An Author's Greatest Desire: To Be READ

Today we have a guest post from a friend of ours Daron D. Fraley
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There are a lot of opinions out there about ebook pricing. Everyone in the publishing industry has an opinion. Some say you have to price your books above $2.99, or you are devaluing the artistic value of the book. Some insist that 99 cents is the price to drive sales. Others think that free is OK. And the big publishers seem to think that $9.99 is the way to go.
So what price do you use? I am still undecided. Here's why:
Let's consider downloads of THE THORN and WATER, my two ebooks. They started out at prices of 2.99 and 99 cents respectively.
Total downloads in 2010, prior to making both of the books free: 9
Yeah. NINE. Granted, it wasn't a full year. The ebooks were first available in August, 2010. But if you extrapolate a yearly number out of that 4 month trend, you still only get 36.
I wasn't very happy about that. And nothing I did to try to change that number seemed to work. I asked for reviews. I posted on facebook. I tweeted. I sent emails to friends and family. I gave out discount codes for a free-download for those who participated in contests. I talked to people on planes. I talked to people at work. I advertised so much online that I felt like I was hurting my relationships with people. Who wants to hear a friend constantly hawking their wares?
I became very self conscious about it. I decided that I had to stop. I would never become a household name, and nobody would ever read my books, and I was OK with that. I knew that ebooks were my last hope because the print edition was only in a few indie stores around the country.
But I am a fighter. I still wanted to change that. But how? If I didn't tell people about them, then how would people discover the books?  I decided to try a bold move. I would make my books free.
My plan: Build readership. Get people interested in my writing, and build a following. Then, sometime in the future, release the second book in my series and another novel as regularly priced novels. Whatever regularly priced means... as I said before, I am still undecided.
Total number of downloads in 2011, from all major sites:  21,446
And that was really only 1/2 a year, because the Amazon Kindle Store didn't pick them up as free until mid-year. Before June, the download numbers were still in the low hundreds.
Amazon made all the difference. How that happened is a long story. Simply put, they saw the books being offered for free on competing sites, and matched the price. Authors can't normally price their books free otherwise.
Besides the number of downloads, here are some interesting stats:
Both of my titles, WATER and THE THORN have been in the top 10 for their genres (Fiction/Genre Fiction/Anthologies, and Fiction/Religious Fiction/Science Fiction & Fantasy) for the last two months straight. And on January 10th, they hit #1 and #2 respectively on the Fiction/Religious Fiction/Science Fiction & Fantasy chart.
Not too shabby with nearly zero advertising. In fact, I have no idea how it happened because I had stopped tweeting and posting about the books months before. I didn't even know the books were being offered for free on Amazon until late summer, and that was two months after Amazon matched the price.
What does it all mean? Is their no easy answer? I submit to you that there IS an answer, even if it isn't easy.
Here are the ingredients for being a successful indie author:
1. Work on your craft. Go to conferences. Read writers blogs and learn about technique, style, voice, etc.
2. READ. Read a lot of books.
3. Write your best book.
4. Get that book professionally edited. PAY to have your book edited!
5. Get help with typesetting and formatting so that the book is a comfortable read.
6. Get a good cover designer to help you create a simple, eye-catching cover. Yeah, you'll probably have to pay for that too.
7. Get the book out there. At what price? I have no idea. Experiment. I don't think there's a silver bullet.
Are you still with me? Except for step 7, which is mostly my opinion, every single one of those steps is touted by those who know what it takes. In fact, we keep quoting each other on those points. Do you think I came up with those? Hah! Nope. I read them somewhere. On the internet. So, they must be true, right?
Don't stop yet, there's one more step:
8. Hang up the horseshoe, rub the rabbit's foot, or whatever else you wish to do for good luck.
Because that is exactly what it is. LUCK. Right place, right time, the right readers downloading your book and getting excited about it and tweeting about it and then they have hundreds or thousands of followers on twitter or facebook who retweet the clever tweet or repost the clever status because it catches their eye and then some of their friends do the same thing and then the book climbs the ranks and it hits the charts and it garners more downloads, and then Amazon sees that trend and marks it as a mover-and-shaker and that brings about even more downloads, and pretty soon you are totally blown away that there are that many people out there reading your book.
Yeah.
What about those who claim free doesn't mean squat? You know what? I have no idea if anyone is actually READING my books. I have no proof. After all, they are FREE, and people forget about free stuff because it has no perceived value. Or so everyone says. It may be true. Probably is.
But here's the rub: I have had some really nice reviews. I know for a fact that I have had at least 50 people read the books. And many of those readers really liked them.
And that is all I really wanted in the first place. To write. And to have someone read my work, and like it. So even if the number is now only TEN, I am no worse off than I was before.
That's how I see it.
Check back with me at the end of the year. After I get my next two books out there.
Question: Will free loss-leaders bring in downloads for the paid novels? I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine. Now, where did I put that horseshoe?
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Thanks Daron

