Category Archives: Amazon

Print Quality KDP Print vs IngramSpark. Spoiler alert–there isn’t a winner.

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I bought book stands for the event! I have to admit, this is a lovely cover!

I was invited to an author event that took place last week. I had several weeks to prepare for this, i.e. find my willpower/energy to face a crowd, figure out what I was going to wear, and the most important thing . . . order author copies.

I was in the middle of redoing the covers for Wherever He Goes and All of Nothing. I’ve worked with KDP long enough that doing a cover in Canva and submitting it is a piece of cake by now. IngramSpark is still taking some time to get used to, and when they flagged Wherever He Goes, I left it alone because I didn’t want to deal with it.

I happily accepted the invitation to sell my books at a librarian convention that took place in West Fargo, North Dakota. Admittedly, I should have ordered author copies the moment I was invited. But as I said, I was redoing my covers, and I thought, hell, I have plenty of time to order copies.

Note to self: don’t ever think that again.

I redid the covers submitted them to KDP, ordered my proofs and approved them.

The event was held on September 26th, and ordered my author copies August 26th. I thought a whole month would be enough time, because in the past it has been. Usually it takes about two and a half weeks. But not this time.

With two weeks left before the event, I received and email from KDP and they told me my order was being delayed. I fixed the file for Wherever He Goes in Ingram. The next day they approved the file, and in a panic, I rush ordered author copies from IngramSpark.

Now, I haven’t heard many stories, good or otherwise, about the quality of copies from IngramSpark. Mostly I’ve heard if you want better quality, you order from them. So needless to say, when my author copies came from them and they didn’t look good, I was crushed.

I received my author copies from Ingram a full week before I received them from KDP because not only did I pay for expedited shipping, I paid for expedited printing, too. You can argue that could be the reason for the poor quality, but in my opinion, you’re paying for the copies, so there should be no reason for poor quality books, period. Especially from a company who prides itself on quality.

If push had come to shove, I could have sold the books Ingram sent me. But I didn’t want to. They didn’t look professional. I could have said it was printing error, but that would still reflect bad on me as a professional author.

Luckily, my KDP Print books came, and they looked good. I realize that was also a gamble. Had those come in poor quality as well, I wouldn’t have been able to attend the book signing.

As it turns out, I didn’t sell any books anyway, but I did receive several compliments on my covers, so it was worth the crap I went through to get them.

Today I put in a request for a refund for my books from Ingram. Take a look a the pictures I submitted as proof they did not look good:

poor quality cover the years between us ingram spark

This is a copy of The Years Between Us from Ingram. Can you see the line through my name? At first I thought that was my fault because the template was showing through, but I checked the file, and even if the template was showing through (for some messed up reason) there is no line there. So it wasn’t that. The same thing happened to Wherever He Goes, but it’s more pronounced near my first name, so I only have the sliver to show you for emphasis:

poor quality cover ingram wherever he goes


All of Nothing was the most messed up. Wherever He Goes wasn’t centered that well, but All of Nothing looked horrible:

poor quality cover all of nothing ingram spark

The title was almost cut off , and the couple is obviously not centered.

So I put in a request for credit to my account, and if you ever need to do that, you look under Orders, and under Submitted, click on Report an Issue for the order that needs to be refunded.

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I’ve never returned books to anywhere before, so I don’t know if they’ll want the books back, or if they’ll let me keep them or what. I’ll let you know. I can tell you that there was a spot for you to download pictures of the books, so be prepared to show them proof of the messed up author copies. I’ve heard KDP wants proof of quality/damage, so that’s not unusual.

The book signing went okay. I never sold any books, like I said, so all this hoopla with the author copies feels like a whole lot of work and money for nothing, but it was a fun experience, and it didn’t take me very long to realize I was the only author there who didn’t have a Square. That didn’t make any difference in the end, but next time I’ll be more prepared.

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The moral of the story is this: always keep author copies on hand if you have regular opportunities to do this, either from KDP Print or IngramSpark. You need lots of time to receive them, and more importantly, you need time to return them and/or order replacements if necessary.

Special thanks to Tina Holland for inviting me to participate in this event. She’s a romance writer involved with the RWA and other writing groups in my area. You can follow her on twitter here @haveubeenaughty and her website tinaholland.com.

Thank you for reading, and may the month of October treat you well!

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Kindle Create: for Kindle and Paperbacks for KDP

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kindle create for blog 1Formatting for an ereader and paperback grows easier and easier all the time with the tools that are continually created for indie authors. These days it’s easier than ever to pay someone for their time if they have Vellum, a formatting software available on Mac computers.

