Chris's Tips for New Indie Publishers in 2016

Happy New Year!

January 2016 marks four years that I’ve been self-publishing. In that time I’ve sold something like 8000 books, a respectable if unspectacular number. My current output stands as follows

9 full novels

3 boxed sets

4 novellas (pen name)

30+ short stories under my own name and two pen names, including 5 short story collections

1 work of non fiction (pen name)

I have three novels finished and in the editing queue, and an insane amount planned for 2016.

However, this post is not about me, it’s about you. The last four years has been an interesting ride. I had the initial learning curve/no sales year (2012), the year of minor gains (2013), the year of decent success (2014) and then a crash down to earth annus miserablis year (2015). I’ve learned a hell of a lot, the most important thing being that you’ve never made it until you’ve made it (and I certainly haven’t made it), and if you ever want to make it, you’d better get writing and get learning and get smart.

Even in the short time I’ve been self-publishing, the landscape has changed a lot. We had Select free promos sending people up to the top of the sales charts, perma-frees being the best way to sell a series, the constant tweaking of the algorithms to make visibility for free books nearly impossible, then Kindle Unlimited and its crazy pages read system. Smashwords used to be the king for the other vendors, then Draft 2 Digital came along which is way more user friendly. Audible opened up in the UK and Europe. Vellum appeared on the scene (for Mac users) to make awesome formatting really easy.

My own books went from uploaded Word files with dodgy Paint-created covers to rather quite snappy looking things with awesome pro covers. I know a bunch of really talented editors and covers designers, so there’s always someone who fits the needs of any one particular book. In short, producing books has become relatively straightforward. Selling them on the other hand, has got harder and harder.

After the trials and tribulations of my own rocky road, I thought I’d compile a short list of things you should do or learn about in order to give yourself the best chance of success if you were starting out now. I’m not going to go into detail about how to do these things, because there are way better tutorials available than anything I can come up with, and for many of them, I’m still a student too. This list is just a starting point.

1.     Write good books

Don’t try to game the system, don’t try to write crap and get away with it, because you’ll fail. It’s hard enough getting anywhere writing good books. If you write junk you’ll get bad reviews, and no one will ever buy your other books, which is what you want. You want every new reader to stay on board through your entire catalogue and beyond. Saying that, it’s not necessary to be Charles Dickens in order to sell books. As long as you know how to weave a good story, you’ll be fine.

2.     Get them edited

Please don’t self edit, and please don’t spin me a line about how you can’t afford it, or you think you can do it better than a professional. Sorry, you can’t. What an editor is more than anything is a second set of eyes that will spot all the things you missed. They don’t have to cost thousands of dollars (I usually pay between $200 and $600, depending on the editor and the length of the book). And please save the “I can’t afford to spend a single penny on my books for (insert reason)!” line. I’m VERY tired of reading it. If you can afford a computer and a wi-fi connect you can probably save up a little bit of money. And if you really can’t, do a swap, or find someone who’s willing (I don’t know, maybe they’re starting out and want experience) to do it for free. But save the no money line. Please. Have you ever gone to a restaurant where they’ve just dumped the food on the tabletop because they’re saving money on plates? No, me either. So don’t expect me to pay money for your half-finished book. This is a professional business, so if you want to be a professional, act like one.

3.     Get good covers

If you have badass Photoshop skills you could actually do this yourself, but if you haven’t just pay someone else. Again, doesn’t have to cost a fortune. A lot of my short story covers are cheap pre-mades that cost $25 each, while I think the most I’ve ever spent on a cover is about $150. I’ve worked with several different designers with professional design skills and I’ve never been disappointed. Ignore people who talk about covers costing a grand or more. They might if they’re custom art, but even most trad-published books only use photo manipulation. If you need recommendations for cover designers, drop me a message.

4.     Write good blurbs

I’m still pretty rubbish at this, but I’m getting better. Say what the story’s about, but keep it snappy. Don’t waffle, don’t use clichés, and if you can, try to get a bit of mystery and intrigue in there, get the reader wanting to know what happens straight away.

5.     Brand your books, and don’t hop genres

This is a case of do what I say and not what I do, haha. I am USELESS at this, but I’m getting better. My four Tube Riders books (yes, there’s a new one coming) have lovely branded covers, as do the four Crow books (next one out Jan 15^th, plug plug), but otherwise I have some sci-fi, some horror-sci-fi, some straight horror, a romance, and a kind of drama thing. I tend to write what I feel like writing, but if you want to be successful stick to the same genre and make sure your books have covers that show both the genre and that they’re part of a series.

6.     Write series

Again, I like writing standalones, which is really stupid because they sell nothing. Literally. Write long series and set the first book free to give yourself the best chance of making money. Do this by not being exclusive to Amazon. Set your books up somewhere like Draft 2 Digital or Smashwords, then set the price for a book to free. Once it's free on iTunes and Barnes&Noble, Amazon will likely price match. Best way to get them to do this is by asking them directly with an email sent through the help function of your Author Central page. That's what I usually do.

Now we’ll go on to some marketing/networking type stuff.

