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What is Web ME 2?

April 8, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 3 comments

World-Changing Articles

In 2004-5, two seminal papers changed the way we think about the web, the world, and everything.

Tim O’Reilly’s “What is Web 2.0” explained how the web had become interactive, with dynamic blogs replacing static websites, and readers/users becoming directly involved in the creation and promotion of new products. Proponents of Web 2.0, he said, knew how to “harness collective intelligence” – just the way that Wikipedia does it with literally thousands of volunteers adding, editing and correcting content daily.

Chris Anderson’s article, “The Long Tail“, showed how digital content would change the dynamics of marketing. Since the physical product – a DVD or a book, say – was no longer required, shelf-space effectively became infinite. Which meant goodbye to shelves, goodbye to bricks-and-mortar bookshops, goodbye to ‘out of print’, goodbye to big-publisher control of the market, goodbye to restrictive pricing practices. Later, in a follow-on book, Anderson included charts showing that, while a small number of best-sellers (‘the head’) would continue to dominate the digital market, the new niche products (‘the tail’) would always find buyers, and that the more digital content released, the more we would consume. While the tail didn’t exactly wag the dog, it was far longer than we ever imagined.


The Fourth Dimension

So according to Anderson, it all comes down to dimensional shift. When Length, Width and Depth are no longer a consideration, marketing and the supply-chain evolve. But there was another dimension he didn’t consider. A dimension that never changed. Time.

If I were a mathematician, I’d insert a formula here. But since my mind copes better with images, let me put it this way:

Give a dog a bone and he’ll eat it. Give a dog 5 bones and 2 minutes and he’ll take the easiest bits.

It’s not a perfect analogy. To get it working you’ll have to train your dog to be time-aware and give him a stop-watch. But you see my point, don’t you? That with the torrent of digital material unleashed upon us, and limited time, our consumption patterns were always bound to change. For the marketer, that’s irrelevant. He’ll count what’s easy to count. The number of dogs. The number of bones. Their availability and price. The cost of dog ownership. That’s how we measure our success in the digital economy – with numbers.

Most of us have learnt to go with the flow, whether reading or listening. Certainly my reading habits have changed. I’ve talked elsewhere about ‘greading‘ – the acquisition of more written content than I could possibly consume in a lifetime, just in case someday I might find the time to read it. ‘Headlining’ is another conveniently-packaged reading technique: scanning the latest news or posts, then dropping into the detail to speed-read where something interesting catches the eye. But reading – taking time with words, interpretation, deep understanding … thinking! – well, who’s got the time these days?

Of course there will always be die-hards who try to resist the inevitable. Watch this BBC video clip now and wallow in the nostalgia for a couple of minutes – but don’t forget to come back!

Telling, isn’t it, that they choose to listen on vinyl? Unreconstructed technophobes!


Web ME 2

In recent weeks, a new feature has been springing up all over the web – the Like button. The purpose of the button, as far as I can see, is to eliminate the need to read entirely. Not long ago, I used to get dozens of requests a day to read someone’s blog or book. Doesn’t happen any more. Now people just ask me to Like their work. I have to confess that at first – forward-thinker though I am – I was uncomfortable with this innovation. It seemed so … uncritical somehow. I’m not the sort of person who gets pleasure out of voting people down, and I wrote to a number of the sites offering ‘Like’ to ask if they could also offer an ‘Indifferent’ or ‘Can’t be bothered’ button.

But I’ve given the matter some thought, and I now see ‘Like’ as a very positive development.

First, it’s undoubtedly a time-saver. I’m saving dozens of hours a week not reading material that otherwise might have seemed important.

Second, Liking is deeply embedded in our democratic traditions. Politicians have known for years that what matters is not whether people read or understand their manifestos, but whether they have an opinion about them. The key to a successful election campaign is not sound policy but momentum in the opinion polls, building up an irresistible force of people who Like you. Why should it be any different with a blog or a book?

Third, this is a textbook application of Newtonian physics, as marketing scientists have explained. ‘Every body attracts every other body with a force that is proportional to the mass of each body.’ Thus, the attraction of a blog or a book which has 200 Likes is 100 times greater than the attraction of a book with only 2 Likes.

Look at O’Reilly’s definition again, and you’ll see that we need to redefine it. Web 2.0, it turns out, is not about harnessing collective intelligence, but harnessing collective opinion. ’1000 people say this blog is great. I’ll go along with that.’

Web 2.0 has reinvented itself as Web ME 2.



References

Of course I’m not expecting you to actually read these world-changing articles. But in case you want to gread them, or just Like them, here are the references.

What is Web 2.0? – Tim O’Reilly
The Long Tail – Chris Anderson

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Why I won’t be selling my novel for $495

March 19, 2011 in Reflections | 8 comments

Limited edition potato

‘Worth more than my novel?’
Answers are not required in ‘Comments’

A year ago, as I was getting ready to publish my first novel, I set myself a target. If I was going to be a real writer, then I had to be able to make a proper living through writing. So how have I done so far?

In English English: ‘Not quite as well as I might have done.”

In any other language: “Total wipeout”.