If you don’t have the connections or the cash to pay someone to do it for you, or you want to remain in control (it’s hard and maybe costly to approach your formatter every time you want to make a change your to your book; for instance if you want to update your back matter, or you swapped out your cover and need to change the attribution to the photographer and add a new photo id) Draft2Digital offers a free formatting on their website that also formats your book for paperback and ereader. Draft2Digital creates a .mobi file and an epub you can download so you can go wide with your files if you like.

But if you are only going to publish on Amazon, there is another software you can try. Kindle Create offers both Kindle and paperback formatting, and both files are sent directly to your KDP dashboard enabling you to publish quickly and easily.

There are drawbacks to the software however: the files can only be used on Amazon. Since the finished files are sent directly to your KDP dashboard, they are not “yours.” When you format with D2D, you download the files they generate for you, and you can use them wherever you please. With Kindle Create, that is not the case. Also if you make ANY changes to your document, those changes are stuck inside the software, but that might not matter to you if you’re only uploading changes to publish on Kindle. It is something to keep in mind, though.

How do you get started?

Download the Kindle Create software. Download how you would normally download new software. Sometimes that means finding the file in your Downloads and clicking on it to start the install process if it doesn’t install automatically. Accept terms and conditions. The install process only takes a few moments.

Then it will ask if you want to resume an existing project or start a new one,  but first you need to enable Early Access so you can create paperbacks with the software.

Click on Help in the upper left hand corner, then Settings. Check Enable Beta Features.

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Then you can import your Word File. It only takes a moment.

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Click Continue when you’re done.

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Your Word file for your book should have your Title Page, your Copyright Page, Dedication, Acknowledgements, and any back matter you want. The only thing Kindle Create will generate for you is the Table of Contents.  Click on Insert in the upper left hand corner and it will look like this:

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When you upload your file, what you see is very generic, and it’s up to you to design your manuscript how you want it to look. This is the first page of The Years Between Us.

Choose a Theme by clicking on the THEME in the upper right hand corner. Unfortunately, there are not many to choose from, but actually, there are not many to choose from when you format in Vellum, either, so don’t feel like you’re missing out if you use Kindle Create.

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The rest is a bit time consuming as you have to go page by page and add the things you want. For example, changing one scene break does not change them all:

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So you may just want to stick with asterisks when you format, unless you are formatting something a little on the shorter side.

The same is true for the chapter start drop caps. You need to put your cursor at the beginning of every paragraph and then choose drop cap on the right under Formatting.

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Kindle Create will nudge you to save every so often, and it’s in your best interest, in any case. It also has a handy UNDO feature in case you mess up somehow.

Like any software, there’s a small learning curve, but it didn’t take me long to play around with it and begin formatting my manuscript how I want it to look.

Once you’re all done, there’s a Preview feature where you can take a look at your book page by page. This is a good idea while you’re still in the software and not in the online previewer on your KDP Dashboard.

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Go through your book page by page. Make sure you didn’t miss any scene breaks, or anything else you’re going to want to change. Flipping through it will take some time, but remember that poor formatting can pull a reader from your story, so you want it to look its best.

Unfortunately, I cannot take you further than this. Pressing Publish will move the files to my KDP Dashboard, and The Years Between Us is already published. But KDP has several tutorials you can watch to see how the process is done. They have a fabulous help section, and you can find anything else out that you’ll need to know.

Look at a typed tutorial here.

Here is a tutorial by KDP on YouTube about Kindle Create. 

Here is another blog post by Just Publishing Advice on their blog. How To Use The Amazon Kindle Create App For Better Ebooks

There are a couple other tutorials that look okay to watch on YouTube, if you search Kindle Create tutorials. The best thing you can do though, is experiment, use the undo button if you do something you don’t like, and save often.

After you publish your files to your dashboard, they will give you options for your paperback such as trim size, and if you want cream or white paper. Your choices will determine the template size for your cover. And you can use the Kindle Cover Creator if you want, to generate a cover for both your Kindle book and paperback, too.

KDP is your one stop shop to formatting, cover creation, and publishing your book!

Have fun!

I wasn’t aware that Kindle Create generated a paperback file until I saw that Daniel Mattia was able to offer a paperback of his book, In Crows’ Claws. We went through some issues he had using Kindle Create in my interview with him a while back. So a big thank you to Daniel and his tips!