7.     Set up a Mailing List.

The single most important thing you need to do. I use Mail Chimp, but there are others. This is very, very important. It’s your number one way to contact your readers. I was publishing for at least two years before I got around to it. Don’t do what I did. Have one ready to go with your very first book, sign ups in the front and back of the book, and plug it wherever you can. And if you have a series, offer the second book free with a sign up. At the moment you can get Crow 2: The Castle of All Nightmares free if you sign up to mine, and since the first book is perma-free, you can get half the series for nothing. This has worked pretty well since I started doing it, although the series isn’t a huge seller, but hopefully what you lose in sales of the second book (some people still buy it anyway), you’re hopefully gaining in long term fans. Don’t spam them, by the way. A couple of emails a month is plenty, and nurture them. Give them free stuff, special discounts, etc. List-only competitions. You’ll figure it out, but start that list. Now.

8.     Advertise

I live in a city of 360,000 people, but there must be 100,000 restaurants. They’re seriously everywhere. Sometimes I’ll spot them when I’m driving along, but more often than not I’ll go to a new one because I see it advertised somewhere, or I hear about it from a friend, who probably saw it advertised somewhere. Then, if it’s good, I’ll go back again. This is how your books should be. Sure, you’ll have people randomly finding them, but there are so many available that your chances are slim. Advertise on sites that post books to increase your chances, and hopefully things like word of mouth will build from there. Keep a tab of sites that work, though. New sites appear all the time, and some that worked when I started out are a waste of money now. Also, always be looking for the next thing. Facebook ads are big at the moment, and Mark Dawson is your man. Also, podcasts and YouTubers might become the way forward in 2016, so look into them.

9.     Have a website

And make it snappy. This site you’re currently reading is a blog. Google owns Blogger. If they decide to shut me down for no reason, I’ll lose everything. Get a site that’s owned and run by you. You’ll likely have to use a domain hoster (I use Weebly but there are others), but have something that’s yours. And keep it tidy. Mine used to be reams of messy information, then I turned an old blog into my news page and keep my main site just to act as a kind of store front / landing page so that people can quickly and easily see what books I have available. Again, links in the front and back of every one of your books.

In addition, you can have all the usual Facebook / Twitter / other places sites, but their effectiveness varies. You mostly just want to be contactable, but the eventually you want to lead people to your mailing list.

10.  Be nice!

If someone takes the time to read your books and contact you about them, don’t be a douchebag. I read of some many writers that are, and it’s so sad. You have to value every single one of your fans, because their money is providing you with an income. Plus, they’re people, and we’re social animals after all. It helps if you’re natural a nice person, but if you’re naturally an anti-social douchebag just try to rein it in a little. And don’t shit on your own books. If someone says they liked your book, don’t say, “Thanks, I thought it was pretty rubbish, but thanks for reading it anyway.” If you do that, you’re telling them their time was wasted. Be appreciative, be thankful.

And that’s about it. Good luck for 2016, and if you want to thank me for all these awesome tips, go to my site and buy one of my books. They’re pretty awesome too!

Thanks for reading!

Chris Ward

Short Stories and Organising your front/back matter

On publishing short stories

After two years and a bit of self-publishing, I now have a pretty substantial backlist available on online for purchase, currently something like 40 items (you know it’s a lot when you can’t immediately recall the exact number!). Only five of those are novels, of course, with almost twenty being short stories.

I love writing short stories. I am shamelessly (and poverty-inducingly) an artist first and a business-minded writer second, and short stories are where I do my experimenting. Some of you may have read some of them, but I have everything from diaries (The Tree) to second person instructive (?) (Three Two One), and lots more equally weird stuff still on the hard drive. It gives you a chance to try out a different writing style or write in a different genre without investing a whole lot of time. I can hammer out a 5,000 word short story in about three hours if I’ve got the plot ready in my mind. For every finished one though, there are 5 – 10 unfinished ones, everything from a couple of lines to several thousand words. They are in my writing scrap heap (A.K.A. the Unfinished Stories file), but if you’re like me and you run out of gas a lot of times, never, ever delete them. Remember, no writing is ever wasted, and you never know when you might come back to it.

But, I digress.

However, when you publish a short story, you have to think about it the same as any other product that you want to sell – what will make people most likely to buy this item?

Of course the basics are a nice cover, good clean formatting, editing and proofreading.

Short stories, however, won’t make a lot of money, particularly when you’re starting out. Mine are usually proper short – 2 – 6,000 words, because when I was submitting to magazines that was the ideal range. The closer to 2,000 words, the more likely you were – as an unknown – to be accepted.

Here’s the truth about the short stories I publish – I scrimp. I edit and format them myself, and I do the proofreading too. They’re 99% clean (in fact, I’d be happy to challenge anyone to find me a typo in one of my shorts – point it out via Facebook or my Mailing List email and I’ll send you a free ebook of Tube Riders: Exile), partly because I’ve been doing this a long time, most of my day job is correcting errors in English, and I trust myself over a short distance. If you’re in any doubt do a swap with someone or keep practicing until you trust yourself. Putting out error-strewn work is a really bad idea.

Recently, however, I did start getting new covers for a lot of my shorts. This is because the cover is basically the door – if it’s unattractive no one will knock, and once you get them knocking you’re good to go. Again, covers can cost a fortune, so I bought a job lot of premade ones from a site called goonwrite.com. I bought 10 for $225, which as the mathematically minded will notice, is $22.50 each. It’s pretty hard to get a decent stock photo for that price, and what I got was perfectly adequate covers. I’ve only ordered five so far, but you can see them on The Tree, Benny’s Harem, Castles Made of Sand, Once We Were Children, and Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories.

