Am I a best-selling author? Part 3
I’ve said in the past that I use my own books as “guinea pigs” for the self publishing services we offer to authors. If I am successful doing something, it is reasonable to think that someone else can be successful, also. If something I do doesn’t have the positive impact I was hoping for, I adjust and try again. And if something fails, well then we know to either avoid suggesting it or to make an effort to advise our authors against it.
Such was one of the blog postings I made in 2005 on my old blog about Kirkus Discoveries, and it was one of the blog postings that led to an interview with the New York Times. At the time I believe Kirkus Discoveries was charging $350 for a “review” of self-published books. Recently they charged $400 or more, and very recently, I hear the future of Kirkus Discoveries seems to be in jeopardy entirely.
However, at the time in 2005, I had seen several of these Kirkus Discoveries reviews, courtesy of our authors, and came away with the feeling that this was not serving the best interests of self-publishing authors, in general. So I said in my blog this was something I wouldn’t recommend to our authors. And our Marketing COACH suggested our authors think twice about doing it.
Anyway, back to the story — another experiment I tried with one of my books was the so-called “Amazon Bestseller Campaign.” There are people out there charging thousands of dollars for this concept, but here it is for free: Contact as many people as you can (suggestions range from 500,000 to one million people) via email. Get as many people as you can to buy your book on Amazon all on the same day. Provide them with incentive to buy your book by offering them other products or services that have a value much greater than the cost of your book itself.
Conducting this campaign has its pros and cons. It also has its share of people firmly entrenched in the “this is good” camp and others firmly entrenched in the “this is evil” camp. All the “downsides” to this campaign contribute to the reasons we don’t currently offer it as a “service” for our authors — because a lot of our authors inquire about it.
Furthermore, pulling this off is easier said than done. Who knows 500,000 people they can email? Nowadays there are companies that charge thousands of dollars to implement this sort of campaign on behalf of the author.
Personally, I didn’t need to pay anyone to do it for me because I had access to lists, and I knew other industry professionals who would support my campaign. But it did take a lot of my time orchestrating, and in retrospect, it may have actually been more cost-effective and efficient — and perhaps even effective — for me to just buy it as a “package” from someone else. But, nevertheless, when Sell Your Book on Amazon was published, I conducted by own “bestseller” campaign as a test.
And it worked. My book reached #29 on the overall Amazon Sales Rank on March 27th, 2007. Below is a chart of my book’s Amazon sales rank that day. Notice that I have to change the SCALE of the chart 3 times in order to keep the chart from being 10 feet tall. Also notice that the ranking starts at 15,000. It would have done the same exact thing if it had started at 150,000 or 1,500,000. The initial ranking is important though, because it implies Amazon’s “true” valuation of the book. Which means after the “campaign” is over, your book will mostly likely return to roughly the level it started at. But in the meantime, you may have acquired a few more reviews, a few more tags, and a little more activity around your book — and that helps support your longer term marketing tactics on Amazon.
Click for a larger view (opens in a new window)
Was that an exciting day? You bet. Did I become a millionaire overnight? Of course not. I didn’t even reach #1. In fact, I didn’t even reach #1 in my category, which is the whole point of the campaign. I reached #2 in my category, because some HUGE best seller was #1, and I couldn’t knock it off.
As I mentioned in a previous post, best sellers are more a product of marketing than sales, just like Oscar winners are often more a product of marketing than quality.
Am I a best-selling author? Part 2
Let’s all conduct an experiment together. Go find a copy of Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse paperback and look at the back cover. If you cannot find at least one copy lying around the house you either a) are not a woman or b) don’t know any women. This book is amazingly pervasive. Every woman I know has either read the Twilight Saga or is reading it (again).
On the back of the paperback edition of Eclipse it says:
The #1 New York Times Bestseller
The #1 USA Today Bestseller
The #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller
Hmm, I guess Little, Brown — the publisher of Eclipse — prefers the single-word lexicon “bestseller” rather than the two-worded version preferred by Webster. But that’s not the point. The point is that there are multiple “best seller” lists. Eclipse promotes being the #1 best seller on 3 different lists from 3 different newspapers. Granted, in this case, these are highly respected lists.
