Should You Self-Publish?

I've been getting a lot of emails from people wondering if they should self-publish, specifically on the Amazon Kindle.

My answer is always the same: It depends.

Here is my advice, based on what I would do.

IF YOU WROTE A NOVEL

I believe your first order of business is getting a well-respected literary agent. The best way to land an agent is: write a damn good book. After the book is perfect, there are a few ways to find agents.

• Visit writing conferences and conventions and pitch to agents in person
• Read books similar to yours, and find out who reps the author
• Pick up a copy of the Writer's Market
• Visit www.aar-online.org
• Befriend an agented author and beg for an introduction

After getting an agent, she'll want to submit the book to editors at large New York publishing houses. If you get lucky, you'll land a book contract. This is the best-case scenario.

Exception: You Can't Get an Agent

Getting a good agent isn't easy, which is why you should spend as much time as possible honing your craft, improving your writing, learning about narrative structure and the elements of a compelling story. I got rejected over 500 times, but the vast majority of these rejections were for books that were not very good.

Should you self-publish if you can't find an agent? I would say no. If a hundred lit agents all think the book needs work, I'd bet the book needs work, and releasing it into the world isn't going to win you fans or do your career any favors.

Exception: Your Agent Can't Sell the Book

If you landed a lit agent, chances are your story is good enough to be published. But just because something is good enough to be published doesn't mean it will be published. This is a hard business, and luck plays a huge part.

If your agent has sent the book to everyone, and no one made an offer, I would say that e-book self-publishing is a viable alternative.

I would avoid print self-pubbing if you some day want a traditional book deal, because numbers follow you. If you get an ISBN, that number is trackable, and so are the sales associated with it. A potential publisher will look at your previous low sales and possibly pass on your next book.

Exception: You Don't Care About Agents or Traditional Publishers

It's important to talk about goals and dreams here.

A goal is something within your power to achieve.

A dream is something that requires other people for you to achieve.

If your dream is to be a bestselling author, your goals should be:

1. Write a damn good book
2. Submit to agents until you find one to work with
3. Keep writing good books until your agent sells one

However, if your goal is to see your name in print and you're okay with investing your own money and doing three times the work for very little respect:

1. Write a damn good book
2. Self-publish it

In the past, I never recommended self-publishing because in 99% of the cases the books are overpriced and inferior (poor covers, poor editing, poor writing), distribution is very hard (no returns on POD), and chances are high you won't sell many books that you didn't personally handsell.

But things have changed.

The Amazon Kindle and Amazon's CreateSpace, along with printers like Lulu.com, allow you to self-publish without investing a lot of your own money.

THIS IS NOT THE QUICK PATH TO FAME AND FORTUNE

Your Kindle release, or your POD book, will likely get lost in a sea of millions, making it very hard for readers to find you. If you have an understanding of how publishing, distribution, and marketing works, then maybe you can sell some books and do well. But if you're clueless, YOUR BOOK WILL NOT SELL.

Simple as that.

Personally, I wouldn't self-publish a novel unless you already have a name for yourself. If you've been traditionally published and have a fan base, if you're a celebrity, if you do a lot of speaking engagements and can sell your books after your speeches, or if you already have an audience, then you've got a better chance at selling some books.

IF YOU WROTE A NOVELLA

We'll define novella as a narrative between 7,000 and 50,000 words. In other words, too long for a short story, too short for a novel, meaning it's very difficult to find a traditional print market willing to buy it.

The rules for novellas are the same as the rules for novels, but disregard finding an agent. Agents don't care about novellas, unless they're so good you can beef them up to novel-size.

I believe novellas are where e-book self-publishing really has an advantage over print. A 15,000 word book doesn't cost much less than a 70,000 word book to produce, so it has to be priced comparably, and people don't want to pay full price for something so short. But in a digital world, you can lower the price of shorter work.

Personally, I see no harm at all in e-publishing a novella on your website (use Paypal.com if you want to charge for it), on Scribd.com, or on Kindle. Worst case-scenario: It doesn't sell at all, but you weren't going to sell it anyway. Best case scenario: It sells well, you make some money and also learn a lot.

I would restrict this to e-publishing because of the costs associated with print. Print novellas cost too much, and they don't sell as well as full length novels.

IF YOU WROTE A SHORT STORY

While the print short story market is dwindling, I believe it is still the preferred medium for shorts.

Writing and submitting short stories to magazines, anthologies, and websites, forces writers to understand the basics of publishing. There is a learning curve in crafting a story, researching markets, and writing query letters. I think all writers can benefit from this.

I also recommend NEVER writing a short story unless you already have a market in mind. Would you create a key without studying the lock first? No. Same rule applies.

If you do sell a short story, I recommend waiting for at least a year after publication before you offer the story on your website or on Kindle. Your contract may say you have e-rights, or that you have permission to publish sooner, but I think it's nice to let the editor who paid you have an exclusive for 12 months.

Once of the reasons I began putting shorts on my website was because fans were having trouble tracking down out of print magazines and anthologies I'd appeared in. E-publishing makes it easy for people to read your entire oeuvre, and the reprint market (editors who buy previously published stories) is now smaller than ever. Years ago, you could sell the same story multiple times. I've published over 70 stories and articles, and less than a handful have actually been reprinted. Unless you're a big enough name that your publisher will release a short story collection (usually at a loss), then feel free to e-publish your old print stories.

Exception: Your Short Story Didn't Sell

Once you've exhausted all of your markets, there's no shame in e-publishing it. Unless you've already got a fan base, I'd recommend putting the short on your website as a free download. But MAKE SURE IT IS GOOD.

Your best advertising for your writing is your writing. If people try you and don't like you, this is the opposite of finding fans.

Again, I'd avoid self-publishing short stories in print. Even if you gather up enough of them to make a full length book, they don't sell as well as novels. Period.

But I see no harm in e-publishing. I'd price them low (or free) and group them together so it is a more appealing download.

IF YOU WROTE NON-FICTION

See the If You Wrote a Novel section above, but there are a few differences.

You don't normally submit non-fiction books to agents or publishers. You submit a proposal, which isn't the full book. If you can't find an agent or a publisher based on a proposal, I would question if you should even bother to write the book in the first place.

Look at your goals and dreams. Maybe you've got a memoir that you want your family to have copies of. Maybe you wrote a cookbook for your friends who are always asking for your recipes. Maybe you get paid good money to speak on some topic you're an expert on, and selling a book after your speeches is a smart add-on.

If you have a need other than vanity, maybe you should write the book, and should self-publish it.

I self-published an e-book about writing which I give away for free, because my goal is to share what I've learned about this business. So far it's been downloaded over 6000 times, and I get just as much fanmail about it as I do from my novels. For me, this was well worth my time and effort, and it satisfies me on a core level even more than money does.

CONCLUSION

There are no short cuts, no easy paths to success, no matter how you publish. You're going to wind up marketing, promoting, and working hard whatever you decide.