Smashwords: Sold – 121. Earnings – $65.35
Amazon – US: Sold – 33. Earnings – $29.66
Amazon – UK: Sold – 3. Earnings – £0.78

So that’s 157 copies and around $96 earned for the year. Call me cautious, but somehow I don’t think I’ll be able to give up the day job just yet. I’ll need to do better: about 500 times better. Excluding taxation.

So one solution could be to increase the price by a factor of 500. ‘That will be $495, sir. Thank you.’ You know, I have a funny feeling that might just work. I could make it a limited edition, probably grab a few headlines for the most expensive book in the world, and I bet I’d get a few takers.

But that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave the price exactly where it has been for most of the year – $0.99 or £0.74 (+VAT). The price of a large potato.

Is that what my novel’s worth? I guess it depends how hungry you are. A potato’s certainly more nutritious. It fills a spot. Even if 157 people seem to have opted for my book instead.

Actually, that’s not quite true. The vast majority of my Smashwords ‘sales’ have come when I’ve offered a free copy as part of a promotion – there were 70 just last week during Read An Ebook Week. So these readers probably didn’t have to sacrifice their daily potato. And I suspect that some – maybe most – will be book-hoarders, accumulating books just in case they need them some rainy day. They’ll probably never read mine.

This is why there’s huge debate about what an ebook price ought to be. My Facebook friend and fellow-Brit-lit-author, Ali M Cooper, fulminated recently against price-cutting:

My UK kindle sales continue to drop as the market is flooded by under £1 ‘bargains’ as authors try to undercut each other … My personal guideline is that if I don’t think a full length novel is worth the price of a pint of beer then I shouldn’t be publishing it.

Several other writers agreed with Ali that price-cutting writers should take account of the ‘long-term perceived value of books’ and encouraged a firm stand on pricing. Selling at a low price implied a lack of confidence in your own book, they said.

But then there was another point of view expressed by Carolyn McCray, founder of the Indie Book Collective, in a post this week on understanding the Amazon book-page. You need to get at least 5 – 10 reviews, she said, and fill the ‘Customers-Who-Bought-This-Item-Also-Bought‘ bar. Her advice is:

Price your book at 99 cents (the lowest allowed by Amazon) and drive as much traffic as you can during your ‘soft’ launch window. Once you have the bar filled you can re-price your book.

There’s my problem. My amazon.com page has fantastic reviews – but only three of them. And the books other people bought with mine? A book on Lebanese cuisine, three books on quantum physics and .. oh yes, this is bound to bring the customers flooding in – The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t allow me to re-design my ‘associated books’ bar. I’ll just have to wait until some future customer chooses better bedfellows.

And as for my UK Amazon page. No reviews. No book-links. Nada.

So you see, I’ve got a way to go to establish any kind of credibility. Pricing is just one way I can persuade people to take a peek, maybe download the sample.

Free is probably not the best way – not for novels anyway, although there may be a case for free short stories to introduce people to your work.

But working at the price of least resistance does seem sensible, at least until my reputation begins to grow outside my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances. Perhaps that time will come with The Lebanese Troubles. Perhaps it will be the next novel. Or the third.

If it was just about pricing it would be easy. Unfortunately, it isn’t. A year on, I’m still learning about how to position and present my book, and this week I’ve been busy updating my promotional pages, and even the book content. You may have noticed changes in this blog too – all designed to make it easier for the potential reader to say ‘Yes’, and inspired largely by Carolyn McCray’s article.

There’s another important requirement. Hard work. Talking to your friends and supporters constantly, not necessarily beating your author-drum all the time, but just communicating. Let me return to Ali Cooper. I don’t know how she’d describe her last 12 months, but I’d call it a success.

Ali published her first novel, The Girl on the Swing around 12 months ago, at about the same time as me. It’s a beautifully-controlled, tightly written psycho-drama, the sort of novel I enjoy reading (especially since it follows in the Hardy/Fowles tradition of featuring Lyme Regis). But since Ali’s book is entirely devoid of vampires, cops and wizards … and is not priced at less than a dollar … it’s pretty unlikely to knock Amanda Hocking or J.A.Konrath from their perch at the top of the indie popularity list.

Carefully, steadily, Ali has nurtured her readership, maintaining the writer contacts she built while developing the novel, making new friends (like me) through the various Kindle boards, maintaining a daily presence through Facebook. In all of this, Ali has been much more consistent than me, and now her hard work is really beginning to pay off. Just look at the reviews she’s accumulated. From results she’s mentioned publicly over the past couple of months, I should think that she has a very real chance of achieving my target, self-sufficiency through writing, as she releases her next novel, Cave, at Easter. And from a potato’s-eye view, that’s inspiring!

Useful links:
Ali Cooper: The Girl on a Swing, Amazon US – Amazon UK

Carolyn McCray: Best Practices For Amazon Ebook Sales

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New cover design for The Lebanese Troubles

March 15, 2011 in News | 4 comments


The Dog River – Nahr Al Kalb

Our little rubber boat swirled and twisted in the boiling, ice-cold water. Circling above us dizzily, the thick green pines and the mountain peaks, here and there flashes of snow gleaming in the spring sun. The Dog River – Nahr al Kalb. Somewhere up here last year, they said, a father had hacked his daughter to death because she’d run off with her lover. Now that same blind fury was sweeping us down from the primitive heart of Lebanon, down towards its narrow rich Mediterranean plain.


