Become a Successful Indie Author

by Craig Martelle

  After you’ve selected your two categories, your book will publish. It’ll show in three categories on your book’s page on Amazon.com. You can add seven more categories if you want. Here’s how you do that.

  Updating your browse categories

  Go to your Author Central Page

  Click "Contact Us"

  Select "My Books"

  Select "Update Information About a Book"

  Select "Browse Categories"

  Select "I want to update my book's browse categories"

  Select email and give them your book title and ASIN (make it easy on them), then ask to have your book added to the additional categories, being very specific - I copy/;paste the ones I want. Like this.

  • Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction > Action & Adventure

  Show the complete category layout as I’ve done above. You have to make it as easy as humanly possible for the Amazon customer service agents. The easier you make it, the quicker your resolution will be.

  At least that’s how you might be able do it when your book goes to print. Sometimes, Amazon will email you back and tell you that they can’t put the book into that category unless (there’s a variety of reasons Amazon could give). If they give you an age range or keywords that have to be included, update whatever they tell you and then email them back and tell them that you’ve made the adjustments. The process to update your categories, if done on a weekday, could take as little as an hour. Sometimes it takes a day or two. It’s important to hit these as quickly as possible while you are at the height of your sales, which for me is when I send out my newsletter on launch day.

  Age & Grade

  I’ve published a lot of books and have tried a number of different ages and age ranges. When I use 16 to 18+, Amazon puts my books in the Young Adult (YA) category. When I use 13 to 18+, same result. When I use 12 to 18+, Amazon puts my books in the Children’s category.

  What is the difference? When I have the F-bomb in the books or adult situations, I list them at 16 and up. No F-bomb, but some swearing (no graphic sex or anything like that), then it’s 13 and up. If there is neither, then I go with 12 and up. I know what I read when I was 12 (Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian series), and that’s what I use as the gauge.

  I never touch grade. I expect that is for books that market to specific grades, like books intended to be used in a classroom.

  Digital Rights Management

  This is a one-way trip. If you take it, then legitimate buyers could have trouble with downloading your book. It is supposedly an anti-piracy measure, but it doesn’t work. Pirates will have a pdf copy of your book on launch day without issue. I never select DRM anymore.

  Upload your eBook Manuscript

  This is a simple process. Many people use Vellum. I upload directly using my Word file. This is right from the Amazon upload page—recommended formats for Kindle eBooks: .doc, .docx, HTML, MOBI, ePub, RTF, Plain Text, and KPF.

  Amazon’s format is MOBI. If that’s what you format in, then your conversion should look exactly like what you see on your screen. For me, it changes a little from my Word file when Amazon converts it, but they make it look great. If you have a bunch of sexy fonts within your story, they may get neutered. Amazon creates a single standard where the users can select which font and at which size they can read their eBook. Save your sexy fonts for the paperback version where you have a much greater level of visual control.

  Other Upload Issues

  Make sure you address the spelling errors that come up. There will always be some. If the spelling is what you want, then click “Ignore” and Amazon will okay your book. This will also keep you from getting an automated quality alert. Amazon’s system has caught typos for me. I back out, correct them, and re-upload the manuscript. It’s okay to take your time at this point. Don’t hurry an error into production.

  Launch Pricing

  Full price

  Discount for 1 day

  Discount for a week or so

  Amazon Giveaway (buy at 99 cents)

  There are all kinds of schools of thought regarding pricing.

  A low price can attract more buyers, reward followers, and drive your launch day rank higher. Many authors launch at full price. Hardcore fans will buy it regardless.

  What is the appearance of value? This is where I’m not going to answer this question for you. As an admin on the 20Booksto50k Facebook group, I’ve seen a wide variety of pricing schemes. What you have to keep in mind are the following:

  Genre—what is the average in your genre?

  Your experience—known authors can command higher prices.

  Book length—selling a 300k word book for the same as a 30k word book doesn’t make much sense.

  Value proposition—how do the readers perceive the value? And in the end, they are the only voices that matter.

  I started off pricing all my books at $2.99. This allowed me to discount books to 99 cents and run paid promotions like Ereader News Today, Robin Reads, Book Barbarian, and more. (There’s a big number of paid newsletter promotion services.)

  Some genres rate eBook prices of $9.99. Under-served audiences who are hungry for more material—Pride and Prejudice novels are some of those in this category and those who write well in that category command high prices and make a great living.

  Other categories seem set at $3.99. When I look at the top 20 books in a category, I’ll look at reviews and prices to gauge how long a particular book will stay there. If a book is showing at $4.99 in the number two spot and has 300 reviews, the book for 99 cents in the number one spot with four reviews won’t be there for long. The low price drove sales up and got the rank. When the price changes back, will new readers still find it attractive? That’s a marketing and conversion question that we’ll talk about later.

  In the Terry Henry Walton Chronicles, the first books were about 60k words and we priced all of them at $3.99. By books eight, nine, and ten, I had way too many threads to tie up, so those books averaged nearly 95k words. We charged $4.99 and some readers complained, accusing us of price gouging. We even put the statement in one blurb, “Two books for the price of one!” Consistency is important and that’s part of training your readership.

