Archive for the ‘Publishing’ Category

Brave New World

Aug 24th, 10 / 8 Comments

Welcome to my first adventure into author-driven digital publishing.

As so many authors have done – and many more undoubtedly will do – I’ve decided to self-publish some backlist works of mine for which I have the rights. This first one is only available on Amazon for Kindle, although I’d be happy to add other formats – it’s a non-exclusive agreement there.

First up is my novella, “The Ballad of Rosamunde” by Claire Delacroix. This is linked to my Jewels of Kinfairlie trilogy. (Scroll down – the link is to the entire Library of my backlist.) This novella was published in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF IRISH ROMANCE earlier this year, but I kept the digital rights. That worked out well – my story had to be edited down because of space constraints in the printed book, which is always disappointing but tends to be a reality in print. I had a bit of a lightbulb moment at the National conference, when someone pointed out to me that such space constraints don’t apply in the digital realm.

This version of “The Ballad of Rosamunde” available from Amazon is unabridged. You get the whole enchilada, just the way I wanted to tell it.

Of course, I’m having a peek through my files and my reverted rights to see what else I can make available to you this way. (And what I can add content back into! LOL!)

(A note here to published authors who have had rights revert. It’s amazing how many mistakes are made in this area. I’ve found digital versions released by publishers of books for which the rights have reverted – this means they have no right to continue to sell the digital version. In many cases, these digital versions weren’t even created until the rights had reverted. If you are a published author with rights reverted, have a good look to ensure that these kinds of mistakes haven’t been made. If they have, a simple note from your agent will solve it.)

Creating a Kindle edition is pretty easy, although the pages aren’t as pretty as I’d like. That’s because the Kindle formats in HTML which doesn’t allow as much control as traditional typesetting. OTOH, it gives the reader more control, in terms of resizing text, etc. Win some, lose some!

As for pricing, I’m currently working with 99 cents for a short, $1.99 for a novella (10,000 to 25,000 words), and $3.99 for a reprinted full book. Let me know what you think about pricing. I’ll have to see how the sales volume goes, particularly if I post a full new book – the editorial cost on a full new book would be about $1000 out of pocket, so I might need to sell those new titles for more. It’s all a bit of an adventure at this point, so everything is still in flux.

Here’s the permalink to the Kindle edition of Rosamunde’s story.

Here we go, into that brave new world!

Historicals, Publishing

Distribution & Consumer Power

Aug 17th, 10 / 8 Comments

Just a quick comment here, as I’m hearing the same thing from a number of you, both publically and privately. It seems that many of you are having trouble finding a copy of WHISPER KISS in your local bricks-and-mortar bookstore. Some of you are even visiting multiple bookstores, without any luck.

I really admire your persistence! For every one of you who keeps hunting, many other readers will give up the chase and buy something else. So, thank you all for chasing down a copy!

Distribution is a complicated business, and it’s one of those facets of publishing that is currently in flux. It’s always been difficult to have the right number of books in the right places for readers to buy them. For some reason, I think it’s getting more challenging. (As to why that might be, we could spend a week discussing the variables!)

But the upshot of this is that I’m going to recommend that you be proactive in your hunt for books – not just my books, but all books.

Think about it. If you go into a bookstore, searching for a specific book, don’t find what you’re looking for, and just leave, then no one knows that you were there. Nothing will change in future. The bookstore will believe that they had everything that their customers were looking for, because there is no information to suggest otherwise. I went to a panel discussion with booksellers at RWA National and one of the buyers for one of the big chains was surprised that people were – for example – unhappy that category romance wasn’t stocked at all of their stores. Seems no one had complained – but the authors in that room were complaining!

So, when I go to a bookstore, searching for a specific book, and don’t find it, I make sure to tell somebody. Ideally, I’ll tell the manager. Yes, I complain. I end up doing this a lot because romance sections tend to be small near where I live – it’s very hit and miss whether I can find a title that isn’t NYT. Sometimes I order the book through the store, then return to pick it up. That leaves a record in their system that they should have stocked that book or stocked more of it. If I get attitude or indifference, I tell the manager that I will just have to buy it online – or even that I will buy it from Amazon. This usually gets the attention of the manager of a bricks-and-mortar bookstore, particularly one that also has an online sales website.