Traditional publishing has the advantages of big money and a huge distribution network, though you might not get either even if you are traditionally published.

Self-publishing is an alternative, but at the time of this writing it still lacks in too many areas compared to trad pubbing, except in some circumstances.

Your job is to figure out what it is you want, and then decide on the best way to get it.

Should you self-publish? It depends.

But first focus on making your writing the best it can be.

Should E-Books Be Cheap?

Let's look at a recent Time Magazine article about the Amazon Kindle.

Here are the two things I picked out:

First, Amazon is selling ebooks at $9.99 for Kindle, and is taking a loss on this because publishers are charging them standard hardcover rates.

Second, according to small press publisher Dennis Johnson, nobody can make a book that sells for $9.99. You can save on shipping and printing, but that's only a small fraction of what it costs to make a book.

Now, at the risk of annoying print publishers everywhere--and print publishers have been very good to me and I consider myself grateful to have worked with some wonderful publishers--I'm going to politely disagree with the above statements.

The music industry, for all who have been paying attention, has never recovered from the digital mp3 revolution. I doubt the skewed tales of loss from the RIAA are accurate, but I have heard that iTunes is now selling more music than the Walmart, the world's largest music retailer. I also know, anecdotally, that my friends with iPods have managed to fill them with music, and very little of this music was bought. Rather it was borrowed, shared, or stolen.

There are several causes for the profits being down in the music industry. CDs cost too much money, especially when consumers often only wanted one or two songs on a disc. iPods and digital equipment have replaced stereos as the preferred method of music delivery. When fans set up distribution networks, like Napster, to share music, the RIAA tried to shut down these networks rather than learn to use the new technology to their advantage.

Apple finally figured out that 99 cent songs and no DRM is the way to go. But it took them way too long to get to that point, and as a result, we have a healthy, active piracy community. In fact, 13 of the top 100 most visited websites are file sharing sites, and that doesn't include Usenet, Limewire, or eMule.

So let's recap on the things the music industry did wrong.

1. High price.
2. Not adapting to the new method of delivery.
3. Not adequately dealing with piracy.

Hmm. Now if we look at what publishers are doing, we can draw some parallels.

First, in this economy, $27.95 is too much for a hardcover work of fiction. Why do they cost this much?

I've done other posts about the cost of books, and why publishing uses an archaic business model. To recap:

1. Only one out of five books makes a profit (two break even, two lose money.)

2. A fifty percent sell through (books printed vs. books actually sold) is considered by many to be the industry average.

3. The books that don't sell are remaindered (sold at a loss) or destroyed.

4. Retailers take books at a 40% to 60% discount. (we'll include the distributor cut in here as well.)

5. The author earns between 10% and 15% of the cover price.

6. Printing and shipping and corrugation (making boxes and displays) can cost 10% or more of the cover price, depending on the number of returns.

7. Marketing, advertising, and coop all are factored in to P&L.

8. Books have certain set up costs; typesetting, line editing, artwork, etc.

9. That means a publisher earns perhaps 15% to 20% of a book's cover price, and they have to run their entire company on this small amount.

So it seems that maybe it is impossible for publishers to lower their prices.

And yet...

No printing, no shipping, and no distribution (warehousing) costs, along with no returns, actually can save a big chunk of money. The way these costs are broken down make it seem like this is a very small part of a book's price. But, in fact, these are the only set costs, and these are the costs that all other costs are based on.

All the other costs are negotiable.

Publishers make money on paperbacks, which sell for $6.99 to $10.99. So it isn't about price, it's about profit per unit.

Print publishers are basing ebook prices on the profit per unit figures of print books. They have to do this, because if they sell ebooks for less and don't make up for the loss in volume, they will lose money.

But if a major publisher switched completely to ebooks (which may be what the future holds) a new pricing and profit structure will evolve. Costs to the publisher will be much less, and the cost of running a company will be much less.

When the cost of printing, shipping, and warehousing is eliminated, a lot of jobs are eliminated. This saves money.

When the cost of returns no longer figures into a book's profit margin, this saves money.

When books no longer go out of print, this earns money. In fact, every book, rather than one out of five, can be profitable.

When gigantic marketing and advertising budgets aimed at moving print books are slashed, this saves money.

No coop in bookstores, no author book tours. This saves money.

"But what about author advances?" publishers may ask. Tell you what--double my royalty rate for ebooks, I won't take an advance.

What we actually have isn't a situation where ebooks cost as much as print books. It's a situation where publishers must charge the same for ebooks as they do with print books if they want to keep their infrastructures intact.

But the fact is, consumers don't care about publishers, or their infrastructures. They care about books. And they want to pay less for ebooks.

They also want to be able to get ebooks without copy protection, just like they want their songs without copy protection. ITunes dropped DRM because their customers hated it. Will publishing adopt a similar stance?

I just got this newsletter from a large publisher:

We have engaged Attributor, a leading anti-piracy protection service, to monitor the web for instances of unlawful use of its authors’ books and content.

How much do you think that is going to add to the cost of ebooks? And how well do you think it will work, considering DRM and Macrovision and RIAA lawsuits and every other form of anti-piracy protection has failed miserably? And of course, Attributor will be used in conjunction with DRM.

I'd love to see Attributor take on Usenet, which has billions of illegal downloads per day and no way to track them. Or Rapidshare, which is based on password-protected private uploads and downloads using encrypted file lockers. Or any torrent tracker, for that matter. Pirate Bay and Mininova have been sued a gazillion times to no effect. And the private trackers are invite-only---good luck Attributor in getting an invitation.

Do you really want to know how to get rid of piracy? Here's how:

The rules of supply and demand don't work in a digital world, because the supply is unlimited. You don't fight piracy with weapons. You fight piracy with cost and convenience.

Let me state that again, because no one seems to get it.

The rules of supply and demand don't work in a digital world, because the supply is unlimited. You don't fight piracy with weapons. You fight piracy with cost and convenience.

If there were a central hub, where you could easily search for ebooks and get them at a reasonable price, there would be no need to pirate books.

Amazon is not that central hub. The Kindle is too expensive, their ebooks are too expensive, and the Kindle uses DRM and a proprietary format that is difficult to convert. Proprietary exclusive formats don't work. That's why Betamax and DAT failed.

Publishers, if they truly were looking toward the future, would make themselves into these hubs, eliminating the need for Amazon. But they're still focused on dead trees.

Here are some possible future scenarios:

--Publishers learn from the mistakes made by the music industry regarding digital content, and lower the prices for digital books. This could result in more inexpensive digital books than expensive print books being sold, leading to a decline in print sales, and an overall drop in the gross profit of the industry, even if there are a greater number of books sold. But they would survive, and after restructuring, possibly thrive.

--Publishers keep the price of digital books high, in which case more and more people boycott expensive books and support newer and cheaper authors. Readers also begin to illegally download books in larger numbers, as they do with music. Publishing dies.