  We tried this with our Darklanding series, books of 20k to 30k words published every eighteen days. The first book we priced at a consistent 99 cents. The others were $2.99 and that’s all there was to it. We had a couple complaints in the beginning, but those died down. With each new release, we got a nice bump to the previous volumes, both in page reads and buys. Nothing sells the last book like the next book.

  I saw this exemplified when I published Book 7 in my Free Trader Series, a year and a half after Book 6 hit the market. In the two weeks after Book 7 hit, I averaged ten copies a day each of the other six books. That’s my blue collar approach, a solid base across a wide front and it all adds up. Before you know it, you’re making $1000/day without any breakout bestsellers.

  I didn’t change the pricing on any of the earlier Free Trader books. Those copies sold at full price for a long stretch and as of this writing, they continue to sell at that rate, and I am doing no advertising on this series besides a minimal number of basic AMS ads and reiterating that Free Trader is alive and well in my newsletter.

  I’ve seen people put together general guides on pricing, but I won’t do that. Look at your genre and how the top books are priced. If you’re not as well-known, maybe knock off a buck and go for it. I’m up to $4.99 for my mainline series, and I don’t see the dropoff in sales one might expect.

  Resource for Going Wide

  Direct Options for eBooks:

  * Amazon KDP

  * Nook Press

  * iTunes Producer & iTunes Connect (for iBooks)

  * Kobo Writing Life

  * Google Play (even though they’ve allegedly been closed to new authors for well over a year now with no sign of changing)

  eBooks - Aggregators

  * Draft2D
igital

  * StreetLib

  * Smashwords

  Print

  * Amazon CreateSpace

  * KDP Print (Beta)

  * IngramSpark

  * Lulu

  * Blurb

  * Off-set printing

  Release Schedule

  Only you can determine when you are ready to release your book. You can do a pre-order or you can simply release it when ready. A pre-order adds a level of stress and complication that I don’t need so I don’t do them unless I have the final book ready but am waiting to release for some reason, like a heavily promoted launch.

  If you miss your pre-order date, Amazon will cancel your pre-order privileges for one year. Sometimes, you update the file before the four-day cutoff window closes, but Amazon still sends out the wrong file. What do you do? You contact them and hope for the best.

  No one fully knows how Amazon’s algorithms work, but everyone says that you want to be on their good side.

  Whatever that means. Amazon is a commercial retailer. They make money when you sell books. They’ll give your stuff a little push if it looks like people are buying. That’s about the extent of my understanding of how it works. There is so much that goes into putting a book in front of a potential buyer, no one source is the end-all. I stay on the good side by releasing quickly and promoting within Amazon itself through AMS ads.

  Another way to get exposure is by getting into the also-boughts, that listing immediately below the top part of the product page where Amazon suggests books based on what others buy after buying your book. In order to populate the also-boughts and get on other people’s front page for extra exposure and hopefully sales, you need to sell at least fifty copies.

  You might have an ad with catchy language today, but it isn’t catchy tomorrow. You never know what will trigger jumps, but when sales are good, they seem to remain good. More of that and less of the bad sales!

  Help Amazon to help you by releasing regularly. If you release less often than once per month, which is most people, one of the better ways to improve your situation is spreading out your sales over a few days. Get your bump with your main list, but get help with NL swaps and run ads. Market to your target audience, even if it is only a boosted post off your FB author page.

  Rapid release is all about exploiting the algorithm. The best numbers I saw were from the first series getting released exactly seven days apart. This presumes that you get sales on the first book. You’ll get no love from Amazon if you aren’t moving any product. Remember that they are a retailer and don’t care who you are or that you’re a person who just put her baby up for sale. Did you sell it? No? Well then, Amazon won’t like you as much as the person who is moving all kinds of product.

  You can make your own luck by selling books. How do we do that? That’s the million-dollar question, but it all starts with one book at a time. When you figure out how that one book sold, you can work that magic on a second and a third. Keep at it.

  What about a less rapid release?

  Serials and an 18-Day Release Schedule

  Scott Moon and I undertook writing a space western in TV serial style. Our target was 30k words per book. I wrote the first book and it was only 17k words, but we are keeping it priced at $0.99, with all the rest priced at $2.99. Scott wrote most of the rest. (I wrote Books 6 and 9.) Book 2 was 23k words, and Books 3-5 and beyond were in the vicinity of 30k words. We started last September to build our kitty of readily available titles so there would be no hiccup in meeting our 18-day launch windows.

  Our costs per title are $200, which includes cover and editing. My FB and AMS ad spend is about $2/day total.

  We launched Book 1 on December 18th, with some NL swaps and a little AMS ad love, but low spend. We launched Book 2 on Jan 5, and Book 3 on Jan 23. (Part of our tagline is a new release every 18 days.) On Jan 23, we ran Book 1 for free.