The majority of my short stories are designed either to be used as perma-free introductions to my other work, or are priced at $0.99 to tempt people to take a chance. At $0.99 I make roughly $0.35 profit, which is not a lot, and means I have to sell about 60 copies just to make the cost of the cover back. On a good month, I will sell two copies of a short story. It’s usually one or zero.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m not in this for six months, or a year, or five years, I’m in this until I die (or until I make so much money I can sit back on a beach drinking sangria for the rest of my life, haha). That’s hopefully a long time. Thinking long term is absolutely key in self-publishing, as it is in practically every other kind of business. Also, there is that wonderful little business term to consider – the upsell.

The Upsell

Here’s where I’m going to start talking about business stuff. If you’re going to get anywhere in self-publishing you have to LEARN LEARN LEARN, all the time.

It’s no good sitting in your ivory tower acting all high and mighty. You have to get down on the ground looking up at everyone standing taller than you and listen to how they did it. Then you can pick and chose your own method based on what you have learned.

I choose to publish in multiple genres. I chose to publish short stories which won’t make much money. These are my choices, but they come from learning how things work so that at least I know what I’m doing wrong. However, even with these choices, I still concentrate on the upsell.

I recently read a brilliant book called Write. Publish. Repeat. by two guys called Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant. I’m lucky enough to be in a multi-book anthology with Platt and his co-author David Wright, who also contributed to Write. Publish. Repeat. I strongly recommend anyone wanting to self-publish to read this book.

In it, they talk a lot about the upsell. Basically, you have a cheapo/free item which is designed to draw a reader in, after which ideally they will purchase a higher priced item. It’s simple economics. I offer Tube Riders for free, hoping that people will then purchase Exile and Revenge, or ideally the Trilogy Boxed Set, which is at the top of the chain. The boxed set is cheaper than the two individual sequels, but a sale of the boxed set over a sale of Exile guarantees a purchase of Revenge.

With the short stories, you need to have some kind of upsell. Admittedly, it’s more difficult unless they’re part of a series. What I have are collections of five genre-themed stories, and I offer a choice of two of these in the contact section of my back/front matter (which is what this blog was originally supposed to be talking about!). Wright/Truant talk a lot about tone of your contact info, and the importance of offering a choice of purchases over a purchase vs nothing.

Here’s an example of my contact matter for my short stories –

Contact

Did you enjoy this story? If so, please consider signing up for the Mailing List where you can get free stuff, special offers and discounts on new releases.

If you would like to read more stories like it, perhaps you would like to try one of my collections, such as Five Tales of Dystopia or Five Tales of Fantasy.

Also, you can chat to me on Facebook at Chris Ward (Fiction Writer) and follow progress on new books on my blog at A Million Miles from Anywhere

Thank you for reading!

Chris Ward

March 2014

I structure it in order of what I deem most important. First is the Mailing List sign up, because once they’re on that they get to hear first about all my new releases (and hopefully buy them). Second is the choice of two collections. This is from The Tree, which is a dystopian story. They get offered Five Tales of Dystopia first, and Five Tales of Fantasy second. After these I give them links to the more unimportant stuff, my Facebook and my blog. Everything is hyperlinked.

Having an upsell option on a short story to a product selling for $2.99 suddenly makes that $22.50 less of an investment. I still only sell a handful of collections a month, but again I’m thinking long term, plus I want as much material in place in the event that one or more of my books take off.

Front/back matter placement

So you’ve got your upsell info in place. Where do you put it? As always, I’m doing the failing so that you don’t have to. The door for a reader is the cover, but the second level of interest is the sample they can download on to their Kindle, generally 10%.

Until recently I had all my links and info at the front and back of everyone of my books. That included an author bio, a list of my other works, a copyright statement, and also the contact stuff. Then, the other day, I downloaded the sample for one of my short stories.

I didn’t actually get any of the story. All I got was the front matter. 10% of 2000 words is only 200, less than a page. It’s still enough to capture a reader’s attention if it’s good, but if all they get is a list of other works and an author bio, they’re not going to purchase anything.

It’s fine to have all that stuff at the front in a novel. Tube Riders is 160,000 words, so you get roughly five chapters in the sample. In a short story, however, it makes sense to put all that stuff at the back.

What I do now is have a simple Contents page like this –

Contents

(story name)

Contact

Also by Chris Ward

About the Author

Copyright

All the back matter is at the back, in reverse order of what I consider important. Straight after the story is the contact page, followed by my other stuff, a short bio if they’re really interested, and a copyright page (which is interesting to basically no one). The contents page is important particularly for other vendors (Apple requires one, even for short stories), but its so short it won’t take much away from the sample. If you’re just publishing to Kindle you could probably do without one. Most importantly, they’re now getting some of the story, and if they get some, they’re likely to want more, and if they like it they’ll be keen to click on the links they find at the back.

Hopefully you found this blog useful. If you did, sign up for my mailing list, go and buy all my books, or at least download Tube Riders, which is permafree. Then you can come back and tell me I’m awesome.

Until next time…

Chris Ward

May 15^th 2014

Separating the Heart from the Head

Recently I heard about a wonderfully successful and deservedly so writer friend of mine who got regularly asked both privately and in person for her “secret” to success, even to the extent where she was offered money to divulge it. While there are surface issues of basic politeness that such people need to address, it got me thinking about why beginning writers tend to have such a desperate craving for a supposed miracle potion that will magic them on the way to literary success. After all, how many times have you heard of someone running up to a banking executive, grabbing him by the lapels and demanding to know his “secret”? No, neither have I.