Check out his amazing work linked above, and he’s also the creator of an Indie book database called Indie book DB. Check out that site for your next awesome read!

There is a lot that goes into publishing a book, and I hope this can be a starting point if you are new and have no idea where to begin. If you have any questions drop them below, or my DMs on Twitter are open, though it can take me a day or two to get back to you–especially if I have to work that day. Thanks for reading, and good luck to you!

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Writing to write, or Writing to Publish? Is there a difference?

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I had another post planned for today, but while I was working an extra shift at my job on Saturday night, I finished Scratch: Writers on Money and the Art of Making a Living. This book is a collection of essays by writers about, yeah, money and writing.

scratch book coverAs an author, I love looking through paperbacks. How is the copyright page constructed? Who did the author dedicate the book to? I skim over the table of contents. Do they use a quote? And by whom? I also look at the Acknowledgements. I like to read who people thank. In the indie world, sometimes I know a person who is mentioned. I like seeing who has helped the writer turn author.

I read Manjula Martin‘s acknowledgments, and something popped out at me. She said:

Thanks to the members of the Blood Moon writing group, who always reminded me that writing is more important than publishing.

She goes on to list names of people whom I don’t know, but I can appreciate their message.

writing is more important than publishing

In this modern time of CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT, that sentence is extremely powerful.

In this age of free books, blog posts, tweets, and author updates, how often we publish has turned more important than what we publish.

This has never been more true than the today with the market being saturated with bookstuffers to take advantage of KU page reads, or authors who team up to publish a book every two weeks, or authors who hire ghostwriters only to blame them when they are caught plagiarizing. There are even those who sell their previously published books to new authors who will strip the book of its title, repackage it, add a new author name, and put it up on Amazon for sale.

What happened to the quality of what we publish?

What has happened to the way we think about our content?

It’s a hard question for me, and I’ve been thinking about this while I’ve been writing my series. I have a different blog post about something similar already, in that I would like to try my hand at women’s fiction. I won’t get into that post now, but that quote does make me think about my publishing journey.

Sometimes publishing isn’t always what we should be doing with our work.

Sometimes we should be writing to practice. Sometimes we should be writing to learn. Sometimes we should write to give ourselves therapy, like writing in a journal or diary, or writing a poem.

Sometimes we should write for fun.

Sometimes we shouldn’t be writing at all. Too busy, burnout, nothing to say. There’s no harm in not writing–even if it feels like there is.

Though indie publishing is becoming more widely accepted (even some of the big-name authors use POD–especially for their non-fiction titles) it may always carry the stigma of people publishing crap.

There are legitimate reasons to write to publish: you’re on a deadline, or you freelance to pay the bills and if you don’t hustle, you can’t eat. But that doesn’t feel like the majority of my writing peers. We write to be published as any of our debut novels can attest.

This not only impacts our own writing careers–who wants to start a lifetime writing career on a cracked foundation?–but if affects all of us a whole.

Write to write, and then publish.

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Lots of people ask writers, “If you were never read, would you still write?” Of course most writers say yes. Writing is a passion, and they would write even if they never had another reader as long as they put words on the page. To be honest, if someone told me from here on out I wouldn’t have a single reader ever again, I would stop writing. There are other ways for me to communicate my passion. I would start running again, or I would volunteer. I would do what I set aside because writing takes up so much of my time. Because I love it. But an audience fuels my love of it, if that makes sense.

Now, if I were told I would still have readers, but I wouldn’t/couldn’t make any money, I would still write. If I was locked into only blogging, or publishing my work on Wattpad, I would still publish my stories. Being read means more to me than making money.

Seeing your book on Amazon is a crazy wonderful thing, and I don’t fault anyone who is damned proud of it.

But sometimes we need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we write. What fuels us? What do we get out of publishing our work? Would we be just as happy, just as proud, if we posted that novel for free, or even more mind-numbing, shoving that novel under your bed?

If we began every project without thinking of the cover art, or who is going to format for us, or when our publishing date is (Hello, Amazon and your one year pre-order deadline now) how would that change our perception of the project? Would we take our time? Put more of our hearts into the piece? Would we dive deeper into the truths of what we want to put down on paper?

Maybe if we wrote to write, writer’s block would be obliterated. After all, if we only wrote for ourselves, we wouldn’t fear criticism or disappointment and the blank page wouldn’t scare us so much.

When indie-publishing is so easy now, we have to stay aware of why we’re writing and what we’re trying to say to our reader.

Open a new document and put words on the page just to write. No agenda. No deadline.