The goal is to figure out what readers are willing to pay for the ease of downloading a book at a central distribution hub. Will they pay $5.99? Will a percentage of them buy it from another site for $2.99 and then convert it to their desired format themselves? Or will some of them just pirate it?

--Publishers realize their business model is based on printing and distribution, and they radically alter their companies in order to succeed in a digital world. That means becoming their own stores/distributors like Amazon, offering exclusive content.

Wal-mart has proven that “one stop shopping” is what America wants. Why go to a mall, with 50 stores, when one store carries everything from milk to tires to pants to books?

And yet, Green Day didn’t release their latest CD with Wal-mart, and it was still a smash hit. People will go elsewhere for exclusive content if they want it bad enough.

If I were a publisher, I’d consider what books I have under contract, and figure out how to sell them without splitting the money with a distributor/retailer such as Amazon.

--Authors realize that they don’t need publishers. Why should they split revenue with a publisher when they can upload it to the world themselves?

Currently, I'm making $110 a day on books NY publishing didn't want. That's not a lot of money, yet. But the average advance for a novel is still $5000. Between April 8 and June 30, I'll have earned $5000. And my numbers are going up.

--Amazon realizes it doesn’t need publishers, and deals directly with authors. They've already begun publishing print titles, and they've allowed for authors to publish print and ebook titles on their own. Eventually, Amazon is going to start getting some big download numbers for their ebooks, and they'll approach a big author with an exclusive royalty deal.

--A third party ereader is created by a company to compete with the Kindle. It will be inexpensive, able to read a variety of ebook formats, and have upgradable software and memory. This will lead to ereaders becoming as commonplace as iPods, and be the beginning of the end of print.

--Ebooks will become multi-media experiences like DVDs. Books will have author annotations and interviews, be bundled with audio versions, and contain extras such as short stories, early drafts, dictionaries and glossaries, and be directly linkable to forum discussions and book groups. Who would still want paper?

There's a lot to consider when it comes to e-book and the future of publishing. And I may be dead wrong on a lot of these predictions. Hell, I may not know what I'm talking about. Even with the economy, and bookstores losing money, and revenue down, publishers are still alive and kicking, just like they have been for hundreds of years.

But I do think e-books are the future. And I don't think print publishers know how to handle that.

There was a recent announcement that Simon & Schuster was joining forces with Scribd, an ebook download hub, and offering their catalog of ebooks for 20% off print cover price.

I wish S&S much success, but I don't predict it. 20% off the print price is a insignificant discount. Maybe if they slashed prices to a few dollars each title it would catch on, but I don't believe Scribd is a big enough hub yet, and it doesn't get nearly the traffic Amazon does.

But because I'm a cutting edge early adopter who can predict trends (ask Barry Eisler), I offered my ebooks on Scribd 15 days ago, at the same price they are available for on Kindle, less than $2 each.

In 15 days, I've sold zero books. Compare this to over a hundred books a day I sell on Amazon.

Scribd is not the future of epublishing.

If I were Simon & Schuster, or any big publisher, I would digitize my entire backlist and sell it on my publisher website for $2.99 a book, splitting royalties 50/50 with the author, and advertising the hell out of it in print, radio, and TV. Scribd, Amazon, and other e-tailers could have the titles for slightly more, factoring in their mark-up.

I would also invest heavily in new ebook reader technology, perhaps partnering with Apple or Google or Sony, to make a cheap, better competitor to the Kindle.

But I don't predict either happening anytime soon. Publishers, like oil tankers, take a long time to change direction. That doesn't mean publishers aren't smart--they're some of the smartest folks I know. But being smart, and being willing to scrap a business model you've used for fifty years, are two different things.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds. But as an author, I'm emboldened that with enough titles under my belt, in the future I might actually be able earn a living uploading my own books digitally, rather than depending on someone else to sell my books for me.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who believes this.

Amazon Kindle Numbers

Elsewhere on the Internets, people have been referring to my previous posts about the Amazon Kindle (here and here) and one of the things they were interested in is numbers.

So here they are. Thoughts, explanations, and predictions to follow.

AFRAID by Jack Kilborn, a horror novel, was released on the Kindle on April 1. During the first month of its release, it was available for $1.99 on Kindle. During that month, it sold over 10,400 copies.

SERIAL by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch was released for free on the Kindle May 20th. It's a horror novella. As of June 10, it has been downloaded on Kindle more than 34,000 times. SERIAL also appears on www.blakecrouch.com, and has had 12,000 downloads, along with 7000 downloads from the Sony Reader website.

Both AFRAID and SERIAL were released by my publisher, Grand Central. They promoted both titles on Amazon using sidebars on Amazon.com, and on the Amazon Kindle blog.

On April 8th, I began to upload my own books to Kindle. As of today, June 11, at 11:40am, here is how many copies I've sold, and how much they've earned.

THE LIST, a technothriller/police procedural novel, is my biggest seller to date, with 1612 copies sold. Since April this has earned $1081.75. I originally priced it at $1.49, and then raised it to $1.89 this month to see if the sales would slow down. The sales sped up instead.

ORIGIN, a technothriller/horror occult adventure novel, is in second place, with 1096 copies sold and $690.18. As with The List and my other Kindle novels, I upped the price to $1.89.

SUCKERS is a thriller/comedy/horror novella I wrote with Jeff Strand. It also includes some Konrath and Strand short stories. 449 copies, $306.60.

DISTURB is a medical thriller. 371 copies, $234.21.

SHOT OF TEQUILA is a crime novel featuring Jack Daniels. 342 copies, $164.02.

55 PROOF is a collection of 55 short stories. 217 copies, $138.99.

PLANTER'S PUNCH is a Jack Daniels novella I co-wrote with Tom Schreck. 154 copies, $107.10.

DIRTY JOKES & VULGAR POEMS is a collection of over 1000 of my Twitters, one-liners, and funny poems. 37 copies sold, $18.57.

So far on Kindle I've earned $2781.35 in 64 days.

PRICING: I've kept my collaborations priced at $1.59, and upped my other books to $1.89. Also, I reduced the price of my poetry collection to 80 cents.

What I've learned about pricing: Not much. I went on some Kindle forums and asked what the magic price point is, and got answers ranging between free and five bucks.

I've kept my books under two bucks for several reasons. First, because my intent is to use these books to hook readers and get them to buy my other, in-print titles. I give these same books away on my website for free, so charging Kindle users more than a few bucks doesn't seem fair.

That said, raising the price from $1.59 to $1.89 didn't cause any drop in sales or Amazon ranking. In fact, my Kindle numbers have been steadily going up.

I don't know what the perfect combination of price/profit is... yet. Authors make 35% of their suggested retail price (Amazon then discounts this.) So I can raise the price, sell fewer books, but still make a greater profit.

For me, however, this isn't all about profit. It's about units sold. Which also gets confusing.

