Something For Nothing?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum Marketing. I sold 150 times as many books last Wednesday than I usually do on Amazon Kindle. I say sold, maybe moved units might be more germane. For they were all free of charge to the, um purchaser.

I wasn't doing it as any promotion. The book, an anthology of flash fiction, has already been out for 9 months. The organiser of the inaugural flash fiction day asked if me and others would consider making our anthologies free as part of the events of the day and I said yes. Without imagining any consequence of just such a move, for I simply wanted to contribute to the day dedicated to promoting the profile of the flash fiction art.

I had to seek his advice as how to make one's book free, since I'd never done it before. First thing was I had to enter the book into KDP Select, which was something I'd also studiously avoided as I couldn't see its relevance to my work. After that the process was quick and easy, but I'd been advised that the timings of the 24 hours of your offer were taken from the US not the UK. I resolved that in order to ensure that the full scope of the 24 hours of National Flash Fiction Day were covered by the offer no matter where you were in the world (sorry Australasia, not sure if I covered you entirely), I actually set it up for two days, the 15th and 16th May.

So the offer went live sometime on the 15th May. I made not a single plug or announcement of the offer on the 15th, since to me it really concerned the 16th May's festivities. (I covered the 15th to ensure people in the Uk could get it for a full 24 hours of the 16th, being 5-7 hours ahead of the US). There was a link from National Flash Fiction Day's own website, but again it was trumpeting launch day of the 16th. And yet lo and behold lots of units moved on the 15th. Mainly in the USA it has to be said.

So what did that suggest to me? These purchasers could only have come by the book and the offer by trawling for that day's free books. Perhaps they did this every or most days at least. Perhaps they do it once in a blue moon when they need something to read and America being so large, this was the cohort who just happened to be looking on this day and in categories pertinent to my book. I wondered if those same people surfed on the 17th May, using their same search requirements of genre and the like, whether they would have bought the book for its modest price of $2.89.

Once the day of the 16th dawned, then the British take up of the offer started to catch up to the US one, though US sales continued to tick over. That was unsurprising since National Flash Fiction Day, though international, originated and centred in the UK. I even appeared in the upper reaches of the charts of Literary and short fiction on Amazon Kindle UK, which was nose-bleed territory for me. I'd never even bothered to consult them before. I was just below the likes of Victor Hugo which seemed fair enough to me.

That started me thinking about the whole question of promotion through freebies. My book appeared in the free chart and would no doubt disappear within 24 hours once the offer had ended. Therefore how much of a boost could that inject to its profile? I suppose if one were able to link it in to other things such as a press release, a video or live reading it might engender a bit more sustainability. But otherwise, nice as it was, I couldn't quite see the long-term benefit.

But then there is the greater boon of my work being introduced to 150 new readers. Even if only 5% of them were to read and review, that would represent an enormous and lasting boost to the book's profile on Amazon. But of course I have no way of knowing who these purchasers are to gently nudge them via social media. Particulalry those Americans who bought before the offer was advertised. I do have more idea of some who might have interacted through National Flash Fiction Day's site, plus of course my own endeavours via social media.

So what are the benefits to promotion from day long giveaways? Apart from getting your work into the hands of more readers, I'm not sure there are any useful ones. And while any writer welcomes more readers, I do wonder if the way of Amazon and Kindle shopping means there is a tranche of readers who maybe only want something for nothing?

In many ways I have no problem with that. Many of the stories in the anthology first appeared on my blog where they were therefore available for free. If a writer only writes to be read, then maybe we should give our work away for free (although there's still no guarantee that the book will reach an audience, though the evidence above suggests it probably will). But then what price art and artists in this? A writer is to make no money from their endeavour? Maybe that's how it is to be, a return to the days of the tribal storytellers around the campfire, entertaining their kinsfolk but maybe only for the price of their meal cooked on the spit.

We write because we love it right? That we choose to spend time at the keyboard rather than go out drinking with mates or seeing a movie. Do we expect to be remunerated for our time? I do think that art suffers when it is entirely drawn into a commercial nexus. That is when the main considerations have to be about commerce rather than artistic content. But maybe I'm deluding myself. Here's an earlier post on the issue of art and artists.

I'd love your responses to this as I'm genuinely rather baffled by the whole experience.

The Kindle Adventure

I'd always been against e-readers. I'd regarded them as being about delivery systems and not content and as both my writing and personal preferences for reading are not about convenience or fitting in with a certain lifestyle, I took no interest in them.