You may find you’ll write something worth publishing.

I loved reading Scratch. There were great essays by some of the top authors. I particularly enjoyed Manjula’s interview with Cheryl Strayed (she talks about her book deal for Wild), and Jennifer Weiner’s essay on earning respect for your work vs. earning money and if you can have both.

Jeff Goins also has a blog post about this topic. You can find it here.

Until next time, lovelies! Have a wonderful writing week!

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Keywords for your books. What are they and how to find them.

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I’m the first to admit that I don’t know anything about keywords. People may have differing opinions on where to find them, or how to use them, but one thing everyone can agree on is that they are pretty important. They help readers find your books, and in this age of publishing, our books need all the help they can get.

In this last mini-series post about how I revamped All of Nothing, I’m going to explore keywords and if I change anything in regards to my book’s keywords.  For a quick recap, if you want to read about how I changed the cover, you can click on the picture of the full wrap. (I still think it’s lovely!)

all of nothing second coverjpg

I also rewrote the blurb, and that garnered some interesting discussion. If you want to take a look at my process and how I did that, you can click here to read about editing the blurb.

So, keywords.

Like I said, I know next to nothing about keywords, so what are they, exactly?

According to an article on IngramSpark, keywords are “One or more words used to indicate the content of your book.” How do we choose the right ones?

The easiest, and cheapest (read, free) is searching on Amazon in the Kindle store. When you publish a book on Amazon, KDP gives you seven slots. That doesn’t mean that you are limited to seven words, and I only just learned this not long ago. (Evidence that you always need to keep learning because you don’t know what you don’t know, and something you learn in passing could change your whole life business.)

You can add more than one word to a space by separating words with semi colons or commas.

kdp keyword screen

It looks pretty intimidating, and if you look at this not even having one idea what to put there, the first thing you need to do is revisit the genre you’re writing in. There should be at least a few words that pop out at you, even if they’re generic and not that specific.

Anyway, so like I said in a previous post, I didn’t know bully romance was thing until recently, and it turned around the way I’m going to approach keywords and marketing for this book moving forward.

When you go to the Kindle Store (Dave Chesson of Publisher Rocket suggests using an incognito window for this) you can plug in some keywords and/or phrases to see what comes up.

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You can see in this incognito window that I started searching enemies to lovers. But you can also see what comes up that could work as keywords as well. Enemies to lovers romance kindle books would be a good phrase to use. Add free if your book is wide and permafree. There might be other phrases in there that could work depending on what your story is about. Enemies with benefits doesn’t quite fit my book, so I’ll leave that alone. What else did I search for?

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I searched for alpha next thinking I could go into alpha romance, or alpha dark romance. Alpha male romance works, maybe if, it isn’t associated with shifter romance. When you click on it, what kind books do you find? Will your book fit in? When I click on Alpha Male Romance, some books that pop up that All of Nothing would fit in with, and that’s the goal, so we can add that to the list.

What else can we search for?

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I can go with the tried and true contemporary romance, but that is a generic term and using up a space in your keywords may not yield results. We can always keep it in mind though, and plug up a space if we happen to have room at the end of the experiment. Not to write off the list entirely, if you happen to have a new release, it might be worth adding.

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I went a bit further and added “rom” for romance, and nothing extraordinary popped up, but contemporary romance with sex was an interesting return. That seems to be quite specific considering Sweet/Clean romance is having it’s 15 minutes and doing well; this would set my book apart. The word “contemporary” takes up a lot of space though, so I’m going to try to narrow it down before resorting to using it.

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But if you look for kindle books, adding that your book is in Kindle Unlimited may not be a bad idea.

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But let’s keep trying to narrow it down. Jax in All of Nothing is a millionaire. I toned it down, didn’t make him a billionaire. Sorry, Jax. But looks like that search may have had a good return, and I could add millionaire romance, even millionaire romance alpha male. Lots of characters though, so we need to watch our words.

What else can we look for?

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Dark romance gives us some return. Bully romance dark romance pops out at me. But there are some that would be good to keep in mind for other standalone books down the road like mafia, books where the heroine has been kidnapped.  Jeez, these sub-sub-genres are something, aren’t they? What could I choose from the list? The bully romance dark romance for sure.

At this point I think I’m running out of search terms.

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Bully pulls up a lot of terms that don’t particularly fit my book either, like high school, college, or reverse harem. All of Nothing isn’t paranormal, so I think besides the top search term, there’s nothing we can take away from this list.