I quite clearly remember being 17 and having a book physically torn out of my hands during a free period in the Sixth Form common room, along with a “stop wasting your time reading” admonishment. The culprit, a kind of mate at the time, is now as far as I know an engineer. He probably builds bridges or whatnot and is probably a lot wealthier than me. I also remember floundering my way through woodwork class while another kid who sucked at English created the most beautiful chairs and tables in half the time it took me to make a jewelry box with a drawer that didn’t shut properly.

People are all different, and some people are better at certain skills than others. People good at maths tend to do well in banking jobs, people good at crafts tend to do more hands-on work, while people good at writing often end up as journalists or writers.

Someone who wants to be a banking executive will look at the CEO he wants to emulate, figure out where he went to university, what he studied, where he first worked, which positions he held and how he gradually made his way up the corporate ladder. The wannabe bestselling writer will look at a real bestselling writer, get all gooey-eyed and start jumping up and down in frustration.

Anyone who writes stories tends be a lot more emotionally charged than someone who draws plans for building projects or analyses chemical reactions. I know this is a gross generalization, but it makes sense that someone who regularly wears their heart on their sleeve in their fiction will view real life in the same way, with a romantic, heroic notion than success is based on luck, unexpected fortune, or pure chance, because of course, these are the kind of plot devices that drive their fiction.

Not so.

Repeat the mantra - “writing is art, bookselling is business”. Do it ten times. Every day. Then realise that if you’re going to be successful you’re going to have to learn to wear two different hats, the one that writes the stories and the one that ships them.

There are seemingly a lot of “overnight” (read ten years of trying) successes in self-publishing, but that’s only because they’re the ones that stand out. There are countless thousands of writers under the radar for every one who achieves great success, but here’s the key - you don’t need to sell thousands of copies per day to be successful. Just ten copies a day will add up. Trust me.

When I started out in self-publishing just over two years ago I felt like I was standing at the bottom of a mountain. EVERYONE seemed to be doing better than me, and I felt like I was forever playing catch up.

What you have to learn is that the writing mountain is climbed in the same way as every other mountain, one step at a time. While there might be the odd helicopter that will pick you up and fly you to the top they are few and far between, so get your best hiking boots on and start walking. It’s the only sure why to get to the top.

Remember, this is not a race. Self-publishing isn’t going anywhere, and while every day there are new writers starting out there are also those who are giving up, and there will always been room in the market for good writing. You have to separate your heart (the writing) from your head (the business side), give each equal weight and don’t let one encroach on the other. Write the best books you can with your heart, then shift them over to your head to prepare them and shop them for sale. Rinse and repeat. Work on building up YOUR brand and YOUR backlist, and don’t go chasing after other people’s success, because that’s just what it is - someone else’s path to the top. Work on following your own.

That is all.

By the way, if you're wondering if my books are as good as my blogs, sign up for my mailing list to get offers, discounts, and notification of new releases. Here's the link.

Chris Ward

April 1st 2014

Pricing for Ebooks - How and Why I do it

First of all, I’ll talk a little bit about the different sales vendors and the regular prices you see when you buy books off the internet, then I’ll talk a little bit about my own decisions when it comes to pricing.

The Basics

If you’re new to self-publishing (SP), on Amazon you can basically price your books how you like, as long as they’re over $0.99 or other currency equivalents. So, yeah, I could price my books at $50 each, but of course no one would buy them. The important thing to remember with pricing is your royalty.

On Amazon you get 35% between $0.99 and $2.99, then 70% from $2.99 to $9.99, before it goes back to 35% over $9.99, but to be honest, you’re unlikely to sell much priced that high. Good luck if you want to try, though.

This is true for most branches of Amazon, but they have certain rules, for example at the moment if you want 70% in India, Japan, Mexico, or Brazil you have to be enrolled in Amazon’s Select program, otherwise it’s 35% regardless of what you charge. All of this is visible on your pricing page when you’re publishing your book.

Amazon’s Select Program

What is Select? If you enroll in Select through your Bookshelf on your Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) page, you have to grant Amazon exclusivity (meaning you can’t be published on any other vendor) for 90 days. In return, you can set your book free for five days per 90-day period, or run a Countdown Promo, and benefit from borrows made by Amazon Prime members, for which you’ll get paid roughly $2 each time.

Some people like Select. I'm not a fan, which is why I’m gradually pulling my books out of it. It used to be awesome - a free run would get a ton of downloads, then when your book reverted to paid you’d get a load of knock on sales for a month or so afterwards. I came into SP when Select was at the end of its golden period. My first free promo on Tube Riders got me 4000 downloads and 60 knock on sales at $4.99 over the next month, which was nice at the time. The second time I did it, knock on sales stopped dead after a week. The most recent one I did (on Head of Words) netted me just 3 sales after giving away 1500 copies.

I’m not going to bitch about Amazon because I love Amazon - both as a publisher and a customer. They absolutely rock. However, they’re a business and they do what they consider best, and if reducing the visibility of free books post-free is in their best interests then it’s up to us writers to roll with it and adapt. I never really liked free promos unless I could find a way to benefit my other books, plus I wanted to publish on other platforms.

