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 by Jon F. Merz

The Freedom of Choice

By Jon F. Merz

One of the best things about being an author in the 21st century is the freedom of choice. For years, writers have been forced to accept whatever terms NYC publishing houses deemed generous in order to get our books out to the masses. Since NYC houses had a monopoly on the distribution system (unless an author could afford to print and distribute their own work) authors, if they had any hope at all of achieving their goals of being published, had to accept those terms as part of doing business.

No more.

With the advent of ebooks and both the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook, authors now have the freedom to choose how they get their work to readers. They can opt to stay with NYC houses or they can go the indie route. Both options have their pros and cons. Let’s look at them:

Traditional or Legacy Publishing Route – PROS

  • Public Perception: the reading public still tends to think that self-published work is of lesser quality. (This, of course, is erroneous and the perception is changing albeit slowly.) A book “vetted” by NYC still looks better to consumers than an indie one.
  • Paper Distribution: your book is available in major chains like Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Powell’s, and a few others. Indie bookstores might order it or they might not.
  • Marketing: this is a BIG MAYBE. There’s always a chance your book is gifted with marketing dollars and the publisher actually puts some muscle behind you in order to move copies.

Traditional or Legacy Publishing Route – CONS

  • Advances: the average advance for a debut novelist AND a midlister with experience is now just $5,000 bucks. That’s it.
  • Royalty Rates: digital is becoming king but publishers still try to take as much as they can. The ebook royalty rate is 25% NET, which equals a measly 17.5% after your agent takes a cut.
  • Accounting: Ever seen a royalty statement? They’re virtually impenetrable unless you know what you’re looking at. You get two of them each year. If your book is selling well, that means you get paid TWICE each year. That’s it.
  • Reserves Against Returns: since publishing uses this bizarre business model that should have been abolished eons ago, they hold back a large chunk of any money you made in case bookstores return unsold copies of your book for credit. Your royalty statement might show that you earned our your advance and are due say, $3500, but since your publisher think stores might ship back unsold copies of your book they’re just going to hang on to that $3500 for now. They *might* release *some* of it in the next statement, or they might hang on to it a little while longer. That means they’re earning interest off of your money.
  • Reversion Clauses: your print book might go the way of the dinosaurs, but that doesn’t mean it’s out-of-print anymore. Nowadays, your ebook will be available pretty much forever. That means any hope you have of getting your rights back one day is about as likely to happen as you suddenly tripping over a spaceship.
  • EBook Price: most NYC ebooks are horribly overpriced. No one should be paying $16.99 for an ebook. No one.
  • Editing: if you have any hope of being edited by some prestigious editor, think again. Editors don’t edit anymore. Of the 30 novels I’ve published – exactly ONE of them got any edits at all.
  • Time: publishers can take up to TWO YEARS from the time you sign the contract until the book actually makes it out into stores. That sort of time span might have worked before the dawn of the Internet, but things move MUCH faster these days.
  • Cover Art: You don’t have any say over cover art. Get rid of this fantasy right now. When St. Martin’s picked up THE KENSEI and I talked to them about the branding we were doing with the TV show and how it would make perfect sense to have brand continuity between the book and TV show to help build an audience, my suggestions were completely shot down and overruled. They presented me with a cover I hated and I demanded changes. They made a few slight changes. But the point here is that if they couldn’t even see the rationale behind building brand continuity for a series heading to TV, there’s no chance in hell they’re going to listen to you.
  • Attitude: The publishing industry is full of people who *think* they know what the reading public wants. And they like to prattle on endlessly about their skill in picking new bestsellers and all that related horse crap. The fact is, NYC editors have no greater understanding about consumer mentality than you or I do. After all, these are the same wizards who brought you novels by Snooki. When my novel THE NINJA APPRENTICE was making the rounds in NYC for eighteen months, my agent heard all manner of astoundingly stupid comments like “boys don’t read,” “this would be great if the hero was a girl,” and “this doesn’t have any commercial appeal.” THE NINJA APPRENTICE, since its debut on May 8, 2012, has gone on to sell over 1300 copies, garnered nothing but 5-star reviews, and been selected as summer reading choices for several high schools and literacy groups.