UNITS SOLD: Pricing doesn't seem to be much of a factor in units sold, as my lowest price book is also my worst seller, and there doesn't seem to be any correlation between price and sales.

What I've learned about units sold: Nothing. I have no clue why The List, which is a fun technothriller about cloning, is outselling Origin, which is about a secret government compound studying Satan. In fact, on my website, Origin has been downloaded 2675 times, and The List only 2223.

Even stranger is SHOT OF TEQUILA, which is a Jack Daniels tie-in novel. I'm known for my JD books, and there is a pre-existing audience for them. Yet the Kindle version is very much underperforming compared to my other three novels, even though I have sold more than 300 copies of it on my website for 99 cents.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: I've tweaked all of my product descriptions several times, playing with the wording and the formatting. I didn't see any noticeable uptick or downtick with any changes I've made.

What I've learned about product description: I believe the product description should sing, but the genre of the book may be more important than the description. I think my best and most provocative description is for the poem book, which is selling poorly.

Category listings and keywords seem to be just as important, if not more important, than the description, because this is how people browse for titles.

COVER ART: People do judge books by their covers, and the covers I've uploaded to Kindle aren't good.

What I've learned about cover art: Not much. I redid the cover art on the poetry book, and it apparently did nothing. Of course, the new art may be just as ugly as the old art.

I'm having a professional cover done for TEQUILA to see if that improves sales. I'll keep everyone posted.

NAME RECOGNITION: Having seven books in print does make it easier for people looking for my books to find them. But there are other authors doing just as well or better than I am on Kindle, and they've never been traditionally published.

What I've learned about name recognition: It may not be as important as other criteria.

QUALITY OF WRITING: Do good books sell better than bad books? Is it even possible to judge quality objectively?

What I've learned about quality of writing: Amazon reviews and Kindle previews (which allow people do download a sample before buying) should have a long range impact on sales. I would think poor reviews will sink a book, or poor writing will result in it not being downloaded, or it being returned (Kindle books can be refunded.)

But I'm not sure if this is a deciding sales factor yet, because the Kindle is still so new, and because people are buying cheap Kindle books but aren't reading them right away.

I also have to look at SERIAL, which has gotten more than twenty 1 star reviews, and is still being downloaded 1000 times per day.

Perception of quality ultimately dictates if a person will buy your next book, but may not be a factor in them trying your first book. For two bucks, why not try it? And if it sits on the Kindle without being read for a year, it isn't helping or hurting your future sales.

But good reviews do help sales, just like a good cover and a good product description does. I just haven't figured out how much yet...

CONCLUSIONS

It's hard to draw any conclusions, because there just isn't enough data. But there are some things I'm noticing.

1. Publisher releases vastly outsell author releases. This seems obvious, but a publisher can buddy-up with Amazon and get primo placement. Authors can't do this on their own.

2. Price matters. All of my ebooks (even the poetry one) are on the genre bestseller lists, outselling name-brand authors. I'm sure this is because of price.

3. Being active on the Kindle forums, in newsletters, and on Amazon, may do more for sales than your cover, your description, your reviews, or even your writing. The key is to make people aware of your books. The more awareness there is, the more you'll sell.

Once you're on a bestseller list, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People browse the lists, see your book, buy your book, you stay on the lists.

4. Novels outsell short stories. It's like this in print as well, but my numbers confirm it.

5. No one buys poetry. Even outrageously funny poetry.

6. My technothrillers are doing much better than my medical thriller and my crime novel. Is this because more Kindle owners like technothrillers? It seems so.

GOALS:

1. To get professional cover art for all of my Kindle books.

2. To release a Kindle exclusive novel at a slightly higher price point ($2.99) under JA Konrath to see how it does.

3. To release a Jack Kilborn/J.A. Konrath short story on Kindle for 99 cents to see how it does.

I'm not sure what the future holds for the Amazon Kindle. I'm currently earning $90 a day, with no signs of slowing down. Now that the Kindle DX was released, I expect my numbers to rise.

With 1.5 million Kindles sold, I could sell 200 books per day, for 720 days, and still only reach 10% of all Kindle buyers. If we include all of the iPhone and iPod Touch owners who can download a Kindle ap, along with continued Kindle sales, I should be able to sell quite a few books before coming close to saturating this market.

If the $90 per day trend keeps up, that's $32,850 a year. Not a huge amount, but not chump change either.

I'll keep everyone updated. And FWIW, in the time it took me to write this blog entry, I made $16 on Kindle...

Ten Questions

I'm having some minor email problems, so haven't been able to send email for about 24 hours. This happens sometimes when I mail out a newsletter--some program or bot or switch is flipped, thinking I'm a spammer. So if you've emailed me and I haven't responded, it's not that I don't love you.

Until I get this sorted out, here's a fun interview with me.

http://miscellaneousyammering.blogspot.com/

JA Konrath/Jack Kilborn Newsletter

Straight Up - The Official Newsletter of Author J.A. Konrath/Jack Kilborn

In this issue:
--Introduction
--Free Book
--SERIAL
--Floaters
--Free e-books
--Afraid
--Book Launch Party
--Summer Reads
--Freebies

--INTRODUCTION
You're on this mailing list because you love books. I love them, too. This email is my way of reaching out to readers, librarians, bookstore employees, and fellow authors, in order to give you free stuff. If you want to be taken off this list, you can opt out using the link at the bottom. If you've asked to be removed from this newsletter and haven't been, I apologize. If you've signed up for this newsletter and haven't received it, you probably aren't reading this, but I apologize anyway.

Now let's get to the fun stuff:

--FREE BOOK
FUZZY NAVEL, the fifth in the Jack Daniels series, was recently released in paperback. If you were too cheap to buy it in hardcover, this version is for you.

If you haven't read FUZZY NAVEL (or even if you have) and would like to review it on your blog, I'll give you a free signed copy of one of my other books.

Let me repeat that: Review FUZZY NAVEL and get a FREE SIGNED BOOK.

Along with the blog review, I'd like you to post your review at least one other place on the Internet. Some of the obvious choices are Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, Booksnbytes.com, Amazon.com, Borders.com, BN.com, Librarything.com, Booksamillion.com, Yahoo groups, DorothyL.com, etc.

How do you enter?

1. Email me at haknort@wowway.com with the heading FUZZY REVIEW.

2. Include your snail mail address, the URL to the blog where you'll post the review, and tell me which review websites you'll post on.

That's all. Fifty people who follow those easy instructions will get free books. Perhaps even more than fifty, if the response is overwhelming.

How cool is that?

--SERIAL
This is an ebook horror novella available for free. Blake Crouch (author of ABANDON) and I turn our attention to the twin golden rules of hitchhiking:

# 1: Don’t go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy.

# 2: Don’t pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be a certifiably crazy.

So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Crazy #2?

When two of the most twisted minds in the world of horror fiction face off, the result is SERIAL, a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong. Like a deeply twisted version of an “After School Special,” SERIAL is the single most persuasive public service announcement on the hazards of free car rides.