Well I’ve finally gone ahead and done it. Changed the cover design for The Lebanese Troubles. And this is it. I’ve left the original cover over on the right for you to make comparisons.

Why not until now? Two reasons. First, I absolutely love Tom Young’s painting which I used on the original cover. When I first saw ‘Twenty Years’, it seemed almost to have been painted for TLT, perfectly reflecting the mood at the end of the book, even if it shows a scene that never actually happens.

But what I’ve learned in the past year is that artistry and appropriacy is not enough for a good front cover, especially for ebooks. The reader normally only sees a thumbnail sketch of the cover; nevertheless the impression it creates will very often determine whether the purchase is made or not.

My problem was that the original cover was bleak, and it seems that readers don’t buy bleak. Worse, it gives the impression that the whole book is about war. Today’s readers want blood and guts, that’s true, but only when the perpetrator is a vampire. Reading for many is a form of escapism: they want to suspend their disbelief, not be confronted with grim realities.

I haven’t managed to slip a vampire into the story yet. But if you’ve read the book, you’ll know that there’s a good deal of humor and energy, and that was not reflected in my cover.

The second problem was that I couldn’t find a good alternative. But today I found it – the picture I’ve used – license free, in that great resource, Wikimedia Commons. A little bit of work to do with the titles, using the free design tool, Paint (here’s a tutorial on how to create your own book cover), and we were good to go.

Several readers told me they thought the book would sell better with pictures of Monique and Claire on the front cover. As you can see, I didn’t. I thought long and hard about it, but in the end decided that I just didn’t have the skill, the time or the money to do it well. I’ll consider that again in the next iteration.

Another thing I didn’t do was to change the title of the book, despite frequent criticisms. Again I thought about it: “Sinners in Paradise” perhaps; or “The Land of Nod”. My favorite was “East of Eden” … but that’s been done before. What about “An Apprentice Hero”? In the end I rejected them all. The things is that I’ve spent months building brand recognition and getting “The Lebanese Troubles” to the top of the Google listings. If I change the title now, all that good work will be lost … and I’ll immediately invalidate those oh-so-important reviews. And besides, TLT is really quite a subtle title, exploding into a new meaning towards the end of the book.

Back to the cover design, and you’ll see a new Rapscallion logo at the bottom left. Thanks here to my good friend from TNBW, Greta Stone, who kindly developed four alternative designs for me, all with a spiky humorous touch. At thumbnail size, we’ll hardly see the logo, bur at full size I think it works, don’t you agree?

Let’s hear your views on the changes. Will the new cover make customers more likely to stop and look again than previously? How does it work for you? And in the coming days, I’ll let you know whether it really does make a difference to sales.



Please note that TLT will not be available at Amazon for a few days while their version is updating. But Smashwords has already made the changes, and the book is available there as normal – just follow the link in the sidebar.

I posted yesterday a longish sample from TLT, describing the mood in Beirut on the first day of the civil war. It seemed particularly appropriate as Bahrain seems to be headed in the same direction. How I wish people would learn to accommodate and celebrate their differences instead of using guns to enforce a point of view. Anyway, if you’d like to read the sample, you can either click here, or use the ‘Sample’ tab at the top of the page.

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A Rose By Any Other Name …

April 27, 2010 in Research | 7 comments

About names he was completely wrong, old William Shakespeare. How badly he understood their vital importance.*

Juliet bemoans her forced separation from Romeo. The Montague and Capulet families are sworn enemies. Romeo’s a Montague, Juliet’s a Capulet, so as far as her family is concerned he’s an unsuitable suitor. But, she protests …

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

A specious argument, as I was to find out yesterday.


I was chatting to a Facebook friend, someone I’ve known a while from the writers’ workshop site I belong to. We’ve shared views a few times about book marketing, though neither of us has read the other’s book yet. The topic was men: ‘What do men do to get over heartbreak? How long does it take when you’re really really in love?’

I made a useful contribution: ‘Timescale – about 5 pages, with double spacing for paragraphs. Although of course men suffer forever.’ So then we got talking about books and I mentioned that my novel was all about a man trying to recover from heartbreak – a story told from a self-centered male’s point of view. “I’d love to see the book”, my friend said. “You can”, I told her. “It’s been posted on our website for the past few months – it’s called The Lebanese Troubles.”. This is what she replied:

“I’ll check it out. But I definitely wouldn’t have picked the relationship thing up from the title. I was thinking Hezbollah. You might want to rethink that.:)”


And there’s your problem, Mr Shakespeare. Names do matter. People notice. To be fair, you already knew that. After all, Juliet has a marketing problem too. How’s she going to sell Romeo to the family? As I recall, it didn’t go too well. But your themes for today’s product-focused, status-aware market are just … well, wrong. If I’d been your agent, I’d have got you to stay on message. Romeo’s problem is just branding: ten minutes on Twitter and he could have fixed it. And surely you’d do better to accentuate the positives. At the end for example, when the heads of the two families agree to end their feud, bring peace to the streets of Verona, and erect gold statues to R and J. So tell the story, beat the drum. ‘How our children helped to build a business empire.’ You’d have had no problem selling a mouth-watering title like that! Romeo and Juliet? A story of unrequited love? Who needs it?

