From Lindsay Buroker:

Hi, I’m J.M. Ney-Grimm. I write fantasy with a Norse twist. I love writing novellas, but I also produce short stories and novels. This year I edited – and contributed a story to – the indie anthology Quantum Zoo.

. . . .

So, why am I here on Lindsay’s blog? To share exactly how two indie writers collaborated with ten other indie writers to create an indie anthology, along with what we learned from the whole process.

. . . .

 Why Create an Indie Anthology?

Building Quantum Zoo has been a lot of fun, but it’s also been a lot of work. Why did we do it? What did we hope to achieve?

D.J. and I had three goals from the very start.

Cross-pollinate reading audiences 

We figured that some of my readers would become his readers. Some his readers would become my readers. Some of our readers would go on to read the works of the other writers contributing stories to the anthology. And vice versa. All of us would increase the size of our audience.

Experiment with new marketing techniques

I’ve been following the more conservative approach recommended for writers with patience and a desire to be frugal with time and energy: write the next book! I write, release, announce, and repeat. Yet I’ve harbored a secret yen to try some bolder and more direct promotional techniques. This would be my chance to approach vast numbers of blogging reviewers and hold a Facebook launch party. D.J. has always been quite open about his desire to experiment with different marketing projects.

Learn from the project and report back to the indie community

We hoped to learn more about what kind of promotion was effective and what wasn’t. Naturally we’d use that knowledge to better guide our own publishing careers, but we’d also share what we’d learned with other writers. We envisioned our anthology project as benefitting many, not just ourselves.

. . . .

Decide the genre and theme for your anthology

How easily you manage this will tell you something about your partnership right off the bat!

Readers generally don’t want a random assortment of stories in an anthology. Would-be anthology builders must decide what the unifying principles for their collection will be.

Genre was easy for us. We both enjoy speculative fiction, reading it and writing it.Quantum Zoo would be science fiction and fantasy.

Selecting a theme was a little more challenging. D.J. and I held several brainstorming sessions. We wanted a prompt that would be fun to write about, had a broad range of applications, and would work equally well for both sci-fi and fantasy authors.

TIP: Be flexible and don’t lock in on a theme right away. Play with ideas for a while.

I’ll confess that I had a story I was longing to write that stemmed from the concept of living exhibitions. But D.J. agreed that “zoo” was an excellent prompt when I suggested it. I’ve never asked him when the inspiration for his “Echoes of Earth” arrived. Now I’m curious. Was it when we were brainstorming? I’d love to know!

Link to the rest at Lindsay Buroker

From author John Brown:

I met Janci Patterson a few years ago when she was shopping her book Chasing the Skip to NY publishers.

. . . .

I loved the premise. Traditional publisher Henry Holt loved it too and thought Janci had done a great job telling the tale, so they made her an offer that Janci accepted. It was published in 2012.

Sounds like a match made in heaven, right?

Well, Janci just released another book called Everything’s Fine, a mystery about a girl named Kira.

. . . .

Another great premise. And this book won the Utah Art’s Council award for Best Young Adult Novel. Clearly, Janci can tell a story. But Janci didn’t take this one to NY.

She’s publishing it as an indie.

Here are her own words explaining what helped convince her going indie was doable.

. . . .

For years I refused to think about self-publishing. This wasn’t because of the stigma, honestly, but because of all the work I watched my self-publisher friends put into creating, shipping, and marketing their books. I couldn’t do that! I told myself. I wanted to be a writer, not a publisher.

When it became obvious to me that self-publishing was the next logical step in my career, I was terrified. Having published with a big publisher, I wasn’t willing to skip steps in the publishing process–it was my editor’s keen eye and the rounds of revision we did together that transformed CHASING THE SKIP from a messy draft into a product I was proud of. I wanted to be just as proud of my independent work, and for that, I knew I’d need help.

. . . .

Self-publishing felt even more impossible than selling books in New York–I knew how I wanted to do it, but I didn’t have the resources.

. . . .

I’d been working with the New York publishing paradigm for fourteen years. And in that world, there are very few ways to be published. You query agents. You send books to publishers. You do your very best to follow all of the guidelines and to do everything perfectly right, hoping to minimize the barriers that stand between you and success as a writer.