When we as consumers are vocal, we show that there is demand for whatever we want to buy. And if enough of us speak up, then things can and will change. It’s the nature of any business to not want to lose a sale, if it can be easily avoided. So, speak up! Tell your bookstores what’s missing from their sections! As the consumer, you’re the one with the money to spend, and bookstores want you to spend it in their store.

Tell them how to make that happen.

Publishing

Links for “Harmonia’s Kiss” Digital Novella

Jul 20th, 10 / 8 Comments

”Harmonia’s Kiss” is a powerful tale of duty and passion. Enchanted for thousands of years, the shapeshifters known as the Dragon’s Teeth Warriors have awakened to find the world a vastly different place. Their leader, concerned for their morale, dares to take them on a mission to confront the fullness of everything they’ve lost. Little does Drake realize that this dangerous mission will give him a renewed purpose.  And if they succeed these Pyr will have to question everything they thought they knew about the past—and confront a quest for the future.

This is a Penguin eSpecial and a new work, never before published.

• Penguin eSpecials

• Penguin eSpecials Adobe Reader version

• Sony Reader

• Amazon Kindle

• Barnes & Noble

• iPad and iPhone – my friend with the iPad says it’s there in the iBooks store but you have to go through the app on the iPad. Search on Deborah Cooke, and you’ll get the first four Dragonfire books and the novella. (She says you’ll know what that means, if you’re an iPad user – and yes, she was trying to convert me to the cause in Orlando!)

Dragonfire, Publishing

E-Readers

Jul 14th, 10 / 12 Comments

I have some questions for all of you about e-readers, as part of some research I’m doing. I’d appreciate if you had the time to share your answers – you can always email them to me if you aren’t happy posting them here.

1. Do you have an e-reader, buy books for it and read books on it? If not, don’t worry about the rest of this!

2. Does format determine whether or not you buy a book for your reader?

3. If it’s not available in your e-reader’s format, do you buy the book in print, or simply not at all?

You might remember a post here a long time ago about rights reverting to me for previously published books. I have some ideas about how to put those books back to work – and make them available to readers again – but the easiest way to do it is digitally. And the easiest place to self-publish digitally is Amazon with their Kindle – but that is a proprietary format. Not everyone has or wants a Kindle. I’m wondering whether it makes sense to take the extra effort/time/money on my part to make the works more universally available.

This isn’t something that will come together immediately – there are bunches of steps to cover and I still have books to write – and I still have a lot of mulling to do about it. Key to that is more data, especially from my readers, so please share your thoughts. :-)

Publishing, Writing

Pre-Ordering

Jul 7th, 10 / 0 Comments

A while ago, a friend asked me about pre-ordering books. It seems that an author whose work my friend likes had an upcoming release, and that book was available for pre-order. My friend intended to buy the book when it came out, but was afraid that it wouldn’t be good for the author if it was pre-ordered. The book was discounted for pre-order and my friend worried that the author would get less money for copies ordered this way.

Not so. Pre-order is good for everybody. When you pre-0rder a book, the publisher and the bookseller know that you want one. That means it’s less risky for them to order a copy. In essence, that first copy is already sold to you – although most booksellers don’t actually charge the customer until the book ships. So, the more people who pre-order a book, the more confident the bookseller is that the ordered quantity will sell, and the more confident the publisher is that the print run will sell. Greater pre-orders can lead to higher bookstore orders and higher print runs. That can lead to higher overall sales – a book that shows tremendous traffic in pre-sales, especially if that ordering isn’t anticipated, could be one that the publisher singles out for extra promotion.

If nothing else, pre-ordering your copy means that you’ll get one as soon as the book is released. Some books come out “hot”, that is, there’s a lot of demand for them on the on sale date, demand which the publisher and bookseller might not have anticipated. People might have to scramble to get books where they need to be – and you might have to wait longer for your local bookstore to get a copy for you.

You can pre-order wherever you like – from one of the big online booksellers, from your local chain store, from Indibound or from your local bookstore. Pre-orders all add up, though, and they’re all good for the author.

When I know I’m going to buy a book, I usually pre-order it – just to make sure I get mine right away.

Now you know!

Publishing