Other Platforms

These are the smaller venues, such as Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and Google Play. If you’re US-based, you can publish to them direct, or for Apple you need to have a Mac. Alternatively, you can publish through an online distributer such as Smashwords or Draft 2Digital.

I currently use Smashwords for most of my stuff, and while I don’t hate it, I’m not particularly fond of it. It works, but it has certain annoying features. Many people complain about the uploader, known as the “meat grinder” and the fact that you have to put “Smashwords Edition” in the front matter of your book. I find these things irritating, but for me the big downside is the ridiculous lateness of the reports. Amazon updates sales as they come in, or with a short, pretty unnoticeable time lag, but for Smashwords you’re lucky if you get sales updates once a month. I go through all of the other vendors with Smashwords, but for example, on my Smashwords dashboard this morning it says that the free downloads through Kobo, for example, were last updated on November 30th, 2013. That’s like, five months ago? What the hell? Most updates are once a month, but even that is pretty poor. There really isn't any reason why they can't provide reports at least once a week.

I’ve only used Draft 2 Digital once, but it was far easier and I’ll probably be using it for most future publications. One advantage that Smashwords apparently has, though, is that you can price books at free on Barnes & Noble, whereas Draft 2 Digital only pushes free books to Apple and Kobo. However, as Apple becomes bigger and B&N becomes smaller, this may not be such a problem. Anyway, if you’re interested in more of a comparison, here’s an interesting blog I came across this morning which talks about them both in more detail.

One last point and then I’ll get back to my original topic(!) - I don’t currently use Google Play. To be honest, I don’t know much about them, but one thing I have heard is that they have a tendency to discount your books without warning. And this can cause big problems with Amazon.

The Price-Match

Amazon is the undisputed God of SP, and you should upset them at your peril. Amazon likes to have the lowest price around, and as a result they will often price-match their books if a book is priced lower on another vendor. If you go to my UK Amazon page you’ll see that Tube Riders: Revenge is priced something like £3.08. This isn’t the price I set. I set it at £3.99, the same as Exile, but somewhere Amazon has found a lower price and matched it. I can’t for the life of me figure out where, unless they’ve actually price-matched it to the US Amazon, where it is priced $4.99 (£3.08 at current exchange rates). There’s not a lot I can do about this. I could email them, but it’s selling and I kind of wonder if it being a fraction cheaper than Exile might be tipping those on the fence about Exile into taking a chance on Revenge. However, this price-matching is why I don’t use Google Play, because its notoriously difficult to get Google Play to change their prices, whereas you are in control of all the others either directly or through Smashwords or Draft 2 Digital.

You can effectively set your prices as you want on other vendors and Amazon will likely price-match it if it is lower. Be careful, though - Amazon won’t be happy if your price is $0.99 on another vendor because pricing matching it to $0.99 on Amazon forces them to pay you the 70% royalty on a book that they usually only pay 35% for, unless you quickly go in and change your requested royalty. If not, you’ll get The Email. I’ve got it, and it’s scary. I don’t want to get it again. Therefore, if you reduce your book to $0.99 for a bargain book promo, be aware that Smashwords can take a week or so to up the prices on the other vendors. Don’t get caught out.

The only real use of price-matching is to get your book priced permanently at free. This is what I’ve done with The Tube Riders. This means you can reap the long term benefits of having a book free without having to be in the Select program. I currently have several perma-frees - The Tube Riders book 1, the short stories Going Underground, Fallen from the Train and The Cold Pools, and the first in my Beat Down! novella series, (under the name of Michael S. Hunter) (if you love me go and grab them all!). All of them (except The Cold Pools, which is only perma-free because it was popular) act as funnels to drive people towards other connected books.

One of the downsides of perma-frees (and frees in general) is you get a lot more bad reviews from people who don't really like your genre but grab it because it's free, the "there was a bloody skull on the front but I wanted to a read a romance and it was a horror, so here's your one star" types. The Cold Pools and Beat Down! have several. There's nothing you can do about it except roll with it, because it comes with the territory. As a word of warning, unless you're a bestseller, making you pretty much immune from the flamers, don't waste your time trying to stand up and justify your books in such cases. It's a huge waste of time and energy, and at the end of the day people are entitled to their opinion, even if you think its grossly unfair or way off the mark. Shrug it off and get back to writing the next book.

Amazon sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t price-match. You can’t guarantee it. Sometimes it just happens (Tube Riders took less than a day) and sometimes it never happens (Beat Down - Clones is still not free in the UK after more than a year). There is a report box on the book’s page on Amazon, so it’s a good idea to report your book as often as possible. I’ve found that the higher priced the item, the quicker it gets price-matched. Also be aware that they can un-price-match at any time. This happens a lot in the UK. Just this week, Tube Riders reverted to paid, meaning my wonderful free ranking got reset. I emailed them and its been set to free again now, but that could be disastrous if it happened on the eve of a big promotion. Make sure you keep an eye on them.

I’d quickly like to take a moment to shout out to a book I’m reading at the moment called Write. Publish. Repeat. By Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant. This is basically the self-publisher’s bible, and if you haven’t read it you should check it out. I’m happy to note that I’ve been doing a lot of the things they talk about, but not nearly enough. They talk about a lot of the same things regarding pricing, particularly the “funnel”, and a few more besides.