But the fact is, nearly every major metropolitan newspaper has a “best seller” list, and most major booksellers or chains have their own best seller lists, too. The cynic inside me assumes that when a book promotes itself as being the “#1 bestseller” without specifying a list, it is because the best-selling list on which the book appeared #1 is NOT the New York Times, USA Today, or the Wall St. Journal. But book marketing is book marketing and those publicists and marketers are doing whatever they can to draw attention to that book and that author in a very competitive environment. And the fact is, that book DID appear on some best-selling list, somewhere.
“Best-selling” status becomes even more questionable when you realize how the lists are compiled. Are booksellers really pouring over weeks and months of data, comparing sales receipts against sales returns, and arriving upon a list of books that truly reflect higher sales compared against all other books? Or, is a sales manager hastily completing a survey every week/month that rewards top-of-mind recall more than actual data? This would make marketing and promotion the true factor involved, rather than actual sales, just as marketing and promotion is the true factor involved in the Oscar race, rather than performance/quality.
Am I questioning whether Eclipse is a #1 bestseller? Absolutely not! I’m sure it is. As I mentioned, every woman I know owns a copy (and bought two more as gifts for other people last Christmas). But I am saying that acquiring “best-selling” status is easier than it might appear and in many cases, might not even relate to actual sales volume. And, there’s the rub; the moment something becomes “easier” to do, it receives less respect. That’s one of the issues we face today with self-publishing.
But everything has a range of difficulty. It’s easier to not write a book than it is to write one. So, right there, people who write a book deserve some level of respect. Of course it’s easier to self-publish a book than it is to get a book traditionally accepted and published. But it’s even easier to not publish a book at all. Doing nothing is always easier than doing something.
And so it goes: writing a bad book is easier than writing a good one. Writing a book that does not appear on any best seller lists is easier than writing a book that does appear on one or more best selling lists. Writing a book that does not earn a million dollar advance is easier than writing a book that does. But are these black and white classifications? Is a book only respectable IF it earns a million dollar advance, earns best seller status on the New York Times, and is published traditionally?
Certainly those accomplishments are worthy of admiration, but so are other accomplishments. Does someone choose not to respect Eli Manning because he’s not Peyton Manning? Even though publishing a book is becoming “easier” and becoming a “best selling” author is becoming “easier,” accomplishing these feats is still “hard” in the overall scheme of things. Any published book and any bestselling status is worthy of some level of kudos.
If you are thinking about writing a book, don’t let anyone stop you. And if you are thinking about publishing a book, don’t let anyone stop you.
And with that prelude, the question remains: Am I a best-selling — or is it bestselling, or best selling– author? Let’s examine that question further in an upcoming post…
Am I a best-selling author? Part One
I’ll start this topic by referencing a previous posting where I was considering adding “best-selling author” to the name of my blog. The purpose is to add another applicable keyword phrase that people who may have interest in this blog could conceivably type into a search engine. I’ve already discussed in the past how blog names and individual blog post titles are important to consider for SEO purposes.
But, as I mentioned, adding “best-selling author” brings up a host of considerations, the first of which I’ll dissect now.
1. Keyword optimization is already complicated, and is made even MORE annoying by words and phrases that are – or could be – hyphenated. At Outskirts Press, we run into this issue all the time within our marketing and IT departments regarding ”self publishing” because you see it hyphenated just as often as not, and when considering topics like SEO, you are wise to support what people might do, and not necessarily what is correct. That’s why pay-per-click bidding on common misspellings of popular keywords is almost as competitive as bidding on the correctly spelled words.
At any rate, adding “best-selling author” to my blog name raises one issue solely based upon the hyphen. Without any other considerations, would it be better to say “best-selling” or “best selling” or “bestselling?”
Hyphenation is often subjective, and everyone has an opinion. Other writers and editors are particularly apt to point out your foibles if you do something they don’t agree personally with — so there’s one can of words, right there, raising the ire of my target audience. What can you say about a language where there are multiple manuals of styles — Strunk & White, A.P., Chicago– all equally credible, but often different in their approaches? Officially — which means, in my humble opinion — “best-selling” should be hyphenated because you are linking a modifying adverb that doesn’t end in “ly.” Other examples of this include “ill-favored” and “well-known” and… yes … ”self-publishing.”
