ConCarolinas later, once I’ve had a little more sleep and time to process. Needless to say it was a great weekend, and I even sold enough books to make back my table fee! The coolest thing that happened all weekend is at the end of this post, so you’ll have to read the whole thing to get there.
We’re not going to discuss the pile of money I spent on comics, we’re going to call it a win and be done with it.
No really, that’s what we’re doing.
Regardless, I’ve got some great stuff coming up, and I hope some of you will be close enough to come out and join me for it!
This Saturday night, downtown (uptown) Charlotte, I’ll be reading poetry and maybe a selection or two from my novels (but mostly poetry) as part of the Festivities with Collaborative Arts. They invite local artists to participate in their Charlotte Shakespeare Festival as opening acts, and then we get a chance to hawk our wares at intermission. I had a great time doing this last year for their production of Othello, and I’m excited to be asked to return. I go on at 7:15 at The Green, and I’ll have copies of all my books with me for sale.
But I’ll only have two copies of Hard Day’s Knight, because that’s all I have left after HeroesCon.
You like how I snuck that in there? Yeah, it doesn’t get any more stealthy than this.
Then next month I’m participating in a killer mega-signing at Barnes & Noble in Columbia, SC with Kalayna Price, Faith Hunter, Rachel Aaron and Misty Massey. We’re working on a cool name for the event, and I’ll get you more info as we lock down the details, but we’ll have books to sign, a badass giveaway, and a couple of panel discussions as well, so that will be super-cool.
And in September I’ve used up a year’s worth of Marriott points to pay for my hotel room at Dragon*Con in downtown Atlanta. I don’t have a table or anything that cool, because I’m still the new kid, but I’ll be there hanging out, drinking and going to panels. I’ve only ever been to one Dragon*Con, and that was in the very early ’90s, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the show has grown in almost 20 years. I also have some hopes of meeting a few of my favorite writers, like Mercedes Lackey, and getting at least a little bit of useful information out of the panels.
I don’t have much booked for the fall, need to get my ass dialed in on the writing front. I had what I think was a cool idea for a YA series the other morning, so I’ll start playing with that once I finish up Knight Moves. It’s about a kid in a world where most everyone has magic, except for her, and what happens when she finds out that she really does have a gift of her own.
So the coolest thing that happened all weekend – I went to ConCarolinas to hang out with a few friends and sit in on a couple of panels. The first panel I went to was called “The Future of the Printed Word.” Obviously something I have a vested interest in. After all the panelists had their say, I raised my hand to comment, and Faith Hunter (NY Times bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock series – totally badass shapeshifter series) told me to introduce myself before I got to my comment. So I did, and mentioned that I had three self-published novels, and she then told the room that Hard Day’s Knight was one of the best self-published novels she’d ever read. I blushed, and was touched, and flattered, and all those things. I didn’t even know I knew how to blush anymore! But it was super-cool to get that kind of vote of confidence from someone who I count as a friend, and someone I respect a hell of a lot as a writer, too. That kind of affirmation doesn’t come along very often, and not very often in a public forum, to boot. So needless to say that was the highlight of my weekend.
by john | May 30, 2011 | Appearances, Real Life, Travel
As a matter of fact, they’re on 7th Street most days, but this weekend they’ll all be downtown at the Charlotte Convention Center! Yep, it’s one of my favorite times of the year, time for the Heroes Con! With this year, I’ll have hit almost hit the cycle with this con, having worked the con as an employee, attended as a fan, and now I’ll be there with my booth selling and signing books!
I’ve got what I think is a killer booth location, Booth AA-65, right along the front wall of the show, on the end really close to the Silent Auction area. I don’t know who my neighbors are yet, but there are some awesome folks coming to the show from all aspects of comic-dom.
From the webcomic world, Chris Flick of Capes N’ Babes will be at the show, as well as Kevin Freeman of Subculture. Those are a couple of webcomics that I subscribe to, as well as Charlotte’s own Rich Barrett, creator of Nathan Sorry. Those are all worth checking out whether you come to the con or not.
In the print world, the lovely Chrissie Zullo will be there (Cinderella), Neal Adams (Green Lantern) will be there, Jeremy Bastian (Cursed Pirate Girl) will be there (and seriously, if you haven’t checked out CPG, what kind of nerd are you? Every year I go to the Heroes Con and give myself permission to be a total fanboy geek over one and only one artist or writer. Last year it was Bill Willingham, and I got lucky enough to get him to sign my Fables hardcover with no one in line. This year I’m so totally stoked at the chance to meet Terry Moore that it’s not even funny.