The trouble is, I find it easier to give advice to a dead poet than a live author – especially if the author happens to be me. OK – so the title of my book might be turning people off. And the cover probably reinforces the Hezbollah view. The painting that I see as a wonderful, moving evocation of solitude and loneliness probably just confirms that the book is all about terrorism for those who arrive with their expectations pre-cooked.

“You can’t change anything’, I rage. ‘The title’s smart. It plays off the troubles of the key characters against the troubles of the war.”

“If that’s the way you want it.” I flash a winning smile, and then stick the knife in. “If you really only want four readers …”

“But what about the time I’ve invested in marketing the title? Top of Google searches for ‘Lebanese’ + ‘troubles’. And those wonderful reviews – did you spot there was a new one on Amazon yesterday – do I just throw them away?”

I raise an eyebrow. Offer no comfort.

We argue into the night … and then hit on a plan, a cunning plan.

“Did you notice that your post on ‘How to publish God‘ got three times more readers than anything else on the blog?”

“So?”

“And how many views and replies there were on the Kindle Boards this week for the post ‘Vampires in Biblical Jerusalem try to assassinate Jesus of Nazareth’?”

“So people like to read about religion.”

“No, I don’t think they do especially. But I think everyone likes a controversial, daring headline, especially if there’s religion or politics involved.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“People think your book’s about Hezbollah, so put Hezbollah in the headline. Shake ‘em up.”

“But the book’s got nothing to do with Hezbollah.**“

“And that’s precisely what you’re going to tell them. ‘Not Hezbollah’.”

“And that’s your idea for the new title?”

“No, stupid! Keep The Lebanese Troubles to set up the Hezbollah expectation. Then in the blurb, on all your publicity, everywhere, just say ‘It’s not about Hezbollah’. I know we’re saying not, but it’s the H-word that will get their attention. They don’t want to read a novel about Hezbollah, but as a headline, it’ll get them reading on. Then just make sure you keep their interest. Lead them to the reviews.”


So that’s the plan, for now at least. I’ll give it a week or two to see if it makes a difference, and then report back. But you know what I really think? Better to choose a title in the first place that says ‘Please read me’ than one that says ‘You’re not gonna like this …’


Notes

*If the syntax seems familiar, then maybe you’re a W.H. Auden fan. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to get one of my favorite poems, Musée des Beaux Arts, out of my head for the past few days.

**If you are a student of Hezbollah and you’re interested in the origins of the movement, never fear. You can read The Lebanese Troubles that way too, if you like. You may also want to check out another recent release, Beware of Small States, a history of Lebanon written by David Hirst, long-time Guardian journalist and resident of Beirut.

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The Rapscallion Framework

April 23, 2010 in Rapscallion | 3 comments

Core skills

Today I’m going to propose a structure for Rapscallion.

I announced a few days back my plans to launch a ‘seed publishing’ operation, helping talented indie writers to work together, share resources, build credibility through association, and reach the widest possible market. A number of you posted excellent questions and responses, helping me to clarify my thoughts.

What I’m presenting today is imperfect, and will be further modified in the coming weeks – but it serves as the basis for discussion. This time I am asking for your views. Where can you see weaknesses in the approach?

Let’s start with the core skills needed for an effective team. I’ve listed on the left expertise that would have helped me as I brought my novel to the market. It’s a combination of the support I might have expected to get from an agent and a publisher, had I trodden the traditional route. The length of the list is some indication of how difficult it is to do everything alone.

As an aside, I imagine that some of you will be thinking that if I need standard agency/publisher skills, why not look for an agent and a publisher? Three reasons. I want to do it now, on a schedule that suits me, not others. Second, I want to retain as much control as possible, and have the ability to experiment and innovate. And third, some of the core skills are not currently provided by most agents and publishers – for example, guidance on web and blog design, which I’d rate amongst the most important marketing tools.

The first skills listed are self-evident, a few would only be required in some cases (such as voices and musicians – only, I imagine for audio books), but some need further explanation:

  • Legal/Financial Advisors – to make sure that this international operation is properly and efficiently structured, and to help members to negotiate contracts with third parties when the time comes.
  • Bloggers – to design and then maintain the Rapscallion blogs, one a dynamic shared resource for members, and the other an interactive site where we engage with (and sell to) readers.
  • Researchers – all members will be expected to share and publish their research … for example, perhaps you’ve been researching POD companies, or have found a great reviewer, or a cheaper way for us to get ISBNs …
  • Publicists – people who know how to manage an effective PR campaign, whether for Rapscallion or for an author.
  • Marketers – in particular people who have their finger on the pulse of the latest publishing trends.
  • Administrators – to make sure that sales are tracked, royalties paid on time … and for dozens of other small but important jobs.
  • Specialists – as required, people who can verify specialist/technical content in a book.
  • Critics – not just literary critics, but people we can trust to give a contrary (but balanced) view when we’re hopelessly optimistic.
  • Influencers – people who would help to give weight and credence to the imprint; or who have significant influence with major publishers.