But I have a few characters left. What else can we look for? I tried bully sex, but those kinds of books I don’t need my book associated with, so we’ll skip that. (Yeah, it’s important to click, and find out what kinds of books are coming up in the search, too. Especially in romance there’s quality, and then there’s quality. I’m not going to call anything trashy as we all have our things.)

We haven’t tried the basic steamy romance and this is what we get:

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Not much comes up here, accept bully romance again, and that can’t be discounted. There are a few more genres that we’ll need to avoid, but the list is interesting, and it gives us something to play with.

This is the cheap and easy way to figure out a limited amount of keywords.

What’s important to note too, is that based on keywords, Amazon may slot your book into categories that are not available to choose from when you publish. If you have a category that you would like your book listed under, you can always email them. But that’s why it’s important to know what genre you’re writing in, even the sub, or sub-sub genres to help narrow down your audience.

It’s obvious that I didn’t have any of the correct keywords for All of Nothing, since Amazon has left it in the most boring and generic category of romance books. That doesn’t do me or sales any favors.

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Pretty freaking embarrassing, if you ask me, and now that the cover, blurb, and keywords are fixed, I’m hoping that I’ll see some traction in the coming months.

What did I come up with for keywords then?

keywords KDP filled

I think I filled up the slots pretty well, and if my book starts selling, they give Amazon a few sub-genre categories to put my book into, too. I do have to warn you that even if you change your keywords, and you hit Publish thinking that they’ve been accepted, they may not be. I hit Publish after filling those spaces out, but I won’t know they’ve been approved for a little while. I may be able to edit this blog post to let you know if they have been, so I’ll keep my eye on my email to see if they publish the book or they flag any of these words.

Edited to add: They did accept all my keywords without a problem! 

What’s the deal with programs that will pull keywords for you if finding free keywords is so easy?

When you start using programs like Publisher Rocket (this isn’t an affiliate link–I get nothing for telling you about this program. All I know is Dave Chesson is a really nice guy and works hard keeping this software working and up to date) you’re looking for a lot of keywords . . . for ads. When you start looking for keywords for Amazon Ads keep in mind they give you room for 1,000 words. You need a lot of help coming up with that many words, and using a software that can scrape your words together for you can save you a lot of time.

Keywords can make a huge difference if your ad converts to clicks, and using keywords is a way to help with that. I barely dipped my toes in the water when it came to Amazon Ads way back when I was trying, and I wasn’t using a program like Publisher Rocket to choose keywords, either. You’re leaving money on the table if you’re not utilizing all the space Amazon gives you.

 

So there you have it. How I revamped my book All of Nothing.

For some of you, this would include an edit as well, and if you want to learn more about relaunching your book, either read Relaunch Your Novel: Breathe Life Into Your Backlist (Write Faster, Write Smarter Book 6) by Chris Fox, or Ads for Authors Who Hate Math: Write Faster, Write Smarter.  In the latter book he goes a little into how much you should do to revamp your books (time vs. cost) so the ads work, because if anyone has heard Chris talk he is always very clear you need to start with a good product. (These aren’t affiliate links either, but I have read both of those books, and they are worth your time.)

Will all this work? Only time will tell. The cover is better, the blurb an improvement (I think, but that remains to be seen) and we’ll see if KDP approves my keywords and go from there. Could the book use an edit? In terms of getting better as a author, any past book an author writes won’t be as good as the newest release. That’s how it is, and I’m not going to stress about it. It’s a solid book in terms of plot and story. I’m sure it has its share of filler words, or a garbage word slipped by me here and there that I didn’t find and delete. But I did run it through a couple of betas who didn’t have anything bad to say, so I’ll take that as a small win and keep on going.

If you want more information about keywords, Dave Chesson has his own channel on YouTube, as well as Chris Fox. Taking time to listen to what these guys have to say is never a waste.

Thanks for reading!

If you want to know more about Dave and his thoughts on keywords and categories, you can listen to his interview with Joanna Penn here.

Here’s another article by the Book Designer on KDP keywords. Words Gone Wild: KDP Keywords Revisited

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All of Nothing’s blurb. How I rewrote it.

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All of Nothing ebook cover

Click here to read All of Nothing! Available in paperback and Kindle Unlimited!

If you’re brave and take a look at your reviews from time to time, there may be some common themes that readers have picked out with your book. If you have a thick skin, sometimes this can be a benefit–readers can (and probably will) see things about your book that you didn’t realize yourself.