But this self-publishing thing was a whole different game. I sat in the audience at the workshop, stunned. That was the moment when I finally realized this truth: there are as many ways to publish as there are people who are publishing. There is no one right way to do it. There are so many things you can do that can help you succeed. It’s better to do something than nothing, because nothing is never the road to success. Even if that means you’re doing it wrong.

So when I got home, I made a list of my assets. Forget about what I lacked. Forget about what I didn’t know. What did I know how to do? What resources did I have access to? And, most importantly, who could I ask for help?

Link to the rest at John Brown

From Dean Wesley Smith:

Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions.

In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.”

Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought.

So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing list of myths that plague it.

The eighth myth to hit Indie writers and publishers is this:

I HAVE MISSED MY CHANCE

…or in similar think…I AM SO FAR BEHIND, WHY BOTHER STARTING?

This myth, of course, has a lot of origins, but the biggest one is the totally false thinking that this indie world is a gold rush. Nope. It’s not anymore. Indie publishing is now a new part of publishing here to stay for any foreseeable future.

And it might, if some people are correct, become the dominant form of publishing. Who knows.

. . . .

But this new world has made it very, very possible for writers with no knowledge of the publishing business to get their books to readers directly. That ability for nonprofessional publishing professionals and writers has only been around since the KDP program started up.

Those early few years of this new wave happened fast, first with the KDP program, followed by Smashwords, and then B&N opening up their bookstores. That was followed by the POD programs to get paper into regular bookstores. All those changes happened seemingly instantly and every indie publisher seemed to be in a huge hurry.

Kris and I were no exception to that in those first few years. It felt like a gold rush, no doubt.

But then everything settled. The explosive growth of electronic books has slowed to a tiny and healthy growth. We are now in a new normal.

Granted, there are major changes coming in publishing because of disruptive technology hitting big companies not capable of handling the changes. But for indie publishers, we are now playing on a level field with all traditional publishers.

. . . .

— First off, stop comparing yourself to other people.

Look around at what other indie publishers are doing and learn and adapt ideas that work for you and ignore all the rest.

— Ask yourself a simple question. “Do I want to be in this exact spot five years from now?”

If the answer is no, then start figuring out where you want to be in five years and in ten years. For those of you without any sense of business, this is called “Making a Business Plan.”

Link to the rest at Dean Wesley Smith

From author Nick Stephenson:

“KDP Select is evil”. “Free promotions are pointless”. “Nick, you’re an idiot”. These are things I hear on a daily basis, the latter usually being something I say to myself when I’m looking in the mirror. As for the first two, I talk to a lot of authors who have a strong opinion on the relative merits of signing up for 90 days of exclusivity with Amazon, and the words “shackled” and “dungeon” come up a lot. It’s the same for free days – half of authors think they’re a God-send, the other half would rather cut off their own limbs with a rusty spatula than offer their work gratis.

. . . .

The two main strategies for free books I see most often are:

A variety of titles signed up to KDP Select, with rotating free promotions on each book. This is pretty easy to do with the 5 free days you get to play with under the KDP Select contract.
Titles NOT in KDP select, and up on other vendors, with the first book in the series permanently free. This is also pretty easy to do.
There are pros and cons for both approaches, but last month was the first time I’d tried option number (2).

. . . .

[T]his was another month where I had a free promotion with Bookbub. You can see clearly that, while immediate results were lower than before, the residual effect is lasting much longer (and has carried over so far into June). Overall, the total income from the promotion is about the same, but the sales increase is far more consistent. And this is a good thing – I’d rather have a bunch of sales spread across a month, rather than just a couple of days. It helps with boosting visibility with Amazon’s algorithms (which largely discount anomalous spikes in favour of consistent performance) and helps keep things going when I’m not actively promoting or advertising.

Next month’s figures will be more illuminating – I’ll be able to see just how long the sales boost lasts. I’m expecting things to drop off pretty quick, but, so far, things are looking good. More importantly, this strategy has really opened up the UK market for me, as well as Nook and iTunes (Kobo is a bit of a graveyard). I’m looking forward to my other 3 titles dropping out of Select, so I can get them up on the other sites too. The non-Amazon-US avenues are now accounting for roughly 50% of revenue, which is cool, as I’m less vulnerable to sales fluctuations in one market – I’ve got others to back me up.