Beyond a thrilling piece of horrifying suspense, SERIAL is also a groundbreaking experiment in literary collaboration. Kilborn wrote the first part. Crouch wrote the second. And they wrote the third together over email in 100-word exchanges, not aware of each other’s opening section. All bets were off, and may the best psycho win.

A warning about SERIAL from the authors:

SERIAL is a 8000 word horror novella written by masters of the genre Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn.

But just because it is 100% free doesn’t mean you should automatically download it.

This is disturbing stuff. Perhaps too disturbing.

If you can handle horrific thrills, proceed at your own risk.

But if you suffer from anxiety attacks, nervous disorders, insomnia, nightmares or night terrors, heart palpitations, stomach problems, or are of an overly sensitive nature, you should read something else instead.

The authors are in no way responsible for any lost sleep, missed work, failed relationships, or difficulty in coping with life after you have read SERIAL. They will not pay for any therapy you may require as a result of reading SERIAL. They will not cradle you in their arms, rock you back and forth, and speak in soothing tones while you unsuccessfully try to forget SERIAL.

Yes, it’s free. But free has its price.

You have been warned.

Download SERIAL at http://www.blakecrouch.com .

Incidentally, SERIAL has been the #1 download on Amazon Kindle for the past 17 days. :)

--FLOATERS
This is a novella I wrote with Henry Perez. In it, Jack Daniels joins forces with Henry's protagonist Alex Chapa (KILLING RED) to solve a bizarre murder.

It's free, and currently available on Henry's website, http://www.henryperezbooks.com . It also features an excerpt from KILLING RED, and from my new Jack Daniels novel, CHERRY BOMB.

Here's what a famous author has to say:

"FLOATERS is buoyantly engrossing, and you'll want to dive right in. I could also use some kind of 'wet behind the ears' pun, but I'm too busy working on my next novel, TRAPPED." - Jack Kilborn, author of AFRAID and, apparently, TRAPPED

--FREE EBOOKS
For those who haven't been paying attention, I have a FREEBIES page on my website. To date I've given away more than 23,000 ebooks. I've just added even more books to give away, including:

PLANTER'S PUNCH, a collaboration with Tom Schreck where Jack Daniels teams up with Duffy Dombrowski, the hero from his mystery series.

SUCKERS, a collaboration with Jeff Strand, where Harry McGlade teams up with Andrew Mayhem, the hero from his thriller series.

THE WORLD'S WORST POET, which features over 1000 bad jokes and poems, including many I've tweeted on Twitter.

Plus others. These books are free on my website, or if you have an Amazon Kindle, you can download them for less than two bucks each on Amazon.com.

--AFRAID
For the three people in the world who still don't know, I wrote a horror novel under the pen name Jack Kilborn. The book is called AFRAID, and it's available in paperback, ebook, and audio versions.

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? YOU WILL BE...

Welcome to Safe Haven, Wisconsin. Miles from everything, with one road in and out, this peaceful town has never needed a full-time police force. Until now...

A helicopter has crashed near Safe Haven and unleashed something horrifying. Now this merciless force is about to do what it does best. Isolate. Terrorize. Annihilate. As residents begin dying in a storm of gory violence, Safe Haven's only chance for survival will rest with an aging county sheriff, a firefighter, and a single mom. And each will have this harrowing thought: Maybe death hasn't come to their town by accident...

You can read more about it, and play the AFRAID Flash game, at http://www.JackKilborn.com .

--BOOK LAUNCH PARTY
The sixth Jack Daniels thriller, CHERRY BOMB, will be out in hardcover and on audio on July 7. I may be biased, but I think it's a pretty good book. Also, unlike the other Jack Daniels books, this one contains a lot of sex to go along with the scares and laughs.

To celebrate the occasion, I'll be having a book launch party.

WHEN: July 12, 2pm - 4pm
WHERE: CENTURIES & SLEUTHS BOOKSTORE, 7419 W. Madison St. Forest Park, IL 60130 (708) 771-7243
WHO: JA Konrath, Jeff Strand, Henry Perez
FREE BEER: Hell yes

Everyone is invited. Mark your calender. Besides being able to buy Cherry Bomb, you can meet two of my favorite authors, Jeff Strand and Henry Perez, who will be there signing their new books, PRESSURE and KILLING RED. We'll probably have some sort of talk or something, but that will be made bearable by the keg of beer we're bringing to the party. Hope to see you there.

--SUMMER READS
Summer is here, and Joe sez this is what you should be reading.

In paperback:
KILLING RED by Henry Perez - A serial killer thriller that is the best debut I've ever read.
PRESSURE by Jeff Strand - The most frightening novel I've ever read.
A FATAL WALTZ by Tasha Alexander - The best historical mystery writer working today.
DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE by Raymond Bensen - The second in his terrific Rock 'n roll detective series.
TRIGGER CITY by Sean Chercover - The second in his excellent Ray Dudgeon series.

In hardcover:
THE DOOMSDAY KEY by James Rollins - This one has more action than all four Indiana Jones films combined.
ABANDON by Blake Crouch - Crouch is one of my favorite writers, and this is his best book.
THE AMATEURS by Marcus Sakey - About Last Night meets Reservoir Dogs. Hip, sexy, and fast-paced.
FAULT LINE by Barry Eisler - A thriller tour de force, crammed with sex, action, and an all-too-plausible plot.
THE UNSEEN by Alexandra Sokoloff - Does ESP exist? It may kill you to find out...
DEAD ON by Robert W. Walker - I love Walker's stuff. He's insane.


See you on the road!

Helping Each Other

Let's talk about the Internet, and why it is the greatest invention in the history of mankind.

Our success as a species has to do with a lot of things. Opposable thumbs. Large brains. Walking upright. Making tools and fire and wheels.

But the thing that allowed us to spread across the planet is language.

Language allows us to communicate with one another. Communication means we can cooperate better and share information. But this isn't the telephone, where the words are lost to time, or a book which is dependent on a print copy only available to a finite number of people.

The Internet is permanent, and accessible by everyone.

What a gift for authors, who need a way to spread the word of their existence in order to survive.

And yet, I don't see many authors doing this to the degree they could or should. And fans, who anxiously await an author's next book, then wonder why the next book never comes (hint: it's because the author was dropped by their publisher.)

Well, I do my damnedest to help other authors. Here are some of the ways I try to:

1. Links. Look in the sidebar, or on my website, and you'll see I link to hundreds of blogs and websites. This isn't just an one-sided endorsement by me, because mutual links help raise Google rankings for sites that reciprocate.

2. Newsletters. In at least one newsletter a year, I recommend books written by my peers to my fans. Imagine if all authors did this.

3. Reviews. I review my friends. We all should.

4. I mention books by my peers when I do interviews and speak in public.

5. Pimping. This goes beyond links and mentions. With several of my buddies, I push their books, and push pretty hard.

6. Blogging. I've been known to interview other authors on occasion.

So why aren't all authors doing this?