With All of Nothing, I knew Jax was a jerk, and I made him that way. An accident he was involved in damaged him beyond all comprehension. In the book he was cold and heartless because underneath the armor, that’s exactly what he wasn’t.

I had a lot of fun with his character arc, but some of the readers were put off by just how mean he really was.

So, when I rewrote the blurb, I knew I needed to make this clearer so his attitude and actions toward Raven weren’t such a shock.

Writing a blurb is difficult, and at the end of this blog post I’ll list a few resources you can look into that may help you on your own path to writing your blurbs.

***

This was the old blurb:

“I took a life, and when I did, he took mine.”

After his fiancée leaves him at the altar, cold-hearted millionaire Jaxon Brooks blackmails the church janitor, forcing her to stand in as his bride.

When she accidentally signs her real name on the marriage certificate, Jax must find his wife to file for divorce.

Since the death of her brother, Raven Grey has been living a hard life on the streets.

When Jax offers his help in exchange for her signature, Raven agrees, hoping for a better future and to repair her relationship with her parents.

As Jax and Raven grow closer, his past haunts them, and the death of her brother threatens their new love in ways neither of them thought possible.

***

I’ve linked to the podcast before, but the Best Page Forward podcast took it apart. Abigail Dunard made some good points, and so did Jim Heskett, and when I rewrote it, I tried to keep their thoughts in mind. I wrote the original blurb with tips from Bryan Cohen’s book, How To Write a Sizzling Synopsis, but I must not have done that great of a job. Anyone who teaches blurb-writing will tell you to measure how good a blurb is by the number of conversions to your ads, but if you don’t run ads, it’s difficult to measure if the blurb is working or not. (Plus, if you use that reasoning, it may be your cover that isn’t doing it when your blurb could be perfectly fine.)

Anyway, I also read Brian D. Meeks’ book about writing Amazon descriptions. He goes about it in a completely different way. It’s a very pared down approach, and does not resemble Bryan’s more book summary style at all. I decided to give that a try.  And only time will tell if I hit the mark.

When writing the new blurb, I used Brian’s tips on copywriting, things I gleaned from the reviews, and tried to take out the confusing parts of the blurb the podcast hosts pointed out.

I ran it by a couple people who liked it, but until I start getting more reviews and more feedback, I still may not have made the right changes. The beauty of being an indie, though, is that you can make any kind of changes you want, nothing is locked in. Because I did do a cover update at the same time as rewriting the blurb, I went ahead and replaced the blurb on the back cover. But that isn’t always necessary, and if I tweak the blurb again, I’ll leave the paperback cover alone.

***

Jaxon Brooks is rich, sexy, and mean as a snake.

It’s no surprise when his fiancé leaves him at the altar. But now what is he going to do?

To save face, he blackmails the church janitor, forcing her to stand in for his bride, and he fights an unwanted attraction as she walks down the aisle.

Raven Grey is homeless.

Jax terrifies her, and left with no choice, she does what he says.

But she has desperate demands of her own. She needs help getting back on her feet, and Jax has the resources to help her.

When Jax moves Raven into his mansion, playing house starts to feel like the real thing. But how long can it last?

Buried under Jax’s rough demeanor is a horrible secret that won’t stay hidden, and Raven’s painful past will come back to haunt them. Despite everything, can Jax be the man that Raven needs him to be? Can Raven forgive him for what he’s done?

Can Jax come to terms with the tragedy that blackened his heart and give himself one last chance at true love?

If you like enemies to lovers or a bully hero, All of Nothing is perfect for you! Read it today!

***

The one huge departure from the other blurb is the call to action (CTA) at the end. I hate telling people what to do. I leave my kids alone, I didn’t run my ex-husband’s life, I don’t even like to give advice unless it’s asked for, and then I’m fully prepared for anyone not to take it. My back matter doesn’t ask readers to sign up for a newsletter, give a review, or read the next book. So putting that last sentence at the bottom really threw me, but Brian swears by it, and well,  it’s way down at the bottom, so what did it hurt? (And I do realize I’m letting opportunity go by with no CTA in my back matter, at all, and I’ll try to think of something when my wedding series drops.)

Is it better? Is it worse? I have no idea.

That is part two in what I did to revamp All of Nothing. I’ve been getting good feedback so far on the cover, and I’ve been kind of messing around with Wherever He Goes. But I don’t want to get so caught up in busy work that I’m not working on my current books.  I’m still on track to put this quartet out by the holidays, and I’m going to keep my eyes on that prize.