So, if one believes that little dose of English 201, one agrees that “best-selling” with the hyphen is the way to go.
But here’s the problem. The whole point of adding “best-selling” to the blog name is to optimize this blog for search engines, not to toot my horn! Well, okay, maybe it is to add a small amount of additional credibility — but we’ll address that later, too…
The fact is, the majority of people don’t type hyphens into search engines. In fact, a surprising number of people often don’t type spaces into search engines, particularly in the case of potentially hyphenated or compound words like “self-publishing” or ‘best-selling.”
So, that logic would suggest that “bestselling” is the way to go. But you know what? “Bestselling” isn’t a single word according to either of the dictionaries I use as a resource –where, often, compound words will be spelled differently depending upon the dictionary. To add further complexity, of course Bill Gates and Word thinks “bestselling” is just fine; so who do you believe? Webster, who has been dead forever, or the richest guy in the world? It’s a tough choice, and Word for Windows has let me down before… I think we’ve all become too reliant upon its “spell check” and “grammar check” functionality that we sometimes eschew true copyediting due to time constraints or resources. Word is fairly competent when it comes to correcting misspellings, but less capable when it comes to correcting incorrect word usage. For that reason, when submitting a book for publication, I would recommend utilizing the services of a human copyeditor and not relying solely on a computer’s functionality.
Back to the story of what to do with this ”best-selling” quagmire. All decisions should be made by weighing all the pros and cons. And that requires understanding more of the issues. Am I a best-selling author? There’s more to that answer than just a hyphen, so more on that in the near future…
Outskirts Press, Colorado Humanities, and TIE
I’ve been trying to avoid blogging about the “day-to-day” details because, frankly, that’s not very interesting. Strategic topics are great to discuss here, but when I find myself composing a blog about the minutiae of running a company, I usually end up erasing it. Why? Because the minutiae here is probably the same as the minutiae everywhere else. Once companies reach a certain size, there’s a certain similarity to what is involved, and while the “big picture” might be different, many of the steps are often the same.
But last week had a few exceptions. I met with the nice folks at Colorado Humanities to discuss what they were going to do with the donation Outskirts Press made to their non-profit organization last year. We are sponsoring their Colorado Book Awards and Student Literary Awards and also discussed some other potential collaborations.
Last Thursday evening I also attended a TIE Association meeting. TIE stands for The Internet Entrepreneur and Thursday’s speaker was Steve Knopper, who was discussing his book, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.
I don’t think I’m saying anything surprising when I say it has some similarities with what is happening now with the traditional publishing industry…
Changing the name of your blog
At some point during my previous blog postings I was discussing the process of picking a template for this blog and placing some of the widgets along the side. In doing so, I think I’ve arrived upon the WordPress blog template that I like the most, although the one element I don’t like so much about it is the “Leave a comment” link at the top. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could actually leave a comment, but as I referred to in a previous post, I’m not positive I have time to do comments justice, so they are turned “off.” My Board of Directors keeps telling me I don’t even have time to do a blog justice, and they’re probably right.
As a result, the “Leave a comment” link that is so inviting up there at the top but doesn’t actually do anything is kind of annoying. As George Castanza said on Seinfeld, “Why must there always be a problem?”
I also referred to the fact that, when “naming” my blog, WordPress advised me I could change it any time I wanted. Of course, I further detailed my inability to find the procedure by which one changes the name and came to the conclusion that I was simply stuck with my original blog name, which, when I registered this blog with WordPress was: CEO Self Publishing Start-Up OutskirtsPress.com
Lots of keywords? Yes. Grammatically correct? No.
Well, by browsing the “help” and forums of WordPress (hence my stumbling upon that “Write a Book” link” which I mentioned in a previous post), I was able to learn about the General>Settings page, although I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to find it on the screen even when I knew precisely what I was looking for.