My prices

In the US I price short stories at $0.99, collections and novellas at $2.99, standalone novels at $3.99 and my Tube Riders sequels at $4.99. On the other Amazons I round up my higher prices to the nearest -99, just to make them look tidy. As a long term strategy I’m moving away from lower prices and also free promotions. Other than my perma-frees, it’s my intention that the only way to get free or discounted books will be through my mailing list (sign up here!) with coupons via Smashwords or Draft 2 Digital. Arbitrarily giving away free books is akin to the often used metaphor of slinging mud against the wall and hoping it sticks. I’ve been trying it for two years and I can tell you that it doesn’t.

I have absolutely no intention of ever giving away Exile or Revenge for free. I’ll just point that out now. It is very easy for self-publishers to cultivate a “culture of free”, where they’re known for giving away everything so much that fans will just wait around until the price eventually comes down. I’ve been there, done that, but after two years of building a base I’m moving away from that now. If anything, I consider Exile and Revenge to be underpriced, but for now $4.99 works for me. I’m a nice person, very generous and all that, but I’m trying to make money, not spend all my free time slaving away at a computer screen to then give books away to people for free. If people want to read my books, I expect them to pay for them.

I’ve had a number of people ask (or even criticism me for) why The Tube Riders is free, considering it took me six months just to draft, and god knows how much longer to revise and get ready for publication. The Tube Riders is my loss leader, the funnel which draws people into the Tube Riders world where I hope they will part with their money for the sequels and eventually the prequel trilogy I am currently writing. I view the series as a set, and each free download of book one is potentially $10 of revenue, which works out at $7 in my pocket. Of course, only a fraction of free downloaders actually go on to even read the book, let alone buy the sequels. I’ve heard of sell-through rates of everything from 0.5% to 15%, but if you can get 5% you’re doing great. Since Tube Riders went permanently free in the US on January 29th and February 5th in the UK I’ve had almost 26,000 downloads. My sell-through rate is currently less than 2%, but since the first book is so long I’m hoping that it will have a long sell-through tail.

I also recently released a boxed set, which is now linked to in the back of The Tube Riders, rather than Exile, which was linked to before. My boxed set is $7.99 in the US and 5.99 in the UK, meaning a saving of about 20%. This is pure marketing. While many readers will (and do) buy the individual books, if there is a boxed set available I’ll likely hang on to some readers that might have read Exile, not enjoyed it (impossible, I know!), and moved on. It also looks nice and shiny, adds another item to my author’s page, and could provide the series with a boost through promotions if and when interest in the initial series begins to wane.

Anyway, like a lot of my blogs, this one has expanded into a two-thousand word beast, so it’s probably a good idea to set it free now. Any questions or comments are welcome, and one more time, please signup for my new releases mailing list if you're interested in what I write.

Chris Ward

19th March 2014

Why writers write series

First up, I'd like to say that I neither particularly enjoy writing series nor reading them. Nor am I in any way telling you that you have to write one in order to succeed at self publishing. Being the kind of writer who tends to do what he wants regardless of whatever anyone else is doing (or you can substitute that for "poor"!), I have a love and hate relationship with series.

Once, many years ago, I refused to ever write a sequel. Then I wrote Tube Riders, and realised that while the story ended it was only part of a larger story, which has now been expanded into a trilogy (due for imminent release - I hope ...) with the possibility of further books in the same world. So I broke my own rule, and I chastise myself every day. However, its a cool story, and I'm hoping that finally, after two years, I might make some money from self-publishing when the next two series books come out. Then I can go back to writing standalones that no one reads ...

So I love them and I hate them. But, however you feel, there are several reasons why writing a series is a good way to be successful (read in that make sales and money), and why many self-published writers do nothing else.

1. Never underestimate the power of a sequel.

Basically, if you have a good first book, a large percentage of people will want to read the sequel. And the second sequel, and the third. Of course, if your first book is a bag of toss then it won't matter how good your sequels are. Saying that though, self-publishing is littered with one star reviews on second and third books in a series saying something along the lines of "even though the first one sucked, I bought the second/third/fifteenth to see if it got better. It didn't." Sucks to get a bad review, but you'll be several dollars richer for every muppet like this who comes along.

2. Readers love familiarity

There is a reason why millions of trad writers have recurring characters in their books, even though when you really look deeply at how that character is constructed there's often very little to set them apart from any other random person. I love a good Agatha Christie, but I've read a couple of Poirots where he doesn't show up until halfway through, and even then it's almost as an afterthought. You could replace him with any other random inspector who could do the same thing, but it wouldn't be the same and it wouldn't have the same mass appeal. It's branding. Go to your bookshelf and pick up a couple of books that have recurring characters. Try to jot down what they say or do differently to any other person, what sets them apart. For many there will be something, sure. But for others, all you've got is a name, but that's power.

3. You can work the free book system.

Amazon Select used to be a goldmine. Like everything else I've done in life I came into it after the goldrush was over, when it was about to go belly up. What used to happen was that you gave away 30,000 free copies over a few days, and while you'd get a few asshole one star reviews for your kindness you'd also a couple of thousand post-free sales because of the increased visibility. Now, you just get the asshole reviews, because Amazon has tweaked their systems so that you don't get any extra visibility at all. So on a standalone book Select is basically a waste of time, unless it's so good that people will go stumbling out into the street in the dead of night to tell people about it. However, when you have a series you can hammer that first book, or even get it set perma free (you have to publish it for free elsewhere and hope Amazon price-matches - this is what I've done with the sampler for Tube Riders) and make your money off the sequels. This is how many big selling indies are making their money.