In the next blog post, I’ll go over metadata and keywords!

Thanks for reading!

Need help with blurbs?

Check out Bryan Cohen’s book.

Check out Brian Meeks’ book.

Listen to Libby Hawker’s tips on YouTube. Her videos are cut into parts, just to let you know, and this link starts with part one. This was quite some time ago, and trends change, but sometimes if you can piecemeal advice from different sources, you can turn that advice into something relevant today.

https://youtu.be/Tf4fKJAlGFU

Bryan Cohen and Chris Fox did a presentation about Blurb, Cover, and Title at the 20books Vegas conferences last November. This is such a great resource, and one of the conferences that I plan to go to! Take a listen to this video on how blurbs, titles, and covers work together to sell your book.

 

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any blurb writing tips!

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Choosing Amazon to self-publish. What’s so bad about it? My answer? Nothing.

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amazon love hateWarning! Lots of thoughts that are a bit scattered, but I try to keep them coherent at least. I’ll blame writer’s brain and the fact that I’m almost done with book three of my series. Yay!

Okay . . . carry on.

 

If you read my blog here in there, you’ll know my feelings toward Amazon are complicated, with a capital C.

But I’m not alone.

There are lots of people who think Amazon is either a devil or an angel, depending on who you talk to, and if it’s on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. (On Sunday you might find a select few in church praying for Jeff Bezos’s soul.)

Dean Koontz’s book deal with Amazon only added gasoline to this already wicked fire. Was he smart? Greedy? Some accused him of starting the toppling of the traditional publishing model, although a few other bigger-named authors have inked deals with Amazon too, like Sylvia Day, with less scrutiny.

Everyone is quick to point fingers, but the fact is, traditional publishing has been on a decline for years because they cling to an old model that is no longer working in the changing landscape.

Depending on huge bestsellers like Stephen King, Nora Roberts, John Grisham, and James Patterson is harmful. People who champion this say coddling the big authors funds the little authors. But I questioned this in two ways. The mid-list is shrinking. Who exactly are they funding? And more importantly, if new authors are not being sought out, their careers nurtured, who will replace these top authors? We can’t depend on all authors like Stephen King to have children who will take over their publishing empires.

One of the most frustrating things about traditional publishing is the lack of risk-taking. Yes, they are the gatekeepers of quality, but while they are busy keeping quality inside their walls, they are also keeping quality out, too. Only so many books are published every year—and those numbers include already established authors. There’s no room to grow.

Yes, they are the gatekeepers of quality, but while they are busy keeping quality inside their walls, they are also keeping quality out, too.

No one ever said if you want to be rich write a book. Some publishing houses or small presses won’t give an author an advance anymore, and if they do, it isn’t much.

Traditional publishing asks a lot of writers who want to be published:

  1. Query an agent. This could take months, if not years.
  2. Go through edits with said agent, if you’re lucky enough to follow the lengthy guidelines required to query each agent and have one sign you.
  3. Wait for your agent to sell your book. If she can. And that’s contingent on a few things: what kind of book you wrote, what’s selling, and what other agents are peddling. There are not many editors to go around.
  4. Then you might have to go through more edits with that editor.
  5. Wait a year for publication.
  6. Market your own book (with a cover you may not like and edits you don’t agree with, but you wanted to be traditionally published, right?).
  7. Make a fraction of book sales because your agent and publishing house take a percentage off the top.
  8. Hope your first book sells so maybe your agent and editor will take a look at another book.

Never mind that after you’ve gone through all of that, depending on what kind of contract you signed, your book isn’t yours anymore; your rights are gone.

To be honest, the more I learn about traditional publishing, the less it appeals to me. And to other writers. And where do writers turn when they want to publish, but don’t want to go the traditional route?

Amazon.

To be clear, publishing with an Amazon imprint is still considered being traditionally published. You can’t be considered without an agent. Which does make me a bit confused. If agents are so vocal about Amazon ruining traditional publishing, how will an author find an agent willing to submit their manuscript?

I listen to Print Run Podcast and the two agents who host make it clear how they feel about Amazon, Amazon’s view on books, and what they are doing to publishing as a whole. Take a listen to their latest episode where they discuss the Koontz defection, and cross them off your querying list if you want a deal with Thomas & Mercer or Montlake.

And that brings us back to what traditional publishing thinks we should do. As authors, we want our work read, not shoved under our bed because an agent’s intern was having a bad day and rejected our query.

We turn to Amazon as self-publishing authors.