But I digress. The short story is that I simply added the word “of” to the name and now the name of my blog, at least today as I’m writing this, is a more grammatically-correct, and still keyword-filled: CEO of Self Publishing Start-Up OutskirtsPress.com.
What does “keyword-filled” mean? It means those are the keywords I envision the intended target audience of this blog typing into a search engine and then finding my blog as a result.
For instance: CEOs and executives may be interested in some of the things I write because I’ll touch upon things like social media confidentiality, trade secrets, M&As, recession-proofing your business, and the like.
And people searching for “self publishing” may be interested in some of the things I write because there is a lot of confusion and misunderstandings about the term; savvy authors exploring all their publishing options are wise to get as many different perspectives as possible to make an informed decision.
And people searching for the phrase “start-up” may be interested in some of the things I write about because I’ll talk about running a company with a 3-year growth percentages of 1000%+, balancing work and a personal life – what personal life? - and managing the obstacles that presents themselves – and the solutions that are required – when you outgrow your credit card processor and your website hosting company all in the same quarter, for example.
Although, on one hand, Outskirts Press was never in “start-up” mode, per se, because that implies angel investors, securing VC rounds, losing control and board seats, etc – and none of that applied to us, which makes us relatively unique and is also something, perhaps, people searching for “CEO” and “start-up” might find interesting. On the other hand, EVERY company should always view themselves in “start-up” mode to some extent — because every day should be an agressive struggle to improve and thrive. On the first hand again, it may be selling ourselves “short” to refer to Outskirts Press as a “start-up,” because… well, for all those reasons I mentioned above. I think maybe I will replace it with a reference to our Inc. 500 placement, which has the potential to attract the same keyword searches– and therefore the same audience– as “start-up” anyway, and is more accurate. And cooler, too.
Now that I think of it, I may want to add “Best-selling author” to the name of my blog, too, but that presents a whole host of considerations, which I’ll get into later…
The trouble with blogging – part five
I think I already mentioned that as a writer, the disorganization of the “typical” blog bothers me, and that may be why, instinctively, I start doing things that “force” organization to blogs, like naming them “parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5,” for instance. But that very philosophy is somewhat contrary to blogs in general. The disorganziation and immedicacy is what appeals to many people… and then “twitter” took that one step even further…
For example, blogs appear in reverse-chronological order, so writing a “series” requires new readers who come upon the blog in the middle to either miss the beginning or “scroll down” to the start. But do they scroll down? I would, because I like organization. But that very requirement of having to scroll down just to get to the “start” of something troubles me. Perhaps it’s the writer in me… I know that novels begin on page one. But blogs begin on the date they started, and that first blog isn’t at the top of the blog; it’s at the bottom.
It’s even more problematic since I’m writing many of these blogs in advance, and usually writing multiple blogs on the same day, and then scheduling them to appear on different days in the future. For example, I started this “Trouble With Blogging” series on January 3, but am scheduling them to appear throughout January, with the last posting in the series scheduled for the end of the month. But if I keep having to worry about writing a “series” in order to force a particular organization, I am probably missing the point of blogs…
Speaking of which, I just saw a link in the WordPress help section called “Write a book” and of course, being president of Outskirts Press, that phrase intrigued me, so I read the tip in which WordPress outlined a process for organizing a blog in a more traditional, book-like manner. Judging from the amount of blogs I’ve seen that offer any sort of organization like that (namely, none), I’d say that doesn’t seem to be too popular of a topic on WordPress.
Perhaps what people are expecting to see when they click on a “Write a book” link is a procedure by which they can take the content of their blog and publish a book out of it, and to that, all I have to say is… “We can help you with that.”
FREE self-publishing e-book
This week we’re trying something new. We’re giving away the e-book edition of Adventures in Publishing without first requiring an email address. Giving away the e-book of Adventures in Publishing and Self-Publishing Simplified has been one of the successful ways we have acquired a pretty extensive email database. But I’m sure an equal (or greater) number of writers don’t feel compelled enough to part with their email address just to read a free e-book. And, as a result, we are missing an opportunity to share the benefit and value of our services with them.