While I still don't possess an e-reader of my own, I have become converted to putting my own books out in e-format. I had always viewed, perhaps sentimentally, the book as an artefact. A solid, tangible thing, a collectible. Something that had a material substance in my bookshelves. I always viewed my own work as embodying everything about literature. That is it started with the cover and extended to the words inside as part of a whole experience. Some of my projects involve design and typographical elements and I was fairly certain their integrity could not as yet be preserved in e-reader format.

So what has caused a change of heart and mind in me?

1) Well the debut novel tracked on this blog has been out in print for 21 months now. I have been marketing it solidly for that time, but its natural cycle has probably come to an end. The kindle opportunity may allow it to have a new sales impetus, with a whole new e-reader market being opened up. A couple of Twitter folks have asked if it's in e-reader format and asked me to let them know if (and now when) it will be in e-form.

2) In addition, there has been one serious flaw I feel with my POD experience. I am unhappy with the reporting of sales by my POD publisher/printer. I know I have sold more than my sales statement through conversations with specific readers via social networking. They have sent me pictures of my own book. Of course I don't get this from every reader, and have no precise figure of actual sales, but for example I know the declared sales from America seems woefully under-reported. I have asked the publishers to look into the last 2 sales periods, but other than an acknowledgement of my query, have received nothing. It is not clear to me if the problem lies with the printers, or the publishers themselves. I am highly disatisfied with this aspect of the service, but they really have me over a barrel. I can't prove anything. I only have anecdotal evidence. It has in truth soured my taste for POD publishing. Comparing notes with a couple of other writers who use the same service, suggests I am not alone with this feeling.

3) I still only ever received 1 of my 5 filmed book trailers. Taking receipt of any of the others would be a waste of time and money now. Unless, a kindle release could be timed to coincide with one or more of these new trailers. Mind you, there's no guarantee I'll still take receipt of any of them as finished... But it remains a tantalising possibility.

4) The joy of a kindle release now, is that I can re-edit the novel. Through doing live readings, I have come to learn so much more about my book. Performing it live really shows you what works and what doesn't. If I stumble over something, what chance the reader grasping it? The writer may let go of a book at the end of the writing process, but the book may never be truly 'complete'. This affords me a wonderful advantage of tweaking bits here and there and hopefully improving them. This sort of thing happens all the time in new editions of non-fiction, but non-simultaneous editions and the ease of reuploading new kindle editions allows for this to happen in fiction.

5) If that wasn't privilege enough, the kindle edition can also come out with new cover art work. The tree edition cover was something I'd had in my mind for two years before the book came out. The concept was refined and refined and the POD company got the gist of it in their two goes at rendering my brief, if not quite how I'd envisioned it. Yet it wasn't their shortcomings that engendered a new cover for the kindle. The fault is all mine. It just goes to show the vagaries of the creative process, but despite me settling so firmly on the original concept, lo and behold after the book was out a wholly different and far superior image came to mind. It emerged out of my video trailers, an image I storyboarded turned into something I realised could stand for the novel as a whole. Well the kindle version is going to afford me the opportunity to realise it. And though I'm going to post here separately on book cover art and e-readers, there can be a relief that the e-reader format does not require a back cover nor spine, thus making a new front cover more palatable.

6) I haven't had anything new out in the market place for those 21 months. I've had plenty of flash fiction on my blog, but that is fixed in situ, not something that gets distributed to readers. As a writer in the market place, I have had no new impetus for nearly two years now. A debut, then seemingly nothing. Well the first idea is to collate and publish those flash fictions in e-reader format as an anthology. But I am first and foremost a novelist. I had three other novels completed. One simply can't lend itself to e-format at present because of a host of typrgraphical demands within it. One is a novella and I'm still editing that. But the third is ready to go and had been knocked back by publishers because of its inflammatory subject matter, that of homegrown suicide bombers. It seemed to me that it could perfectly be pitched on kindle and sink or swim under its own auspices as to whether it found a readership or not.

So not only will I be bringing out my print novel in kindle format, but there will be a completely new novel and an anthology, all released at the same time. Is that overly-ambitious? At £1.50 and £1 download price, I don't believe it is. Were they 3 print editions simultaneously released at £7.99 then that could well be biting off more than I can chew.

I'll let you know how the decision turns out as well as the process of actually converting my Word document to kindle and how easy or not that turns out to be.