4. You can afford to take an advertising hit.

There are few sites where you'll make money from an advertisement. Even most of the better websites are a case of pay $20, make $10 from sales, but if you have sequels you have afford to take those hits, because the sequels sales will make up for it.

5. You always have something to write about.

So, your trilogy is done and dusted. But is it? What about the prequel, or the spinoff featuring a couple of minor characters, or the new trilogy featuring the kids of the first lot of characters? When you write a series you do more than just tell a story, you build a world. And the stories you can get out of that world are infinite. And because it's connected to your first series, it has the same appeal to fans of those books. It's names and branding all over again.


So, there you are. Some reasons why writing a series can be successful. Feel free to add any more you think I've missed in the comments below.

And if you want to see how badass my own series is, download the free sampler of Tube Riders (22 chapters) here.

Chris Ward
21st October 2013

Fighting through the low times

There comes a point during any self-publisher's journey where you start to doubt yourself. Am I really as good as I think I am? Am I really in the right profession? Should I just give up and try something else?

It's an easy situation to be in, particularly when you're surrounded by people doing a whole lot better than you are. It's easy to let the bitterness slip in, to feel aggrieved or frustrated at someone else's success, particularly when you can't understand why you're unable to replicate it.

There could be a number of reasons why someone is more successful than you.

They might have more books out.

They might have a large friends/family network all wanting to blog/Tweet/Facebook them to give them a chance to get off the ground.

They might have really good books, the kind where someone reads it and just has to tell everyone they know.

They might be writing in a more popular genre.

They might be incredibly business savvy, incredibly hardworking, or incredibly adept at knowing what kind of covers, blurb or pricing works best.

They might be very, very lucky.

A lot of writers say they feel no bitterness, envy or jealously towards other writers. Some of them might be telling the truth. Many will be lying. If you're making a thousand dollars a month it's a lot easier to not feel jealous of someone making $2000, but if you're writing/marketing three hours a day for $10 on a good month, it's a lot easier to feel that frustration, that "why not me?" feeling.

September marks the 18-month mark of my self-publishing adventure. I've published 31 different items under four different pen names, including three full-length novels, half a dozen novellas and several collections of short stories. I even have one work of non-fiction (but it's a secret!)

I've sold roughly 1800 books, more or less 100 a month, which is far, far better than many thousands of indie writers, who are probably going green with envy right now and can only dream of the kind of success I've so far attained. I hope so, I really do.

That's a joke, kind of. I've not made any money. So far this September, only 4 of my 31 titles have registered a paid sale. I think, at the time of writing, I'm still a little in the red.

I work on my books in the majority of my free time, roughly three hours a day on average. That's a lot of time to spend on not making any money (okay, I could be watching TV, which is much worse).

Why don't I make any money? Firstly, I plow it back in. As I got more sales, I invested in better covers, editors, proofreaders. All my novels are now going through a formatter, because I'm not happy just having an uploaded Word document, I want my books to look pro. I want there to be no distinction between my work and say, Stephen King's (although for the most part, my books are a lot shorter ...). I want my books to be awesome inside and out. I'm a complete computer illiterate, so it's easier to farm these tasks out. But that costs a little money.

I've built up a firm base. I have a decent if unspectacular social media platform, and a solid, well-reviewed backlist.

Yet still the doubts creep in. In March or so I gave up doing free promotions on novels. What used to happen was in exchange for some douchebag review or two you'd end up with 50 - 100 sales if you gave enough copies away. It was enough to massage the bank account a little, although the bad reviews always used to hurt. Doesn't matter how many five-star reviews you get, those one-stars really sting.

Suddenly things became hard. Getting reviews was difficult, getting on bargain book promo sites was tricky, getting any sales at all without reducing the price was near impossible. August was my worst sales month since my first, which was only four days long.

Then a couple of days ago I got rejected by a pretty piddly promotion site, after labouring for six months to try to get the prerequisite number of reviews.

I wanted to bury my head in the sand. Am I ever going to get anywhere doing this? Surely after 18 months I deserve a break?

I wanted to get bitter, I wanted to get resentful. I wanted to stand up on a rooftop somewhere and shout, GOD DAMN IT! WHY AREN'T I SELLING ANY BOOKS?? MY BOOKS ROCK BUT NO ONE WILL BUY THEM!! ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY??

Or something like that. Then I realised. No one owes me shit. Not Amazon, not other authors, not friends or family. It's just me, and it's all up to me. And that list of stuff other people are doing that makes them sell better? Not my problem. My problem is my books, and my books only.

You have to fight through the bad times. You have to get proactive and not turn into one of the whiny little pricks you find in places like the KDP Forums, the kind that will go and one-star more successful authors just to feel better about themselves. I've never done it, but I've had it happen to me, and it sucks.

You might be struggling to stay afloat in a sea of internal negativity, but you HAVE TO DO IT. DO NOT GIVE UP. You have to reach and reach and reach for that olive branch of positive energy that's dangling over you and haul yourself up it on to dry land.

Here's what you have to do.

1. Write more books. Obvious, but so true. No one can totally control the market, but one thing you can do is keep churning out those words, and the more books you have out the more chance you have of having one take off.

2. Become a better writer. All I ever here is "how can I sell books?", when you should be asking, "How can I write better books?" The same way as with everything else. LEARN. Buy study guides, listen to advice from other writers, watch online lectures, practice. You want to be so good that anyone who buys one of your books has no choice but to buy all the others.