We aren't in competition with one another. We're not all islands unto ourselves. It doesn't detract from our sales to mention someone else's book. In fact, fans like these recommendations.

If you're an author, look at your links. Look at your newsletter. Look at your blog. Check how often you mention other authors in general (and me in particular.)

And if you're a fan, the best thing you can do to ensure an author you like continues to get published is to tell other people about their books. Either in person, or online via reviews, social networks, forums, listservs, etc.

Just imagine how many new people we could reach if we pooled our efforts.

More on the Amazon Kindle

It's the last day of May.

My little Kindle experiment has netted me $1250 for this month. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is for books that I've been giving away for free on my website for years.

I've settled on a price point of $1.59 per Kindle download (they were $1.19 for the first three weeks of May) and I'm currently making about fifty bucks a day, with no signs of slowing down.

Huge money? No. But it isn't chump change either.

The average advance for a first time novel is still $5000. If Kindle keeps growing in popularity, and the Sony Reader opens up to author submissions like it intends to, I think a motivated writer will be able to make $5000 a year on a well-written e-novel. Or more. All without ever being in print.

Isn't that fascinating?

In the previous Kindle thread, Amber Argyle-Smith mentioned that her agent warned against authors uploading to Kindle, as the book would be considered published and therefore unsalable.

On the surface, that makes sense. Ebook publishing is publishing, and once the public is able to purchase it, the first rights are gone.

If you look a little deeper, it makes even more sense why her agent said that. If authors begin uploading books to Kindle and Sony themselves, are agents and publishers still needed?

At this date, May 31 2009, agents and publishers are necessary. Any author who wants to make writing their fulltime job can only support themselves by selling print books, and the agents and publishers are a crucial part of this industry.

But how about in 2012? 2015? 2025?

If you look even deeper at what Amber's agent said, it makes less sense. Publishers aren't stupid. If an author uploads a Kindle book and sells 80,000 copies, I can't imagine publishers not being interested. Why are Kindle books any different than self-published POD books? And publishers have been known, on occasion, to buy those without qualms or nits about first rights.

Right now, the big money is in print publishing. Even with the crummy economy, with bookstores in financial trouble, and with publishers laying off people and downsizing, the big money is still there.

But there is small money to be made by authors with the Kindle. And the small money can add up.

My friend, Robert W. Walker, has written over forty novels. Most of them are out of print, and the rights have reverted back to him.

If he digitized and uploaded his books, and priced them at $1.59 (which earns him 70 cents a download), and sold 500 copies of each per month (I sold 500 of Origin and 780 of The List in May), he'd be making $14,000 a month, or $168,000 a year, on books that Big NY Publishing doesn't want anymore.

Even if he made half, or a third, or a fifth of that, that's decent money on books that he's not doing anything else with.

Now, all of us aren't Rob, and we don't have 40 novels on our hard drives, especially 40 novels that were good enough to have once been published in print.

But how long do you think it will be before some unknown author has a Kindle bestseller?

Publisher's Weekly lists the Kindle Bestsellers, but it omits the freebies. I suppose that makes sense--the freebies aren't actually being sold.

But the freebies are being downloaded and read. There isn't money changing hands, but branding and name-recognition--two essentials for every successful author--are happening.

The ebook horror novella I wrote with Blake Crouch, SERIAL, is currently the #1 Kindle Bestseller, and has been for the last nine days.

I don't know how many people have downloaded it on Kindle, but I have heard that over 7000 have downloaded it on the Sony Reader, and even more than that have downloaded it on Blake's website and various other places on the net.

I wouldn't be surprised, by the end of the year, if more than 50,000 people have downloaded SERIAL.

Is that potentially interesting to publishers? Will a savvy editor approach us with a two book deal to collaborate on some full-length horror novels?

I don't know. But I do know that even if we aren't approached by editors, I'm very interested in writing a full-length horror book with Blake and trading in on some of that branding and name-recognition we earned with SERIAL.

Let's see, 50,000 downloads, priced at $1.59 and earning 70 cents per download, divided by two, is $17,500 each. Per year, of course, since ebooks are becoming more and more popular.

And of course there is a momentum that builds. Old books sell newer books, backlists support the frontlist, each new title brings in new readers who buy an author's entire oeuvre. Profit is only limited by how many quality books an author can produce.

I know I can write four books per year. If each one makes only $5000 a year (which Origin and The List are on track to do), by year five I'll have 20 books done and be earning 100k annually just on ebooks.

If I manage to last as long as Rob Walker, I may become a millionaire yet.

And Rob, by the way, just uploaded two of his books to Kindle at $1.59 each. If you have a Kindle, check them out...

I'm also curious what will happen if I raise my prices from $1.59 to $1.89. Will sales stay steady? Will I lose some volume but gain some royalties?

June will be interesting...

Advice For Professional Writers

This blog is called A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, because a lot of what I write about is geared toward unpublished or recently published authors.

Now I'd like to dispense some advice for authors who have a book or two or ten on the shelves, because I keep seeing authors making the same damn mistakes. even after years in this biz.

You hear the phone ringing? It's reality calling. Pick it up and listen.

1. Keep writing. I'm shocked by how many authors I know who haven't had a book published in over a year. I can name more than fifty authors who have seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Yes, I know this business is hard, and rejection is discouraging. But giving up isn't an option. If you can't sell your latest book, write another one. And another. And another. Sheesh.

2. Stop whining. This business is woefully unfair, and involves a great deal of luck. Keep your complaints to yourself, get over it, and see #1.

3. Stop fretting about reviews. I know it's difficult when some brain donor on Amazon gives you one star without reading past page 3. Everyone has an opinion, and all opinions are valid, so get over it. Criticism (and for that matter, praise) is pointless after the book has been published. You don't need other people's opinions to be happy.

4. Don't compare yourself to other authors. Ever. Never ever. Someone will always have a bigger advance, better sales, more awards, bigger movie deals, and a much better publisher than you do. This isn't a competition, and envy is just as useless as worry, regret, and guilt.

5. Keep your ego in check. You are not all that. Your writing isn't that great. And anything good that has happened to you in your career is more about luck than about anything you've personally done. Get over yourself, be thankful and gracious, and always remember where you came from.

6. Celebrate. It's so easy to get so bogged down by details that you can forget you're a published author, which is pretty damn cool. Any time something good happens, take some time and luxuriate in it.

7. Promote. As much as you can. If you're not good at it, get good at it. The more you do, the more you'll sell. The more you sell, the longer you'll survive.

Now you might say, "But Joe, Author X doesn't do any of these, and he/she is wildly successful."

True. But Author X is also a dick. And I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Don't be a dick.

Lecture over. Ignore at your own peril.

