Thanks to you, readers and fellow writers, for making this month one of my best ever. The blog’s viewership/readership is expanding massively, and I am so excited to share the Last Gladiator with all of you this Saturday!
Act now to preorder your copy of my latest novella – The Last Gladiator!
Available on Kindle, Nook, and for all other e-readers through Smashwords!
A review of the Written Word Media promotion service!
Salve!
As many of you know, I’ve been documenting how difficult it can be for a self-published author to promote their books consistently when you’ve also got a day-job. There are many tools on the web that can help the self-published man or woman, but many require a fair amount of time up front.
Learn more about how I use Google Docs to outline my novels!
Hi everyone!
I briefly wanted to tell you about how I’ve been planning my last two novels. Ever since I started writing, I’ve been planning my novels out. Given the fact that I have to juggle story lines that evolve over several books, plus characters and technologies that don’t exist, one would except the need to have an outline or story map.
Continue reading “How To – Using Google Documents to Plan Your Novel”
My thoughts on whether Facebook Advertising is worth it. Join the conversation!
Salve Facebook Romans! (Err, I mean real Romans!) As I’m recovering from the release of Steel Praetorian, I’ve been thinking about some things in my writing world I’d like to change.
Today we have a great article written by yours truly about Facebook and Advertising. Facebook (and to a lesser extent, Twitter and other social media sites) seems to occupy more and more off our lives, and everyone seems to be on it all the time. But does this popularity translate into more sales?
For my self-published friends: What exactly is your book worth?
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the lack of postings/tweets/facebook messages, I’ve been stuck without my main computer! It died about two weeks ago and I’m still in limbo with it. I could replace the hard drive, but at this point, It may make more sense to simply get a new computer. Not sure yet.
Anywho, onto my main post.
As self-published authors, we are always facing the latest push to devalue our work. The average pricing for an ebook dropped roughly 50% this last year, according to a recent study. (I’ll find the source, but heard it on the radio!) So even the main stream publishers are facing pressure to reduce the price of their work. Understandably, there is pressure on self-published authors to get our work in ‘under the wire’ so to speak, at a reduced price, because hey, everyone likes a deal, right?
Consider what goes into making a book: Time + Money + Effort = Finished Product. You spend hours writing, revising, fixing a novel. Then you probably spend money sending it to someone else to be edited, revised, tweaked. You spend money on getting good cover art because, hey, people DO judge a book by it’s cover. You put in effort to promote, to network, to do all the legwork yourself or with only a few volunteers.
Face it: You, the self-published (or small-published) author works incredibly hard for your money. Why should you not ask people to pay for your work? And not just a pittance either. $0.99? for a full length novel?
If you spent $1,000 crafting your novel, and you sell it for 99 cents, using Amazon’s algorithm (i.e – 35% of each sale is yours), you would have to sell 2800 copies of your novel just to break even. Before any advertising & such. I once heard a quote somewhere that said the vast majority of self-published authors never sell more than 50 books.
Sell your novel for 1.99, you make 66 cents each book – you’ve cut the number of books needed to break even down to 1500. Already you’re doing a lot better. Up it to $2.99, and now you’re making 70% of each sale, 2.09 – now you only need to sell 478 novels sold.
If you truly think your work is only worth 99 cents, then sell it for that amount. Sometimes people ask me why my novella isn’t 99 cents. Because I don’t think it is worth that. Will I reduce the price in the future? Maybe. It is a short novella. But true fans will buy your work, regardless of whether it is 99 cents or 1.99 or 2.99. A true fan will not ignore your work because it costs a dollar more. Then it is simply someone who is out looking for 99 cent books, not someone looking for you.
So what is the point of this? Readers believe that everything should be cheap or free. But quality has a price. If you want readers to come to you because of the quality of your work, price it accordingly.
Thanks for letting me rant 🙂
Here’s what some other people have said…
Modern Papyrus 