  Look at how the tail is increasing in size for both sales and page reads. This is a Space Western (Firefly meets Tombstone, although we put it in the space opera and alien contact categories). It's not a huge niche with a ready market, so we are developing that market. Many reviews call Book 1 a Short Story, and that's part of the message that we didn't manage. We call them all "books," which has no defined word count, and the average reader doesn't know what a novella is. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive, but length is part of the readers' concern, so we'll start managing that part in FB ads—so much story in a compact, quick-read package kind of thing.

  There was a little hiccup going from 1 to 2 as the price also went from 99 cents to $2.99, even though subsequent volumes were longer. We did not attempt to work this message because it will play out over time, when we can tout ‘Book 1 in the bestselling Darklanding series is ONLY 99 cents’ for marketing).

  Overall, this is a win as it is starting to sustain itself. Six weeks after launch, Book 1 continues to get 10-15 sales a day and over 1000 page reads. Are these numbers eye-popping? No, but we are having a lot of fun and the income is increasing with each new title. We also wanted a series that was pitchable to network TV, because, hey! Those bastards canceled Firefly and still haven't replaced it with something comparable...

  Chapter 5

  Building a following

  Biggest Bang for the Buck

  Snippets, Blogs, and Social Media – Oh my!

  How do you build a following?

  Newsletter Cross Promotion

  New Release Notification

  Getting Feedback

  Trolls

  Biggest bang for the buck or how can I get the most exposure at the least cost?

  I get 100 emails and 50 direct messages a day from people. Maybe I can answer some of those questions here. New authors who have yet to publish universally struggle with this question. Here are some tips and a not-all-inclusive list of things. Some established authors are looking to start fresh. It all applies. I’ve said some of this before, but here’s a recap with value estimate.

  Social media: you have it anyway, use it to build your author brand. Be interesting and be well-spoken. Be professional. This costs nothing but time. If your posts are laced with typos and incomprehensible, you won’t be taken seriously as an author. Well-written posts could gain you readers. Poorly written posts will not.

  Read books in the genre you are/will be writing in. Don't write in a genre you know nothing about. That is a steep mountain and high, too.

  Get a thick skin. When you're new, it is easy to get discouraged. Remember why you write—because you love it.

  The first 500 words of your story have to be killer. The reader has to be wowed and be fanatical about wanting to read more. If you need back story for the rest of your story to make sense and your back story is boring, you will have to work it in without an info dump to start your story. You don’t want to fight through that to develop a following. You want the readers to follow because they’re interested, not because they’ve been badgered.

  Help promote other authors by finding stuff you like in your genre. This can build your genre-specific following by identifying those folks who might read your stuff. You can boost a FB post every now and then with a similar style book for $10 or $20. See the readers who are clicking that. Then you can ask if they'd like a free story and you can send yours. See if you can start building your readership.

  Your book needs to be edited. Editing can be done by beta readers if you can find them or by software such as Grammarly—which is inexpensive, and good, but not an end-all. Self-edited books usually look it. (No offense to those who can pull it off, but usually, you are already well-established and know what you're doing.)

  Covers: research the covers in your genre and then look through the pre-made cover providers and see if something is as close as you can get to your book. These will cost $100 to $200 or so. If you can do it yourself, understand good cover design and not necessarily great art. They are not one and the same.

  Reserve your domain name and if you can afford it, s
tart building a website. You need a real email. (If you show up with an AOL email, people won't take you seriously, and AOL emails sometimes get blocked by other email providers as AOL has been compromised too many times.)

  Publish: It costs nothing to publish on Amazon and then you can use AMS ads, which are relatively low cost.

  Total cost to publish? $250 and a bunch of time. Total cost to be taken seriously as an author? There is no price on that because that comes from the stuff you can't buy—a great story, well-written, a public persona that readership in your genre can relate to and want to follow, and a work ethic that says, I can do this.

  Snippets, Blogs, and Social Media – Oh my!

  Snippets are bits and pieces of your story. You can post them on your blog or directly to Facebook, maybe even 140 characters at a time on Twitter. Some people have success on Instagram, but the base premise is the same. Share bits and pieces of the story to build interest without the hard sell.

  The Hillcat looked up, disdain clear on his furry face.

  “Why are you such an ass?” the human asked. The cat yawned, found the human’s blanket, and curled up.

  I could post that with a picture of the cat and a coming soon, Snippet #2 from The Free Trader… Yes, I have a series with a cat as a main character, and don’t be surprised at the demographics of my readership.

  I’ve posted entire chapters before as part of a cover reveal. I always share the cover well before the book goes live. I believe the cover drives excitement. I always share my ever-growing cover wall because I am proud of my covers. I’ve had quite a few re-done. That’s okay. It drives up the cost per book, but always pays off. I have never had a new cover not pay for itself, even on my short stories.

  The whole thing is to generate interest. Write well and share it. I can put more on my blog and that gives me more flexibility with formatting (something as simple as italics) and then link to the blog from one of my Facebook pages.