What Comes First?

What comes first in this field that we are all a part of?

Story.

I am answering this from a fiction writers perspective, but it has to be story-ultimately that's why we all write, we have a story to tell. Anything else comes later and that includes marketing, promotion, finding an agent/publisher, and even doing favors for other people that are tacitly related to all of the above.

I mention this because I have felt a little overwhelmed as of late and my wife gave me a dressing down for being too nice to people. "Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that?"

My answer was always-"Well, its for promotion, to get my name out there, to support someone else, give out some reviews my readers might like, etc, etc, etc."

Not that there is anything wrong with any of those things--But what comes first? What is the most important thing to Your career as a writer?

Telling your story and writing your books.

So I am not against any of the above, I have expanded on some social networking lately Google+ for one, but I do need to find a better balance of my time because of what is more important in the big picture for my career-Yes, I am working toward it being THE career.

When I told Dan this would be my post for July (sorry about nothing for June) he thought it might be controversial-I don't see how.
Anyone who I told I would read their book, or give them a blurb or review etc is still going to get one-I'm just probably not going to volunteer so much once I get through this current batch.
And
as is stated in the heading of the Man Cave -"Writing can be solitary, but success isn't." is true, I'm not advocating an every man for himself policy, just a reminder like my wife had to give me...of what comes first?

Writing Role Models & Influences

I have written action stories since I was a kid. Back in grade school, most of the stuff was what could fairly be termed fan-fic (I wrote a lot of G.I. JOE adventures) I also began my own "secondary world" epic fantasy. I'd like to think that for someone supremely influenced by J.R.R.Tolkien, I had some pretty cool original ideas.

Twenty five years down the road and a lot more reading under my belt, seems like a lot of other writers have already developed some of those very same ideas. I was going to have a young man be the veritable saviour of an epic worldwide struggle, I came to find that was very similar to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I was going to have a militaristic city state of werewolves in the mix, similar now to James Enge's The Wolf Age. I had big plans for a cursed warlord/sorcerer to stalk the land waiting for the endtime so incredibly akin to Karl Edward Wagner's Kane (I even wrote a short prequel on how he became cursed for his hubris).

SO

As much as I loved those ideas, I don't know if or when I will ever work on them...

But then again...

We all have our influences, the same as anyone else. I have read Scott Oden, Lion of Cairo, say that his three biggest influences are Tolkien, Robert E. Howard and Karl Edward Wagner.

Guess what = they are mine too.

But is there any real danger of us writing close to the same thing? No, there is isn't.
Why?
Because we all draw on our own experiences in life, our own worldview, our own strengths and weakness's. We are all different.
If any two of us set out to write the exact same story it would still turn out quite different and likewise appeal to different readers. I read a recent post of Dean Wesley Smith where he said, (and I'm somewhat paraphrasin') - "We are not in competition with other writers-but with ourselves to write better stories."

I like that a lot-it makes me not compare myself to my influences and the seeming impossibility of catching up, recreating the foundation they have already lain, but of just learning what I can from them and improving my own craft and writing the best stories I possibly can.

Lately, I am stressing/working on my sequel to Heroes of the Fallen - Blood of Our Fathers and working at making it the best book it can possibly be-that means writing the most awesome book that I would want to read again and again.
On other fronts I have a lot of speculative short stories getting published this year - 9 so far are forthcoming and I have another 4 submitted already, saturating the spec-fic market just like my writing role model, Robert E. Howard.
I'm kinda treating the present day anthology and e-markets like the depression era markets of the pulps. Gotta get my own weird brand out there and be read.