Link to the rest, including sales graphs, at Nick Stephenson

From Digital Book World:

Self-publishing is something of a misnomer, given the various ways that authors can publish books outside of a traditional publishing relationship. In particular, we might consider two modes of indie publishing, do-it-yourself and team publishing. DIY is for authors who go it entirely alone. Authors who seek to make their projects team efforts may engage others to help them with various aspects of publication, whether those teams are groups of freelancers and friends or companies that have formed for the purpose.

Are there benefits to indie authors to outsourcing different aspects of their projects, especially those that emulate the services provided by traditional publishers, or are authors better off saving their money?

. . . .

 Just under half of the self-published authors surveyed had hired someone or contracted with a company to help them self-publish their last book. Among those who hired services, the median expenditure was in the range of $500- $999, and the median number of services used was 3. The most popular service outsourced by authors was cover art.

. . . .

[T]he greatest differences between those that had no income and those that earned $10,000 or more from their latest book related to cover art and editing. Among authors making no income from their latest book, 22% contracted cover art, compared to 52% of those making more than $5,000 and to 63.6% for those earning $25,000.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World

From Thought Catalog:

Everything is changing amazingly fast for writers. Procedure; publishing patterns; “best practices” that won’t be best in 10 more minutes; broken rules; and lady-or-tiger options—say the secret word and you either get kissed by an online promotion or eaten alive by an algorithm.

It’s one of the reasons that authors spend so much time reading each other’s blog posts. They’re searching for answers no one has. Never has so much wisdom been offered to so many by so many others who knew so little more than the first many. (And thank God Churchill didn’t live to read that mess.)

It’s almost preposterous how many writers are writing books about how to write a book—the #bookbooks, I call them. Is it a bit cannibalistic, writing these things to sell to your fellow writers? Yes, it is. We had enough #bookbooks ten years ago. They’re all here, thank you. “Why do all the ladies of my parish bake cupcakes once a month and sell them to each other?” asks Rev. March in John Updike’s The Centaur. Maybe because it’s easier to sell to each other than to strangers. And maybe it’s more comfortable to sell books to other writers than to readers?

. . . .

The idea is that as an author, you are neither all-self-publishing nor all-traditionally publishing. You are both. You’re a “hybrid.” Case-by-case basis. If your agent turns up his nose at your latest masterpiece, you just publish it yourself. So there. But if your agent likes it and can sell it to a publisher, then that’s great: all those “author services” (editing, cover and interior design, formatting, and no marketing) are done for you by the publishing house.

Authors have learned to make sure their traditional contracts allow them to moonlight in this way.

. . . .

The hybrid=good formula has looked so stable that it may come as an unsettling surprise to some that North Carolina cozy queen Elizabeth Spann Craig now is questioning how the hybrid birdbath looks in her own backyard.

In Must a Writer Go Hybrid for a Higher Income?, she writes:

Maybe my main point is that you don’t have to remain a hybrid writer. You could start out as a hybrid author, soak up all the knowledge you can, and then self-publish afterward.

Uh-oh. What new heresy is this? Actually, it’s considerably well thought-out stuff and has drawn some 50 comments to Craig’s blog (“Mystery Writing is Murder”), which is well-read but not always so heavily yakked up.

. . . .

Somewhere in an office in Manhattan, coffee just paused on its way across the desk. An “I Heart Books” mug is being set back down.

I feel that the benefits that I’ve received are winding down.  I’ve gotten a great education from my talented editors.

Craig has written a Dear John letter.

And if anything can make the publishing establishment listen up, it might well be this: a highly successful, dependable, cozy-writing champ near the line between North and South Carolina announcing that she’s had just about all she needs, y’all, from the industry! the industry! 

Dean & DeLuca coffee is cooling fast as Craig goes on:

I’ve received exposure in physical bookstores and libraries and an introduction to a dedicated reader base.  I hate to sound like I just want to take my ball and go home, but that’s likely the ultimate direction I’m heading in.

Coffee now? Ice-cold:

Mainly, now…I feel as if my self-publishing production is slowed down because of traditional publishing.  I wince as I say that, but it’s the truth.

Link to the rest at Thought Catalog and thanks to Randall for the tip.