Yes, offering something for “free” in exchange for an email address, or some other contact information, is an effective and persuasive tool in the Internet age. But if the “free product” is compelling in its own right, you may want to consider providing it even WITHOUT the email requirement. Perhaps more people will read it as a result, and perhaps more people will find it a valuable solution to their particular situation, which may lead them to contacting you and volunteering their email address on their own. And wouldn’t that be better for everyone?
That’s the logic of this little experiment, at any rate… So, without further ado, here is the free e-book edition of Adventures in Publishing…
The trouble with blogging – part four
Another trouble I have with blogging is that most of them just aren’t very interesting.
In one of my previous “trouble with blogging” postings, I referred to the dilemma I have about what sort of confidential information I should share because that would be directly proportional to the “interest” factor. It all seems like much ado about nothing. While publicly I say that blogging and “tweeting” is the next best thing to sliced bread, for the everyday Joe I’m just not so sure anyone cares. I would think that most people are too busy writing their own blogs to read anyone else’s. But then, ironically, when I’m reading some of the blogs out there and seeing the number of comments some of them generate, I’m proving myself wrong in multiple ways simultaneously, and that’s always good for the ol’ ego.
By the way, that same belief I have that “no one has time to care” extends to twitter, Facebook, myspace, and linked-in, too, all of which I publicly recommend and almost none of which I personally have time for. Since “New Year’s Resolutions” are a big marketing push in my industry, I should touch upon one of my resolutions before January ends, and that is this: Making more time for the social media sites that I recommend. Time to practice what I preach, so to speak.
That reminds me: one of the reviews I received on Amazon for my book Sell Your Book on Amazon mentioned that very aspect – that I didn’t appear to do many of the very Amazon tactics I was recommending. That reviewer was right; a lot of the marketing tactics I suggest in my book are time-consuming, and I didn’t — or don’t — have time to do a lot of them. So my only response to that is, don’t let my personal short-comings prevent YOU from being successful. Or, as a parent might say to a child, “Do what I say, not what I do.” But, ultimately, every leader — and every parent for that matter — knows that you should lead by example.
And I’ve discovered that just because I don’t have time for that stuff doesn’t mean nobody does. In fact, internet stats seem to indicate quite the opposite. Most people seem to have nothing but time for social networking sites, so as an author, entrepreneur, etc, etc, you owe it to yourself to be out there on all those platforms in as consistent and professional a manner as you can muster. And… in spite of all my troubles with blogging, here I am.
The difference between “self publishing” and a “self publishing company”
I would like to address a point of contention and misunderstanding facing the author-supported self-publishing industry today, and that is the chasm between “self-publishing” and “self-publishing companies” or what some call ”vanity” publishing. Authors who have traditionally published books or independently published their own books by doing all the work themselves often denounce “self-publishing companies” as either “vanity” publishers if they’re being nice, or “scams” if they’re feeling particularly hostile. Neither term is accurate; although I can appreciate their point of view–they’ve worked hard to accomplish something that self-publishing companies make relatively easy, so you can’t blame them for being mad.
Ultimately, much of the confusion comes down to semantics, and a misunderstanding of what differentiates “self-publishing” from a “self-publishing company.” I imagine “self-publishing companies” may use the term “self-publishing” in their marketing efforts, not to anger independent self-publishers, but rather to SET THE EXPECTATIONS of their own authors.
By labeling services as “self-publishing” there is an attempt to make it clear to the authors who use such services that their success rests largely on their own shoulders, just as it does for authors who independently self-publish. The difference is that with self-publishing companies, instead of incurring the time and effort of establishing a DBA or LLC or C-Corp or S-Corp or sole-proprietorship with the state, reviewing cover designers, seeking interior formatters, getting bids from printers, acquiring ISBNs, dealing with Ingram, dealing with fulfillment, dealing with returns, dealing with accounts receivables, dealing with taxes, etc., etc., etc., the author is incurring a service charge and having all those details taken care of for them. It’s not right for everyone, but it is right for a lot of people.