What else? Tell me.

Let me now show you the proposed Rapscallion structure, and explain how everything fits together.

What you see here is a very simple business structure with three layers – a strategic level, operational management, and a set of small independent cells – what management guru Tom Peters might call skunkworks operations.

###

Strategic Management – The Think-Tank

The role would be to set and approve strategy and (later) budgets. I envisage five or six people in the team – and between them, I would want most of the core skills to be represented. They would not necessarily be writers. Committed readers would add value in the same way that non-executive directors in a business can often provide an invaluable objective, and perhaps consumer-oriented view.

The Think-Tank would be a sounding-board for the operational manager(s) and would regularly review the performance of the management team and the organization as a whole. They might expect to contribute around 15 hours a month to Rapscallion.

###

Writer Cells

I’ll move next to the bottom of the organization chart – what I’ve called writer cells (- and yes the pun is intentional).

Why Writer Cells?

Let’s use a simple example, my situation right now. I’m marketing a novel that fits broadly into an “international” category. Forget the literary fiction tag that I’m stuck with at the moment. My book is likely to appeal to people who think internationally. So where will I find readers? Probably readers of the Christian Science Monitor would like it. In paperback, it would probably be a good airport book. If I can plug into expatriate networks on the web, that’ll be helpful too.

But think how much more effectively I could make an impact if alongside mine, there were 3-4 other novels under the same imprint that would appeal to the same kind of reader. That wouldn’t be competition, but reinforcement – establishing loyalty to the brand. So if I were the leader of the ‘International’ cell, my job would be to headhunt other indie writers I admire with the same kind of market appeal, and persuade them to join Rapscallion.

What would writers get by participating?

  • The experience and knowledge of the Rapscallion team.
  • The strength of the brand – credibility, which will grow as we deliver more outstanding books.
  • Editing and preparation of the book for publication.
  • Preparation for e-publishing, if the writer chose this route to market
  • Guaranteed early reviews, and assuming writers have been invited to join because our team thinks their work outstanding, they’d be good reviews.
  • Positioning alongside books that attract similar readers.
  • Assistance and ideas for the marketing plan.

Importantly though, final decisions on format, pricing, sample material, etc would continue to be decisions made by each individual writer. And writers would be free to leave Rapscallion at any time (following exit procedures that are clear and fair to all), if they felt they would do better elsewhere.

What would be required from the writer?

  • Conformity with Rapscallion’s branding standards (although cover design decisions would be left to the writer).
  • X reviews of other Rapscallion books per year.
  • Participation in the Rapscallion blog.
  • Constant promotion of the Rapscallion brand – through email signatures, blog and Facebook links, etc.

Above all, we’d be looking for people who are prepared to spend a few hours a week promoting their own books and, at the same time, Rapscallion. To take an analogy from basketball, we really wouldn’t be interested in players who just wanted to take all the free throws – no matter how talented they may be; we need people who are willing to play the whole match with the team.

What would it cost?

This is difficult. Nothing up-front for sure, or at least not if the writer just required the standard services listed above. But my inclination would be to suggest that a percentage of royalties should be deducted. Some of this would be paid to the leader of the cell the writer belongs to (- we’ll go into more detail later). This would have a two-fold effect. First the cell leaders would be paid for the work they do. (What work? Again, details below.) Second, this would encourage team-leaders to select their members wisely – choosing books that complement their own and which are likely to be well-received by readers.

The writer would also be able to purchase additional services from the Rapscallion store, if required. If for example, they wanted help with art-work or photography, or specific legal advice. The store would include services offered by other members, and those provided by recommended third parties. In such cases, payment would probably be required with purchase.

How would the teams be managed?

By their team-leaders, who would generally select their own team-members. Teams would be limited to 4-5 writers, and the leaders would be personally take responsibility for making the standard Rapscallion services available to team-members – editing, preparing for e-publication, assisting with marketing, etc

How would we control this? Our team leaders need to be trained, and approved … And it’s time to turn our attention to Rapscallion’s management layer …

###

The Creative Director(s)

Day-to-day management of the organization would be in the hands of the Creative Director, reporting to the Think-Tank and responsible for maintaining quality and stimulating innovation within the writer cells.

Functions

  • Training for potential team-leaders – so that they can deliver the standard services; those who prove to us that they have the skills and qualities to maintain a Writer Cell will be authorized to do so.
  • Ongoing assistance for authorized team-leaders.
  • Right of veto over potential team-members whose work does not meet Rapscallion standards (- with a right of appeal by the team-leader to the Think-Tank; the Creative Director would ask the Think-Tank for a second opinion, if uncertain).
  • Final approval required on any Rapscallion material to be published – whether books or blogs.
  • Resource co-ordinator
  • Creative ideas generator

Just as in any business, the operational manager’s success will be judged by his/her ability to make money for the enterprise, and therefore for its author-members. But even more important we’ll need to be able to measure the amount of exposure our writers are getting, and whether they are attracting the attention of the publishing majors.