PG says the article points out an uncomfortable myth Big Publishing has sold itself about hybrid authors. They’ve regarded it as the literary equivalent of an open marriage. Sure, an author will go for a weekend fling with self-publishing, but, after a little playtime with Amazon, will return to the welcoming bosom of tradpub.

PG warns that the tradpub contracts can be more of a problem than the article implies if the author isn’t careful, but Elizabeth Craig is far from the only author coming to this conclusion. People who are selling very nicely for tradpub are coming to the conclusion that there are diminishing returns to staying there.

Reputation built? Check. Faithful readers in place? Check. Library patrons can find some of your books? Check. Nothing new that Big Publishing can offer? Check. Want to permanently trade ebook royalties of less than 15% of selling price for royalties of just under 70% of selling price? Check.

First known pattern of authors exploiting big publishers instead of the other way around? Check.

Somebody will think PG messed up his royalty numbers. After all, it says in all Big Publishing contracts that the author will receive a 25% ebook royalty. Knowing PG quit taking math classes after advanced algebra, a numerical error might not be a bad assumption, but he’s not wrong in this case.

When an indie author deals with Amazon, he/she receives 70% of the ebook selling price (less delivery charges). When a tradpub author deals with a publisher, he/she receives 25% of what the publisher receives from Amazon, not 25% of the ebook selling price.

Here are the numbers, assuming the publisher is selling the ebook for a 70% royalty from Amazon (not always a good assumption):

PG hasn’t included Amazon’s delivery charges, assuming they’re likely to be pretty much the same for tradpub and selfpub.

From CJ Lyons via Jane Friedman’s blog:

Since 2009, after the release of my second novel, I’ve been a so-called hybrid author, working with New York publishers as well as self-publishing. I’m often asked why I chose to combine these two seemingly disparate publishing careers, juggling twice the work.

The answer is simple: It’s not twice the work or two different careers. It’s one career—my career.

But that’s not even the right question to ask. It’s not about me or New York. The right question—in fact, the one I asked myself before embarking on self-publishing—is: What is the best way to get my books in front of my readers?

At the time I had two books in a series published, but the books were being brought out one a year and readers were clamoring for more. My agent and I had many discussions with my editor, including a face-to-face meeting with her and the publisher. We explained the difficulties of building a readership and keeping my name prominent in their minds with such a slow release schedule.

Their answer: that’s the way their production schedule worked.

. . . .

Frustrated at my inability to provide my readers with what they wanted—more stories from me—when e-book self-publishing opportunities arose, I jumped right in. I never considered making money; I only wanted to get more books out to my readers in the hopes that they’d remember my name by the time my next New York–published book eventually hit the shelves.

With that decision, I not only created a massively successful way to grow and serve my readership, I also took control of my career. I finally realized it wasn’t up to New York to decide how many books a year I published or what genre my books were categorized as or even how they were distributed.

. . . .

So I made my choice. To embrace the world of possibilities and form my own Global Publishing Empire. As CEO, I decide whom I want to partner with.

. . . .

Currently, my strategic partnerships also include New York publishers. Why? Because they can still serve my readers via their distribution channels and marketing as well as serving me via their editorial guidance to take my craft to the next level. And traditional publishers are still the best at turning a book into an event.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman and thanks to Sandra for the tip.

CJ was just named to the Executive Council of The Authors Guild

From FutureBook:

“Self-publishing through Amazon changed my life but the way Macmillan have handled me has made that grow.” And so writes the author Kerry Wilkinson in a blog about his journey from self-published ‘Kindle King’ to Pan Macmillan author.

Kerry’s blog is a necessary corrective to some of the bluster blogged about both publishing and self-publishing recently. It is open, honest and without the rancour that has come to characterise this debate. As Kerry notes, “the issue surely isn’t self-publishing versus traditional publishing, it’s good publishing versus bad.”

Not every author’s experience of publishing, however they do it, will be a positive one. Most recently Mark Edwards wrote on Facebook a response to a news report about his latest Amazon deal. Edwards along with his co-author Louise Voss had been one of the original Kindle sensations, leading to a deal with HarperCollins. But Edwards is now back self-publishing some titles, and has recently done a deal with Amazon’s publishing imprint Thomas & Mercer.