You don’t know Terry Moore? Jebus, how are we even friends? Go buy every trade paperback edition of Strangers in Paradise that you can find, because it is teh hawesome! Seriously, shut up. I know they’re expensive, but they’re that damn good. SiP is so good I bought the omnibus edition. Which is pretty much too big and heavy to actually read, but it’s still awesome! And his new stuff, Echo, is also awesome.
I’ll have all my books there, and a drawing to win a chance to name a bad guy in Book 3 of Black Knight Chronicles (don’t sweat it if you can’t make it to Charlotte, you’ll get a chance, too!). And thanks to the fine folks at Square, as long as I can get cell service (always iffy in the bowels of the Charlotte Convention Center), I’ll be able to take cash, Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express!
I hope I see you there!
by john | May 27, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
And I’m not sure where it went. Well, part of it went down the road to Atlanta, where I hired a new Project Manager for work. He seems to be fitting in fairly well so far, but the job has a tremendous learning curve, so it’ll be a year or two before he really has all his sea legs. Fortunately I have another really good PM down there right now, and he will serve as an excellent teacher.
Broke the 2,000 book mark for the first time this month, so that was really exciting. When I started the month my goal was 1,800, which would have been a 25% increase over last month. I nailed that with more than a week to go, blew through 2,000 early this week, and then Amazon’s servers crashed. Seems that offering the new Lady Gaga album for 99 cents overloaded the Amazon servers. A lot. Hell, I don’t blame the bargain hunters, I even bought a copy at that price! But the sales reporting from Amazon’s publishing arm was a little goofy for a couple of days, so my numbers may not be 100% accurate. For a day or so I wandered around thinking “Is this how traditionally published authors feel all the time? With no idea how many units they’re moving? How odd.” It seems to have recovered, and with a little luck and a decent holiday weekend push, I might just crack 2,500 total books sold this week, a full 500 books over my highest hopes for the month.
I’ve also made some serious progress on Knight Moves, which is a relief after having the project stalled for some weeks. I think I’ll have it wrapped up by the end of June, but having hard copies in hand early July is not going to happen. I really want to take a little more time with the editing and polishing of this book, to try and make it as good as it can possibly be before I release it. That may mean an August release, and if that’s the case, then I’ll live with it. That will still put four novels on the streets in one year, which isn’t bad no matter how you shake it.
Last night I was the guest of the Hickory Jaycees for a cool evening of beer, brats and talking about writing. They fed me, covered my gas money, bought a few books and had some good questions. The event was a lot of fun, and profitable, so I hope that more things like that are in the offing in the future.
Next week is the Heroes Con! I have a booth, so come stop by. I’ll be signing stuff, selling stuff and maybe even have some giveaways!
by john | May 23, 2011 | Writing
There’s been a great discussion over the past few days over at Magical Words, which is a group blog by some fantastic writers. Because I can’t stay out of a good debate, I’ve been sticking my nose in the comments. One of the best things about this series of posts is not just that everyone involved has some type of experience, from NYT bestsellers to multiple short story sales, to dozens of novels, to my little couple of years on the front lines of self-publishing. I’m by far the least experienced writer in the comments, but there’s a lot to be learned just by hanging out at that site on a regular basis. The other great thing about this discussion is that everyone has remained civil, unlike a lot of internet discussions on these topics. Everyone has shown a lot of mutual respect, and that’s kinda key when talking to other people in the field. Even if you disagree with someone, there’s no need to be nasty. And who knows, the person you’re a dick to on the internet today might be the same person you’re on panel with next summer!
One thing that I posted, that I want to be really clear on, is that I’m not anti-traditional publishing. If a big publishing house wanted to pay me a pile of money, I’d sell the rights to my books so fast it would make your head spin. But the doors of those publishing houses are buttoned up pretty tight, and I haven’t ever made any progress getting my knocking heard. So I self-published, and thanks to all of you and all of your friends, I’m making some decent coin doing it. If that causes NYC to take notice and come calling, that’s very cool. I’d love the chance to go through the process and work with a good editor and make my books the best they can possibly be. If it doesn’t happen, that’s cool too. I’ll maintain all creative control and pocket a larger share of smaller overall sales.
My overall point is that I’m keeping as many options open as I can. I hope that by self-publishing my work so far that I haven’t closed any doors, but if I have, so be it. If NYC wants to come calling, I’ll happily listen. If not, I’ll happily sell books on my own. But if you are interested in other people’s opinions on this topic, go check out Magical Words and the comments from the past few days.