Expansion of the role

In the organization chart above, I’ve included three notional Writer’s Cells. The objective of course, in order to build the imprint’s credibility, would be to stimulate the formation of far more Cells … as long as we keep identifying talented writers and find people who are prepared and qualified to be team-leaders. Even with three or four cells to support, it’s likely that the Creative Director will have a full-time job, and as more cells are formed, we’re likely to need more than one person in this position. There could then be a requirement for one more level – someone to co-ordinate the activities of all the creative directors.

And, given that theirs will be a full-time job, we’ll probably need to find a way to pay the creative directors. Where will that money come from? Well, I haven’t done the math yet, but suppose we had an arrangement along these lines? From their net royalty income, writers would pay a 20% deduction to Rapscallion. 10% would go to their team leader. The other 10% would go to a Rapscallion fighting fund, administered by the Think-Tank. From this an agreed salary would be paid to the creative director(s), always assuming that Rapscallion income was greater than the salary – if the managers failed to run the business well therefore, they’d fail to make their salary. A little different from the banks!

Where would a royalty arrangement like this leave the author? In a much better position, relatively speaking, than in an agent/publisher relationship, where after deductions, authors typically earn less than 8% of the published price.

I’d like your views on this idea of royalty sharing – and then we’ll do the math properly. I’ll also show you typical indie author royalties, for self-publishing, POD and e-publishing, so you can see the full picture.

We’re some weeks (if not months) away from cutting the tape on Rapscallion. Before we go into full operation, there are procedures to be written and agreed, and right now, a good deal of market testing. As you may have noticed, that’s already started. So next time, I’ll tell you how you could participate in the test phase.

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Indie Writers – Freedom To Innovate

April 17, 2010 in Reflections | 4 comments

Over at the Kindle Boards site – where Kindle readers and writers exchange views – there’s been animated discussion in the last 24 hours about ‘How to get rid of the indie stigma?’.

Smashwords, Amazon (i.e. Kindle) and others have made it possible for writers to e-publish their books without the intervention of agents and publishers. Writers have responded with enthusiasm: Smashwords has published just over 10,000 books and half a million words to date, and they’re forecasting that the totals may double by the end of 2010. Readers too seem to have jumped onto the ebook bandwagon, particularly for budget books. In an illuminating article, mid-list author J.A. Konrath reports that he’s selling 180 $1.99 ebooks a day, and that although published research says that ebooks are only one-tenth of the total market for books, his ebook sales are keeping pace with his print sales.

But the problem is that if anyone can publish, then what happens to standards? Yes, inevitably there will be some great books self-published by great writers who might otherwise have been lost in the slush pile. But there will also be other books that should have been burnt before they even reached the slush stage. Who will protect the reader? And what if a reader comes across three appalling books in a row, and swears never to read an indie book again. There’s the stigma. If we ally ourselves with failure, might we not be labelled failures ourselves? Can anyone take our work seriously if it doesn’t have a proper publisher’s stamp of approval?

I saw the problem at first hand last night. I’d been telling an old friend about my novel – it turned out that he’d already bought it after spotting my LinkedIn announcement. He then wrote: ‘Have you ever come across XXXXX.com? Its a web-based bookshop site partially owned by a friend of mine – good ideas – but they need stuff that is already published – don’t know if it may offer a channel?’ Did you spot the stigma? He wasn’t meaning to be unkind, but because I’d released my novel as an ebook, he considered it still unpublished.

For a few seconds I was hurt. But not for long. Because this whole venture is not just about independence. It’s about innovation – about embracing innovation. And throughout history, innovators have always been treated with a wry smile, suspicion or outright hostility.

What happened when the printing press was invented? The Church felt threatened. Suddenly the world of knowledge and learning wasn’t their exclusive domain any more. Anyone could read books. There was a demand for Bibles in the native language for Heavens sake. Not in Latin, the language of the Church. Surely this was opening the floodgates too far – the democratization of learning was a threat to the status quo. Today they’d call it socialism – and we all know how dangerous that is, don’t we? The Church tried to get books banned – and burned printer/publishers at the stake. And we’re worried about a little stigma?

From that media revolution, the novel was born. And from today’s media revolution – electronic publishing – who knows? At the moment, we still think of the book like a printed book, and everyone’s trying to replicate the experience. For example, when we publish an ebook we include a static book-sized cover with the file. But when will someone realize that we don’t need to do that. Why does it need to be that size? Why does it need to be static – why not a sequence of images or a video, or like the Harry Potter’s photographs why can’t the characters on the cover be waving or chatting to each other? Stupid? Perhaps. But let me pose another question. Why does the book need to be a one-way experience, from writer to reader? Why can’t it be interactive, since e-publishing would easily allow that? And why oh why, has the iPad used the cheesy page-turning icon when you move from one page to the next? It would drive me mad … if they ever release the iPad here in the UK.