A spokesperson for HC commented: “We were thrilled to acquire Catch Your Death and hoped that Mark and Louise’s legion of word-of-mouth fans would prove to be a loyal readership that would follow them through to physical and to their subsequent titles. Sadly, despite great support from both the supermarkets and the high street, that hasn’t happened. We would like to wish them success with their new venture.” But Mark disagreed, and on Facebook, wrote: “HC [HarperCollins] never spent a penny marketing or promoting us. They expected our ‘legion of fans’ to buy the paperbacks after they had already bought the ebook, without making any attempt to find us new readers. By the time the new titles came out, they had given up on us.”

. . . .

As Kerry blogged, Pan Macmillan concentrated on building his audience, the opposite of what Edwards felt happened with HarperCollins.

Link to the rest at FutureBook

From Publishers Weekly:

Author Bella Andre has struck a deal with Kobo that will give the e-bookseller exclusive rights to the French translation of some of her titles for a three month period. The agreement is part of what Andre told PW is part of a new effort to do more translations of her books rather than license rights to overseas publishers.

In the Kobo deal, the company will get a three-month window to titles in Andre’s five volume Four Weddings and a Fiasco series written under her Lucy Kevin pen name. The titles will be published through the Kobo Writing Life self-publishing platform and the first book, The Wedding Gift (Le Cadeau) is now available. Andre said that in teaming with Kobo, the company helped with the French translations. After the three month exclusive period following the release of each title, Andre can then distribute the French language e-books on all retailer sites for all devices, make POD paperbacks of the French translations, and release French audiobooks.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly and thanks to Anthea for the tip.

Passive Guy says this is refreshing change from contracts that last for the life of the copyright.

From author Toby Neal:

[Y]esterday I heard from a talented writer who used to work in my former agent’s office. This person knew my writing from the get-go. She knew how hard the agency worked to sell my book series, and she had to find another job when my agent retired in frustration in 2011. She has continued to write herself, and watch my career as someone who has seen it from that very first version of Blood Orchids, that, while needing a complete rewrite, had enough promise to attract her boss.  Spurred by the Authorearnings disclosure, and “on the fence” herself about which way to go with agent interest in her work, she wrote me a series of questions to help her decide whether to persist with the traditional route or make the leap to “author-publisher.”

The discussion was so good I thought I’d share it with other writers struggling with the same dilemma.

. . . .

Writer-on-the-fence: Would you self-publish again? 

As you know more than anyone, I was devastated when our agent retired in 2011 and I was left without representation. It had taken me two years to get an agent and 179 query letters! Then, we hadn’t sold the series in 9 months (well, we did get an offer, but it was too low and digital rights only.)

. . . .

I felt after that much “lost time” I had to try self-publishing, and our agent’s comments on the market had been very discouraging, so I thought at least it couldn’t hurt  to try. I did, however, go “high end” from the beginning, with a top-tier cover artist (Julie Metz) a publicist, and two rounds of professional structural editing… That first book cost me $12,000 to produce and market its first month. (Now I have my book development expenses whittled down to a mere $4-6,000.) However, Blood Orchids paid for itself within two months after debuting in December 2011, and last year alone I netted close to a hundred thousand in sales.

I think of my books as a start-up business, so I spent at least half of that on new book development and advertising. This has made my take-home income just replacing the middle-class amount I made as a school counselor, a job I was able to leave because my writing income had replaced the need for a 9-to-5. I choose to keep re-investing in new books because, as others have said, every title is a worker bee out there earning for me, and the model that works in indie publishing is capturing your readers and keeping them reading and engaged with a flow of new titles.

My books still cost more than many other indies report, but I won’t stint on the quality and I love the team I’ve built.

. . . .

The publishing side’s a business, and while I’m PASSIONATE about my writing (I even feel I tell stories with deeper messages and meaning, call it hubris if you will) I run it like a business. To make money as an author/publisher you have to be a good businessperson and a fast and prolific writer…or you can be a hobbyist, as many are.

Would I self-publish again? The question is no longer that. It’s now, what deal could a traditional publisher offer me that I would take? And my answer, if I’m honest, is a six-figure, print-only deal (at least for the mysteries.) And I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Link to the rest at Toby Neal