3. Get proactive about marketing.

Research. Try new places. Bust ass looking for reviewers. There are huge lists of review bloggers out there, you just have to contact them. You need five reviews to get on Bookblast, eight for Kindle News and Tips, 10 for Ereader News Today. Stepping stones. Take one at a time, gradually lifting yourself up.

4. Relax.

Okay, I couldn't really think of anything interesting to write for number four, but you need to remember that unless you're like 95 and you're expecting to die in the next week or so, it's not a race. You have lots of time. Many traditional writers took decades before they were able to give up the day job. You have all the advantage - no production schedule, no one rejecting your proposal or telling you to write your book over from scratch or to write something different in another genre. YOU are the master. YOU CHOOSE what gets published and when. It's the perfect situation.

Through most of July and August I was busting my ass getting the final Tube Riders book done. Now that's been drafted, I have a little more time to address marketing and see if I can't figure out what to do about my plummeting sales.

What I've been doing -

I set up Goodreads giveaways for two of my paperbacks. This is a way to get more visibility for your books and to potentially get more reviews.

I've done some research into online markets, and I've spent a bit of money here and there. Not much, $10 here, $10 there, trying to get a bit more visibility.

I've tweeted and blogged more (hello!). I've linked my blogs on Stumbledupon and tweeted them.

I've set up a Facebook ad for one of my books, which I put on special price.

I printed out a bunch of photographs of my book covers, and during a recent trip back to England I "strategically" placed them in potentially beneficial locations. For example, the next person to use my seat on the airline I took will find a Tube Riders bookmark inside his in-flight magazine. Not sure if it'll help, but you have to think outside the box sometimes.

What have been the results?

Well, nothing spectacular, but yesterday I sold four books. That's four more than I sold the day before. I can't be sure that had anything at all to do with my renewed efforts, but it felt like it did.

And sometimes that's enough.


Don't let the bitterness take hold. If you've decided you're in this for the long haul then stop stressing about today or yesterday's sales. Think about where you want your sales to be in 2015.

Fight through the low times. If you keep writing, they'll pass.

Chris Ward
September 23rd 2013

How to add an Amazon Store to your Facebook Page

Take a quick look at my Facebook page. There, next to the Mailing List is a button saying "Store".

If you click on this button you go to this page, where you can see all of my books -

Why is this awesome? Well, not only can my fans easily view my bookstore and click the links to go straight to the Amazon page for each book, but the links go through my affiliate account so any purchases make me a few extra pennies.

Personally I think this is really cool, and it's pretty easy to do. In this blog I'll tell you how.

First of all, big thanks to Phyllis Zimbler Miller for this guide and YA author Elle Casey for posting this information on this thread on Kindleboards. This is basically a pictorial step-by-step guide comprised of this information.

To do this, you will need a Facebook page for your writing. That is a proper page, which people "like", not a personal page.

You will also need an Amazon Associates account. If you don't have one, sign up here.

Finally, you will need to add a Static I-Frame to your Facebook page. This is pretty easy, just click this link, the big blue button in the middle and then select the page you want to add it to. Easy.

Once you have your I-frame ready for your Facebook page, log in to your Amazon Associates account and click the "astore" button in the middle of the picture below.

In the sidebar, click on Category Pages.

Then, Add Category Page (please note, there are more options in these pictures than you'll see because I've already set a store up).

Then, Add Products.

On the next screen, choose the field you want to search and then enter your book name or ASIN. Of course, you can create a store for any products you like, not just your own books. You can see the results below when I put in one of my books. Click Add to add any products you wish. They will then appear in the Added Products box.

If you want to order your books in a certain way or add specific text, click on the book in the Added Products box on the left above, and this box will appear -

Add your order or text and click save.

When you've added all the books you wish, click on Back to Category Pages, which is at the bottom of the search results page.

Then click on Continue at the bottom of the first screen.

Next to you come a page where you can decide your colours and design, as well as give your store a name. When you're done, click Continue at the bottom of the page.

The next page you come to allows you to add extra stuff such as side bars, wishlists, and the like. I kept mine simple, but it's up to you. When you're done, click Finish & Get Link at the bottom. You're almost there!

On the next page, select the second option, "Embed my store using an inline frame". Then highlight and copy the link. To make sure your store covers the full screen, edit "width" in the link to say "100".

Now, return to Facebook. If you've already added your inline frame, it'll look like the "Welcome" button below (this is from my pen name's page).

Click it and you'll see this -

Paste the link into the box (deleting the information that you can see above first). You'll then get this rather scary message -

This terrified me, and stumped me for about twenty minutes. Don't worry, simply change "http" to "https" (maybe this is obvious to the computer types out there, but I struggle with the complexity of a typewriter ...!) The red message will immediately disappear. Click Save & Publish (the blue box on the top right) and you're done.

Now all you have to do is edit the button itself. Put your cursor over the button and you'll see a little pencil appear in the top right corner. Click it and you'll see this box -

Click "Edit Settings" and this box will appear. Now you can rename your store or at an icon or picture.

You'll remember from my first picture that I had a nice little icon for my store. This was actually a stock icon I bought from a stock photo website called Pond 5. You can do the same or add a picture of your own. Anything will do.

And you're done! Good luck with your store - I hope many people visit it (and feel free to visit mine anytime!)

Chris Ward
June 8th 2013