Who’s going to lead innovation? Not the traditional publishers, I’m almost sure of that. At a time when anyone familiar with the web knows the power of free and the impact of viral marketing, the big six are fighting to raise prices and are delaying their e-editions to protect the time-honored print model. Surely it makes sense to release the e-version first, make sure there is a market for a book, and then release the print version. Perhaps then they wouldn’t make losses on so much of their fiction list.

So I’m happy to live with condescension as I retain my freedom to experiment. But I’m not sure I’d go quite as far as Margaret Lake on Kindle Boards, who’s waiting, tongue in cheek, for the time when “we’ll be saying to authors with publishers and editors and agents and publicists … Couldn’t make it on your own, huh?” Retaining your independence doesn’t necessarily mean going it alone. There are advantages to hunting with the pack, as we’ll see next time.

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Finding Readers At Smashwords

March 13, 2010 in Activities | 2 comments

Smashwords Header

The day didn’t start too well. I’ve been working hard on building my web presence, and for the last couple of days I’ve started to feel junked out. As soon as people begin to notice that you’re a serious web-dude, they all want to sell you something.

I’ve been following writers, agents, web experts on Twitter, and posting sensible, well-directed entries – just as all the experts advise – 3 or 4 times a day. But what do I get? Invitations to join Donald Trump selling Viagra to all my friends – any takers? (It might not be Viagra – but it’s some kind of health care thingy and I couldn’t be bothered to hang around and watch for details.) I know what several literary agents had for breakfast and how much fun they’re having with ‘the 4yo’ – I think that must be a brand-name for the latest model of child. I came close to signing up for Wealth for Teens but when I tried to enter my year of birth, it wasn’t in the drop-down list.

What I was really looking for from Twitter was some evidence that someone might have noticed my tweets on the short story I’ve published here on the blog, and had then come to join us here. There wasn’t one – not one.

I now have around 75 Twitter followers, more than my target for the month, but it’s certainly not an effective tool for me at the moment. There have been occasional gems, and far too much dross. But I’ll keep working on it, starting with eliminating the dross.

But hang in there. Today, just after noon I posted Waiting for Orders to Smashwords, probably the leading e-publishing site for independents. And the results have been FAR better than I expected. After 8 hours, just look at how many readers have downloaded the story – here’s my Smashwords dashboard around 8 hours after the original posting:

Smashwords Dashboard

45 new readers in 8 hours – that’s a lot. And since I haven’t mentioned Smashwords here until now, I assume that most of these will be new readers, not my blog-friends

Now to be fair, I’ve cheated. I’m giving away my short story for free. I’m sure the numbers would have been much lower if I’d set a price – which I’m at liberty to do with Smashwords. And I was particularly pleased with the cover design I managed to put together, and the introductory blurb. These first impressions are so important to just pull in your ‘customers’ in the first place. What do you think of the photo and the blurb in the left-hand panel? Would they have drawn you in.

Smashwords is extremely important to my strategy. I want to devote the whole next post to explaining why and how.

But in the meantime, if you like my story and you’d like to give me a little support, then here’s how. Head over to the Smashwords home page, and sign up – it’s free. Then Search for Alain Miles and you’ll see the title page for Waiting For Orders. If you download, you’ll be adding to the buzz. Better still, add the story to your library. And best of all write a couple of sentences as a Smashwords review – nothing extensive – and please don’t give too much away about the actual story.

Next you could start posting a few of your short stories on Smashwords too, to build your readership. We’ll talk about how to do that next time.

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Google Analytics to measure engagement

March 7, 2010 in planning, Results | 3 comments

 

In the next three posts I’ll be looking at reader engagement. This time I’ll look at how to measure engagement, and propose short-term targets in an Engagement Scoresheet. Next time, the topic will be how to build engagement. And in the third post, I’ll explain how I plan to convert engagement into sales.

To make a start, let’s see what Google Analytics can do for us in this 5-screen display.

 

Download (PDF, 77.45KB)

This display created with Google Docs and the WordPress plugin, Google Doc Embedder.
Another WordPress plugin, WP Google Analytics, helped me to connect the blog to Analytics in just a couple of minutes.



There’s much more that Google Analytics can do for you. For example you can find out which links have been clicked (although I can’t get this to play with WordPress at the moment); you can see how many times people have revisited; you can see which outbound links are the most popular. But which are the most important measurements for me?

Once again I need to go back to my objective. $18,000 net income per year is my target. Let’s suppose that my receipts are 50% of total sales revenues (and if I can improve on that percentage, that’ll be good). So I need to aim at $36,000 in sales revenue. That means I’ll have to find around 3000 engaged readers who are prepared to spend at least $12 a year on my creative output.

How do we define the number of engaged readers? I’m going to be measuring the number of people returning at least three times a week. I’ll be tracking also the number of visits per week where more than 3 pages were accessed, and where the time spent on site was more than 3 minutes.

I also want to measure how many people are actually reading the creative writing elements – at the moment how many people are reading the sample chapters of The Lebanese Troubles. And when they’ve started, do they continue? This after all, is the point of the whole marketing exercise. The key measurable here will be how many people have read at least 50% of the creative writing samples on the site – we’ll be aiming at 3000 by March 2011.