Stay hungry my friends.

David

In the Beginning

I have written stories for about as long as I can remember, at least the last few months.

When I was a kid, I started out doing G.I. JOE fan-fic, Indiana Jones type treasure hunting yarns and some pseudo-Tolkien inspired fantasy outlines.

In a lot of ways, that's still what I do-very action oriented yet indomitable character driven tales. It has to have punch and bring the blood and thunder as it were-I cannot be bored. I write the stories that I want to read. Quite often I catch myself wanting to watch a movie that doesn't exist or read a book on a certain time period and subject and 'Lo and Behold' that book doesn't exist either. What do I do? I write it. I'd like to think the whole reason I have a novel published, Heroes of the Fallen (with more on the way) and a half dozen short stories coming soon is because there is a passionate fire behind them. You have to want these stories to be told...and it does take skill, talent and TIME, but there has to be a fire burning, you have to sit down and WRITE.

That's was the biggest obstacle for me in my 20's. I always knew I would write books, I had a drive to tell the stories I wanted to read-BUT-I kept making excuses and saying I would write when I had time, when I was older and was just sitting around.

How foolish of me-when am I ever just gonna be sitting around?

Throughout my 20's I had a lot of adventures, but my point is, that IF you really want to write you have to sit down and do it.

I didn't really get after it until I was 28. I would go into my favorite local restaurant in the evenings, order a drink and usually something simple like soup and pie-I got everything for free because the waitress's liked me (Yes, I was that guy-the one who gets free pie) and I would tune out the world and write.

Now the stuff I wrote back then will never see the light of day-but the point is even back then I was learning-voice, pacing and characterization and perhaps most important of all I was forming a habit of discipline when it came to writing.

My hope for here at the Man Cave Author blog is that we can all share some writerly wisdom and reap what we sow. Keep your sword sharp and your pen handy.

From Storyteller to Author

My name is Michael Young and I'm excited to kick of "Man Cave Authors".  We are a group of five published authors, dedicated to showing what being an author is like from a man's perspective. In addition to myself, we have Dan Harrington, David West, J. Lloyd Morgan, and Frank Cole. We hope that we can help inspire other men (and women too) out there to pursue the amazing journey that is publishing.

Each of the five of us will take turns posting, and this month we're going to start out by telling our stories about how we became authors.

By today's standards, I grew up in a huge family.  Being the oldest of eight children, I was often called on to be the combination babysitter/entertainer, and spent many an afternoon and evening keeping my siblings entertained with stories. Sometimes we would even go out back on our trampoline and act them out.  I've always been blessed with a vivid imagination.  When people ask me where I get my ideas, I just shrug.  I wish I knew.

I started actually putting my ideas down on paper, or more accurately, word processor, in high school.  I took a few great writing classes and, one day, I decided I was just going to start to try to write a novel.  It took me about a year of working on it every day in the evenings, but I finished it: Face Value, a novel of 170,000 words. Looking back on it now, it definitely needs some work. I don't know if it will ever be published, but it was my first step in building my skills and confidence as a writer.  I realized I had the discipline to make it happen.

I had the idea for "The Canticle Kingdom" pop into my head one day while I was working at Target.  It was my second year of college and I was very busy between work and school.  However, I churned out just a little bit every day and over about a year's time, the first draft came together.  I attended a publisher's fair at my university and there met representatives from Cedar Fort to whom I pitched my manuscript.  They took it and sent it back a little later with a request for a few rewrites.

I took a few months to revise and then sent it back.  I must have checked my email 20 times daily for a response, but finally in July of 2009, I got the green light.  "The Canticle Kingdom" came out in February 2010 and it's been a crazy journey since. But that's another story.

Since then, I have been typing away at a number of other manuscripts and I hope to have some others out on the shelves soon.  Looking back, I think the biggest thing I've learned from the experiences I've had is that writing is a lot like the tortoise and the hare.  It is the slow, consistent commitment to every day writing that will help you get your projects done.  Intense, but infrequent bouts of writing will not bring the same results.

If you'd like to read more about my writing, please visit my personal blog at http://www.writermike.com.

Thanks for reading and check back later to hear from another one of the Man Cave Authors.