But that isn’t what enrages the traditional publishing industry. What makes them so mad is that authors who publish on Amazon are making money, and there’s nothing they can say about it, or anything to defend themselves. I’ve seen proof of writers who can make good money publishing quality books. Consistently.

Living wage money.

In traditional publishing, where does the money go? To the CEOs of the huge corporations that own the publishing houses, and to the big authors who earned the gigantic advances. There is no mid-list in publishing anymore. We’re all over on Amazon earning 70% royalties and keeping our rights to our books.

Yet, somehow this is all Amazon’s fault. Mostly because Amazon is accused of not caring about books. It’s brought up time and again Jeff Bezos started moving books because they are compact and couldn’t break.

The traditional publishing houses, and anyone associated with them, holds on to the philosophy Amazon doesn’t care about books. I can say the same about the traditional publishing industry, too. If a book doesn’t sell, you’re out. Your career, too. There are no second chances, no molding of careers. Can an industry who doesn’t pay their authors, or help them sell their books, say they care about the writer or the book? They aren’t publishing for art, they’re publishing for money, and authors aren’t getting a piece of the pie. Caring about a book and caring about selling a book are two different things, but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I love my books. I love selling them, too.

Maybe books are loss leader on Amazon, but that doesn’t change the fact that Amazon gives every writer something that an agent or traditional publisher won’t or can’t.

A chance.

A lot of authors take that chance and turn it into a four, five, or six figure career.

And Amazon is the bad guy?

I get Amazon lets too many things slide: book stuffers, plagiarism, letting indie authors publish crap that wastes customer dollars if they don’t look closely enough at the product. But the thing is, it doesn’t make them any different than any other company. Everyone has bought something brand new from a store that didn’t work when it should have. People buy cheap crap, because stores sell it, all the time. It doesn’t make it right, but Amazon isn’t doing anything new.

You can say they treat their employees like crap, but again how is that different from any other company? We all have not-so-nice things to say about where we work. Walmart is a huge culprit of this. Not long ago it came out that their workers were working off the clock to get all their work done.

Questionable ethics abound. Starbucks employees are racist. McDonald’s serves unhealthy food. Jimmy John’s founder trophy hunts. No one stops drinking coffee, and McDonald’s is still the number one fast food restaurant in the United States.

Authors don’t have a problem making money doing something they love. And if everyone else does, it’s time to do something about it.

Traditional publishing isn’t letting more authors in. Every year they keep more out.
Barnes and Noble is still in shambles, though it would be great if the new owners could give Amazon a run for their money. Apple Books doesn’t seem to be a contender, and you have to jump through more hoops than a circus tiger to publish with Google Play. When I was wide, Draft2Digital wasn’t able to publish my books there.

Everyone can complain about Amazon, but no one is stepping up to compete. Shouldn’t that be what the traditional publishing industry’s job?

Dean Koontz obviously felt that his publishing house wasn’t going to give him what he wanted or needed for the next handful of books in his career.

That’s not Amazon’s fault.

Amazon may not love books, but they are forward-thinking and are willing to pay authors for their work.

What do you have to say, traditional publishing industry?

Seems like all you can do is point fingers when you’re the only one in the room who can do something.

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All this paper is good for something. I’d rather write another book for my backlist than take the time to query agents who will reject me.

I may have vented some frustration with Amazon in the past, but the truth is, writers should go where the money is, and for now that’s KU for the page reads and a 70% royalty  for self-publishers (or an imprint if you can get it). With no one else willing to give authors competitive alternatives, I’ll take my chances.

And instead of writing 500 query letters, I’ll take that time to write another book.

It’s important to note that in some genres it makes more sense to query. I write Contemporary Romance. That’s one of the top genres that does well in the self-publishing space. YA fantasy, middle grade, and picture books do better when you can take the time to query. I’m not saying you can’t self-publish, but those kinds of books require a different kind of marketing, and you’ll need to do your research and make sure you understand how you’re going to reach your audience once your book is self-published. Always research the best way to publish your books.

There’s a lot of opinion on the state of publishing and whether or not querying is a viable option. Amazon is accused of not caring about books, and training readers to want free things. Traditional publishing is accused of not moving forward and staying in the past. It’s interesting to take a look at all angles and read different sides to different stories. For more reading look here:

You can read another opinion piece from the New Yorker, here.

This is a great read on both sides. PUBLISHING INDUSTRY NEWS
Amazon’s Influence on Authors & the Publishing Industry

Stay Away From Traditional Book Publishing by Dean Wesley Smith