Ebooks and Free Books and Amazon Kindle, Oh My

FREE KINDLE EBOOKS! CHEAP E-BOOK DOWNLOADS! FREE AMAZON EBOOK! AMAZON KINDLE BOOKS FOR FREE AND CHEAP!

Now that I've satisfied the search engines with keywords, lets get down to business.

As I write this, SERIAL, a horror novella I co-authored with Blake Crouch, is the #1 Amazon Kindle download.

Why are two midlist thriller authors getting more downloads than huge bestsellers like James Patterson, David Baldacci, John Sandford, Lee Child, and Stephanie Meyer?

Because SERIAL is free.

Those familiar with my website know that I've been giving away free ebooks for years. You can go to www.jakonrath.com/freebies.htm and download the nine ebook novels and collections I'm currently giving away.

I've had 20,636 ebook downloads since I began using http://www.bfnsoftware.com to track them (I didn't use a download tracker the first year they were up.)

Rob Siders, has also been offering my ebooks for free, and so far 4401 people have downloaded them from his blog.

That's over 25,000 free ebooks I've given away, and it doesn't count other sites who host the books (which I encourage), or people copying the books for their friends (which I encourage.)

Why do I give ebooks away?

1. Writing is the Best Advertising. You can only become a fan of a writer if you read the writer. That's why I love selling short stories--I can reach new readers and expose them to my words. It's like the guy standing in front of the mall Chinese buffet, giving away samples of Kung Pow chicken. Some people try it, like it, then go inside to eat.

2. Books Are Expensive. Many people don't want to spend $24.99 or even $6.99 to take a chance on an unknown. And even fewer want to spend $14.99 on an ebook download. But people love a bargain, and free is the best bargain of all.

3. Free is Viral. If you Google Kilborn+Crouch+Serial, you currently get 6550 hits. Part of that is because of an orchestrated campaign done by Blake and I, in conjunction with my publisher, Grand Central. But part of it is because people are talking about it, picking up on it, repeating it, linking to it, etc. Publicity and promotion is free and easier to come by (if you're a midlister) when you're giving something away.

The goal, of course, is to find readers. Some of those readers will become fans. Some of those fans will become book buyers.

Is it working for me? Well, I get regular emails from fans who have enjoyed my free ebooks who then say they're going to buy my print books. My "regular" I mean a few a week. I'm even getting requests to write sequels to some of my freebies.

AFRAID by Jack Kilborn (my pen name) and my Jack Daniels series are selling well, both in print and as ebooks. Though I have decent distribution with these books (bookstores regularly stock them) I have to think that many folks sought them out rather than accidentally ran into them, and if they heard about them prior to buying them it might very well be because I work my butt off getting my name and words out there, for people to discover.

Now here is where the story gets interesting.

On February 18 of this year, I tried an experiment. My GPS, named Sheila, was murdered by my wife, and to buy a new one I put an ebook download on my website, asking folks for a 99 cent donation. The promotion was called Tequila for Sheila.

Repairing my GPS cost $80. PayPal took 35 cents out of every donation. So in order to repair Sheila, I needed 123 people to donate.

I was not optimistic. While my blog and website are popular, I didn't think folks would want to pay for a pdf download for many reasons. First, because digital media wants to be free. Second, because pdfs are not the preferred method of reading books. Third, because the only people who knew about this promotion were those who visited me already, which is a very limited distribution.

One of the biggest hurdles to overcome in the print world is distribution. The number of print books I sell is limited by the number of books printed, and the places they are for sale. If no one is aware of my books, no one will buy them. I strive to make people aware I exist, so readers seek me out rather than accidentally run into me, but I can only reach so many people.

So Tequila would only be known by people who already know me, which is extremely limiting.

And yet, to date, 226 people have donated to the Tequila fund, and the donations are still trickling in. So Shelia now has a hotter, younger sister named Leela.

It gets more interesting.

When AFRAID debuted on Kindle and the Sony Reader, my very savvy publisher released it for $1.99. This helped catapult it up the Kindle and Sony bestseller charts, and in the first month it sold over 7000 downloads, even though Kilborn is an unknown name.

So I got to thinking. High name recognition and limited distribution and a low price point, as with Tequila, resulted in 226 downloads in three and a half months. Low name recognition with major distribution and a low price point resulted in over 7000 downloads in a month.

What if I tried high name recognition, high distribution, and a low price point?

Which brings us to http://dtp.amazon.com.

Amazon actually allows authors to upload their own ebooks on Kindle, set a price, and earn 35% royalties.

This is either a closely guarded secret, or authors are just plain stupid, but as far as I know I'm the only published author taking advantage of this.

On April 8, I uploaded eight ebooks to Amazon, and sold them for $1.19 each.

These are the ebooks I've been giving away on my website for free, and are still available for free. But Amazon gets more visitors than JAKonrath.com, which means it is a much better distributor. That gives me the opportunity to reach people who don't know about me beforehand.

As I've stated before, digital content wants to be free. People don't like paying for downloads, whether they be pdfs or mp3s, because they are overpriced and there isn't a perceived value in binary code, which is all digital content really is. This is why 13 of the top visited sites on the Internet are file-sharing sites--it's often faster, easier, and much cheaper to steal digital content than it is to buy it.

Unfortunately, authors cannot release ebooks for free on Amazon (unless you go through your publisher, like I did with SERIAL.) You have to set the price at a minimum of 99 cents.

After adjusting my price several times, I settled on $1.99 per ebook, which Amazon discounts to $1.59, and nets me 70 cents in royalties each download--more than I make when I sell a $7.99 print paperback.

So how much have I earned in royalties in the 46 days my books have been available on Kindle?

As of this morning, I've had 1906 downloads on Kindle, and I've made $1370.12 in royalties.

That averages out to $30 a day, or almost $11,000 a year, for books that I give away for free.

Actually, I think that is a low prediction, as my Kindle sales have steadily increased, and only recently did I begin charging $1.59 (up from $1.19.) In the past week I've averaged $37 a day.

So why the hell isn't every author with a shelf novel or an out of print book doing this?!?!

It gets even more bizarre, when you start looking at bestseller lists.

Currently, my ebook The List is the #1 Kindle bestseller in the Police Procedurals category.

Who are #2 through #14? Multiple titles by Jeffery Deaver, James Patterson, James Lee Burke, JD Robb, and Michael Connelly.

Who is #15? Whiskey Sour by JA Konrath, which my publisher smartly priced at $3.96.

My ebook Origin is #3 on the Occult bestseller list, being beaten by two Charlaine Harris titles. But I'm outselling Stephen King, which is the only time that will ever happen.

Now, eleven grand a year isn't a huge amount of money, but I consider it pretty much a gift, and it really helps supplement my writer income. I'm not doing it for the money, though. I'm doing it for the same reason I continue to give away ebooks: to spread brand awareness and name recognition and find new readers and fans.

This is the future. But no one else seems to see it.