There are a growing number of companies in the “self publishing” industry. And why not? As the traditional publishing industry continues to struggle, the self-publishing industry is growing at a steady pace and is earning more respectability daily. The internet has made it possible for anyone to sell a book globally (on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble) and has also improved the book marketing reach of authors who leverage popular sites like YouTube and twitter.
Very soon, traditional and bestselling authors with established names (Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, etc.) will realize they no longer need traditional publishers and will turn to “self publishing companies” for a greater stake of the profits.
“Self-publishing companies” are service companies who provide valuable (and convenient) services to writers for a fee. This is no different from any other service industry. For example, I can either choose to do my own taxes, or I can pay H&R Block to do them for me. I can either build my own house, or I can buy one that has been built by professionals, so I’m confident it won’t fall apart. I can either milk my own cow, or I can go to 7-11 and buy a gallon of milk that is ready to drink. Are people surprised that 7-11 charges money for milk? Do they get upset that 7-11 charges more money for a gallon of milk than King Soopers does? Rational people realize that convenience costs money and that industry know-how costs money. To suggest that a company cannot help you self-publish is like saying H&R Block cannot help you do your personal taxes.
Do I really want to spend my valuable time doing taxes, building a house or milking a cow–all of which first requires me to LEARN how to properly do all those things? Or would I rather calculate my own hourly rate and determine that it is more cost-effective to pay an expert to do it for me so I can spend my time doing things that are more important to me–like going to work and spending time with my family? Self-publishing companies don’t do anything that someone who is very motivated cannot do themselves with a lot of industry knowledge, effort, resources, time, and money. But much like doing taxes, building a house, and yes, even milking a cow, what seems easy at first is actually more complicated than you might expect — I would imagine. Personally, I don’t do my own taxes, build my own homes, OR milk cows for my own milk. Like most people, I pay professionals to do all those things for me.
For those authors out there who have already invested their time and energy on the steep learning curve that is “self-publishing,” naturally they don’t see the benefit of using a ”self-publishing company.” But most people have better things to do, or at least, their interests lie elsewhere — most people just want to be published authors, not publishers.
You know what they say about the lawyer who represents himself, or the doctor who has herself as a patient, right? The same could be said for most authors. Sure, there are exceptions, but the services of “self publishing companies” are intended for the majority of writers, entrepreneurs and professionals out there who would find value in having a published book, but also value their time enough to let the professionals do it for them. And there’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is wanting desperately to be published and not doing anything about it — out of fear of failure or fear of someone else telling you that you made ”a wrong choice.” The only truly wrong choice is not doing anything. As Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
The trouble with blogging – part three
Another trouble I have, personally, with blogging (and with social media in general) is that I simply don’t have the time to invest in many of the elements that are required for any such endeavor in this arena to be successful — and that is the “social interaction” part.
For blogging, that involves reader comments. I think many blogs are popular because readers have the opportunity to voice their own thoughts and participate in the discussion. And that, in turn, breeds more readers because the blog becomes more three-dimensional in nature as readers get a chance to a) read the original post and then b) participate by adding their own two-cents worth.
Currently, I have the comments disabled because, honestly, I’m still deciding what to do. Am I deciding whether I think comments are good or bad? No; of course they are “good.” But I’m trying to determine if I can “do them justice.” I don’t want to allow comments and then come across as a “jerk” when I don’t have the time to respond to them. It all comes down to time and resources. I’m writing this particular posting on December 17 at 2:01 in the morning. By the time it appears on my blog a month later, my mind will be well onto other things. Part of the advantage of WordPress (and one of the reasons I didn’t stick with my blog on blogger) is because this platform allows one to schedule blogs in advance.
But if I then have to “revisit” this blog on January 18th, 19th, and 20th, to read and respond to comments that have been posted, that kind of defeats the efficiency I’m going for.
One could argue that means I’m not a good candidate for blogging at all, and there’s a lot of validity in that argument. All three of my “the trouble with blogging” posts support that very argument.
But, here I am doing it… nonetheless… for as long as I can… Will my lack of comments “kill” the blog? Or will I turn comments on at some point and either bite that time-bullet myself or delegate the process of comment-moderation to someone else? Only time with tell. Speaking of time, it is in short supply. And now it’s 2:04 am.