Am I expecting to get 3000 engaged readers for this site – A Real Writer? Absolutely not. I hope that fellow-writers will enjoy my experiments in literature, but I’ve identified other niche audiences for my work too – which I’ll talk about next time. I’ll be aiming for engagement with them too, but they’re unlikely to follow me here. There will be other sites, a Facebook fan page, Twitter – I’ll expand more on this as we go on. But for now, let’s look at a possible Engagement Scoresheet, laying down some fairly modest targets for the next 30 days.



Engagement Scoresheet

A monthly update, showing the results achieved to date and the targets for the next 30 days. (This display created with the Wordpress plugin, WP-Target Reloaded)
1st MarchTarget
31st March		Notes
BLOG Visits0600Fairly low expectations for Month 1 - Seeking min 150% increase per month for each of these targets.
Unique visitors050
People > 12 visits this month040
Visits > 3 minutes0200
Visits > 3 pages0200
Feed subscribers020As recorded by Feedburner
FACEBOOK friends3050Novel fan page planned for April.
TWITTER fans3360Tracking writer communities this month.
TWITTER mentions + questions020
No of Sales00First sales expected May
Net income- $60- $60Cost of website for 12 months

 


Nothing too ambitious for month 1, but if I want to achieve the targets, I’ll need to register month-of-month increases of at least 150%. How? That’s for next time.

Now tell me which other key measurements I’ve missed.


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A Writer’s Objectives

March 5, 2010 in planning | 12 comments

 

In my first post I mentioned that my objective was not simply to see my name in print. What I want is:

To be a full-time creative writer engaging enough readers and generating enough income to support myself and my family.

In business, that would be called a mission statement.

I’ve chosen the words carefully. ‘A creative writer‘. That rules out taking on writing and research assignments for others. Plenty of writers do supplement their income like this, but it’s not for me: I know I’d lose focus and there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day for my creative work. That’s always been the problem – finding enough time to do the writing that really matters to me.

‘Engaging readers‘ is different from ‘winning fans’. We saw in the previous post that Josh Woodward has used the web to attract huge numbers of fans, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he has huge sales. In the age of viral marketing, all of us are signing up, subscribing, following – it’s a fad. How many times this year have you signed up for a site? How many do you continue to follow? How often have you parted with money?

Engagement is converting brand recognition into brand loyalty. More important than the number of fans is the number of people who come back and read again, the amount of time they spend reading. And ultimately whether they’re willing to put their hand in their pocket for the work I sell. As Gary Stein explains in a recent post, the most effective interactive marketers are ‘forcefully evolving their engagement strategies away from a simple number of who-has-the-most-fans to something that actually has some value: what-do-my-fans-get-me?’

There’s much more to say about engagement; in my next post I’ll explain how I propose to build it, and how I’m going to measure it. But now I need to expand on my mission statement. It’s still too vague. The stated objective is to generate income to support my family. How much income – and in what timeframe? Without real numbers, there’s no way to evaluate success or, later, to judge whether the strategy needs adjustment.

What I’m doing here is to apply to myself the same rules I’ve been using in my professional career for the past few years. As a business consultant, I’ve helped businesses and individuals to define their objectives and then manage achievement. The golden rule is always to set up measurable targets. When individuals say they want a career-change, I ask them to write their resumé – as they want it to look in three years time. Then together we work out a route-map to get there, with clear milestones.

I’m not giving myself the luxury of a three-year plan. I know myself too well. When I dive into a project, I find it very difficult to focus on anything else – I’m not a multi-tasker. So if I’m going to get serious about writing, I need writing to support me within one year. Support – what does that mean in real money? Well let’s not get over-ambitious or write in too many luxuries. In fact, let’s depersonalize it, by setting as a target the equivalent of the UK minimum wage for a 40-hour week. That’s around $18,000 per year. Of course I’m not going to start earning right away. But by March 2011, I need to be earning a net income from writing averaging at least $1,500 per month.

If I was stacking shelves in a supermarket it would be a breeze. For a writer it’s not so easy. But by setting my objectives, I’m already sensing the shape of the plan.

  1. At this stage in my career I won’t be looking for an agent or a publisher. Even if by some stroke of good fortune I was signed up quickly, it would take months before a book appeared on the shelves. Any advance for an unknown first-time novelist would be relatively small – certainly lower than $18,000. Assuming I earned a 10% royalty on a $14.99 book, I’d have to be selling 1500 books a month to meet my target. That very rarely happens – not at the beginning of a career.

  2. E-publishing looks a better bet than self-publishing or print-on-demand. It’s faster – and I need to get started as soon as possible – less expensive, less risky, easier to distribute, and while a novel would be priced lower (typically around the $4.99 mark – anyone like to research this?), the royalty would be 70% or greater. This would leave me with only around 425 books to sell per month to reach my target.

  3. But even this sales target is high. There will need to be other sources of creative-writing income. So what might they be?

(Now it’s time for you to put your thinking caps on: let’s have some left-field thinking – can we learn anything from musicians, artists, business, politicians … did you hear today that Tony Blair is getting a £4.5 million advance from Harper Collins for his forthcoming autobiography?)

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