Well, that's not entirely true. Boyd Morrison is outselling me on Kindle, doing the same thing I'm doing: good product, low price point. Even though Boyd has been blurbed by some major bestsellers, he hasn't gotten a print contract yet. I stress "yet" because eventually NY Publishing is going to see Boyd's success on Kindle and want a piece of it.

Stephen Windwalker knows more about the Kindle than anyone on the planet, and publishes the excellent blog Kindle Nation. Stephen has been a huge supporter of my ebooks, and I owe him a lot of beer for his efforts in promoting Afraid, SERIAL, and my Kindle titles.

If you find this topic interesting, you need to check out the Kindle Boards, a forum dedicated to all things Kindle. Lots of smart people there who understand how to effectively use the Kindle.

Not so incidentally, the Sony Reader will soon institute a program allowing authors to upload books.

Let's recap:

1. Ebooks are good, because they help get your name and words out there.

2. More people are reading ebooks. Walmart now sells the Sony Reader. The Amazon DX will be out this summer, and Kindle has an iPhone app. And everyone with a new ereader wants content for that ereader.

3. The cheaper you are, the more you'll sell. You can even outsell major bestselling authors.

4. Free is better than cheap. Many more people will download free than cheap, so you'll reach many more people.

5. Distribution still matters. If you want big numbers, you get more downloads on Amazon than you will on your homepage.

6. There is money to be made. Like the POD industry, Kindle is getting diluted with overpriced self-pubbed crap. Don't be overpriced self-pubbed crap, because that doesn't sell. But if you're a good writer, a smart marketer, and can live with selling your book for $1.59, you can make some cash.

7. This is the future. Don't get left behind.

Any questions?

Kilborn 200 Tour Wrap Up

I left on the Jack Kilborn Afraid Tour on April 17, and came back on May 10.

Here are the final stats:

Days on tour: 23
Miles driven: 5789
Bookstores visited: 206
Books signed: 1515
Books given away: 580 (this includes two conventions)
States traversed: 12 + Washington DC
Nights in hotels: 6
Gas cost: $593.65
Hotel cost: $400.22
Tolls and Parking cost: $68.00
Food cost: $130.64
Total tour cost: $1192.51

These fine people allowed me to stay with them while on tour:

William Berger
Rob Swartwood
Steve Lukac
Jennifer & James Daniel Ross
Sherrill & Barry Bland
Jeff & Janice Strand
Cynthia & Bill Johnson
Jane & Don Bretl
Rhonda & Randy White
And especially my pal, Jim Coursey

The tour would have been quicker, but I had to do two events, the Romantic Times Convention in Orlando which ate up three days, and the Reaching Forward library conference which ate up two and a half days.

Is it all worth it?

Unfortunately, yes.

I say "unfortunately" because touring like this ain't easy. But having a publisher behind me and fans/peers who were willing to put me up for the night (and often buy me dinner/breakfast) made it cheaper and easier than it would have been had I done it without this sort of support.

These are the reasons it is worthwhile:

1. Meeting Booksellers. I met well over 500, and a bunch of them got free copies of my books (graciously supplied by my publisher.) Many of these booksellers will read the books I gave them, which makes them much easier to handsell. I also encouraged booksellers to post reviews of AFRAID on the Internet, and many of them already have.

2. Signing Stock. Signed books tend to sell better than unsigned books for two reasons. First, there's an added value to a signed book. Second, because signed books are often displayed face-out, which sells more books.

3. Long-term Effects. While short-term sales are nice, the long-term benefits are better. Books that sell well in a bookstore are automatically re-ordered (or are manually re-ordered by the bookseller) which leads to the store automatically keeping copies on the shelves. Down the road, this means royalty checks and an ever-increasing group of readers exposed to your books. It also doesn't hurt to show your publisher that you are working your butt off for them, especially since we're in a recession. There's also some publicity to be had in doing a tour like this, and it makes a good talking point for interviews and a good bit for the bio.

If you want to do a tour like this, some things to think about:

1. Plan ahead. Select bookstore-rich locations where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

2. Use your friends. The more people you can hook up with on the road, the cheaper and easier it is.

3. Priceline.com and Expedia.com. When you don't have any friends in a certain town, use the Internet to get the cheapest hotel rates.

4. Involve your publisher. You may not get any $$$ to tour, or any free books to give away, but keeping your publisher informed, and getting whatever help you can from them, is win-win.

5. Get a GPS and a smartphone with Google Maps. Often, doing a stock-signing tour takes you in directions you hadn't forseen. A current GPS and a phone (or Blackberry, laptop, etc) with Google Maps lets you find bookstores in your current area or on your route.

6. Eat on the road. It isn't the healthiest way to tour (unless you're Barry Eisler, who stops daily at Whole Foods while on tour and stocks up on nutritious stuff) but it will allow you to get more done. Keep a case of water and some snacks in the car with you.

7. Read my blog. That may seem redundant, since you're already reading my blog, but I've done two of these giant tours, and everything I've learned is in this blog. Read up so you can repeat my successes and avoid my failures.

While the Afraid Tour is over, I won't stop promoting Afraid. My new Jack Daniels paperback, Fuzzy Navel, comes out next week, and I'll be visiting many bookstores in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana to support it. Naturually, I'll also be supporting Afraid. Ditto in July, when Cherry Bomb comes out in hardcover.

Touring isn't just for when your book is released. It's perpetual. If your books are on the bookself, signing them and meeting the bookseller is a no-brainer, even if the books have been out for a few years.

Besides Internet promotion, stock-signing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote. As I said, it isn't easy, but what worthwhile things in life are? I've found that the most difficult and challenging things are the most rewarding.

Of course, a lot of people also say I'm nuts. But they've said that about a lot of forward-thinking people, like Caligula, and DeSade.

Here's a list of the remaining bookstores I have visited:

BN 5501 W. Broad Richmond VA

BN Glen Allen VA

BN 1150 Midlothian Richmond VA

BN 11640 W. Broad Richmond VA

BN Midlothian VA

Borders Glen Allen VA

Walden Glen Allen VA

Creatures & Crooks Richmond VA

BN Greensboro NC

BN High Point NC

BN Burlington NC

BN Winston-Salem NC

BN New Hope Durham NC

BN Renaissance Durham NC

Walden Four Seasons Greensboro NC

Borders Greensboro NC

Borders Winston-Salem NC

Walden Silas Creek NC

Borders Columbia MD

Borders Express Kensington MD

Borders Kensington MD

Borders K St. DC

BN Kensington MD

Borders Fredricksburg VA

Borders Arlington VA

BN Alexandria VA

BN Arlington VA

BN Mclean VA

BN M St. DC

BN Manassas VA

Borders Manassas VA

Borders 14th St. DC

BN 12th St. DC

BN Pratt Baltimore MD

BN Towson MD

BN Rittenberg Charleston SC

BN Mt. Pleasant SC

BN Rivers Charleston SC

BN Forest Dr. Coumbia SC

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