Indie Publishing – PROS

  • Complete Control: Over everything. Cover art, layout, editing, copyediting, price, everything. You get to write what you want, when you want, knowing you can always publish it. Want to write a novel about brain-eating pixies from the alterna-Earth Paleolithic Era space twinkies? You can. And even if you only sell a few copies, you can still make pizza money writing it.
  • FREE to publish: It doesn’t cost you a damned thing to sell your work. There are no upfront fees with Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You *should* invest in a good cover design and ebook formatting, but in terms of actually publishing fees, there are none.
  • Monthly Paycheck: This is huge. 60 days after you start selling your book, you will start getting paid every single month via direct deposit into your bank account. March sales show up in your account at the end of May.
  • Royalty: If you price your book between $2.99-$9.99 on Amazon, you earn a 70% royalty rate. That’s a better rate than ANYONE who has ever been traditionally published.
  • Changes: Spot an error in the book? Open the file, make the changes, and re-upload it. That’s it fixed.
  • Time: Your book enters the upload pipeline and is available within 48 hours – as compared to up to TWO YEARS with traditional publishers.
  • Distribution: your book is available all over the world, depending on the platform. You now have global reach. With traditional publishers, you’d need to wait until you sell foreign rights in order to get that same distribution.

Indie Publishing – CONS

  • Public Perception: consumers might think your book quality is not good enough without a stamp of approval of NYC publishing. This sentiment is changing, however, and you can help further that change by ensuring that your cover looks as good or better than what NYC covers look like, your book is as error-free as you can get it, and your price point is reasonable.
  • Distribution: you don’t get a presence in stores that carry print books.
  • Many Jobs: You do it all: write it, edit it, promote it, check sales, etc. It can be overwhelming if you don’t discipline yourself on how to make time for all the tasks.
  • Stupid Commentary from the Entrenched: Clueless authors who have gotten wealthy from the old way of doing things are some of the most vociferous defenders of a failed system. They don’t want these changes because it represents a threat to their way of life (hmm, sorta sounds like the political landscape in this country right now…) They know that the digital revolution levels the playing field and they’ll no longer be at the top of the heap. So they write dumb letters (Scott Turow, president of the Author’s Guild, wrote a stunningly stupid piece defending the old publishing model – crazy since it was coming from an organization ostensibly devoted to protecting authors NOT publishers.)

So there’s a quick breakdown of the pros and cons of each. There is one more PRO to the indie publishing movement, however, and that is technology. Technology continues to move forward and more players are entering the publishing world all the time. Just this morning, Kobo announced its own self-publishing portal along the lines of Amazon’s KDP and Barnes & Noble’s Pubit! program. Along with Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and iBooks, there are now FIVE platforms indie authors can use to get their work into the hands of readers and earn a decent living doing so. I expect we’ll see more platforms arriving soon as well.

It’s a great time to be an author. The freedom of choice is something we’ve never had before, but thanks to the technology of the 21st century, we can now do what we love to do and earn a decent living doing so.

in Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / Uncategorized / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Intelligence Gathering 101: An Open Mind

(One of the more critical traits of anyone involved in intelligence gathering is the ability to keep an open mind. In one of my earlier posts on intelligence gathering, I stressed the importance of not letting ego impact an operative’s ability to remain objective. Maintaining an open mind is directly attributable to the necessity of keeping the ego in check as well. One does not work if the other is not firmly under control.)

Back when I was hanging around with an ex-special forces Korean War veteran named Tom, (“hanging around” is not entirely accurate – I was, for all intents and purposes, being mentored by him) we were both working at an eye care facility in the Boston area (I was the receptionist). Tom would create certain exercises that would drive home an important lesson he wanted me to understand. One such exercise started off easily enough, with Tom casually mentioning over lunch at McDonald’s that he wanted me to strike up a friendship with a guy named Farid. Farid, to my knowledge at that time, worked in the parking lot shack at the back of the building where the eye care facility was housed. He wore his hair in a tight perm that gave him a strange, somewhat greasy appearance. I’d see him every once in a while when some patient’s car needed to be moved or if someone had left their lights on. But that was it. I knew next to nothing, aside from the fact that he was about ten years older than I was.

I wasn’t crazy about the exercise; in my mind, I’d already formed a picture of Farid and could see very little point to creating a relationship. Tom questioned me about why I was reluctant and when I told him, he simply grinned and said that I should keep an open mind and not close myself off to possibilities simply because of preconceptions, stereotypes, or a media-distorted view of the world. He went on to state that good intelligence gathering is often the result of simply not hampering the organic flow of information – rather than forcing a set of parameters on to a situation. I wasn’t quite sure I knew what he meant at the time.

I also had no idea how to start a friendship with Farid. And it was really the first time in my life I’d actually had to put real thought into how I would make my approach. Tom had stressed previous to this exercise that forcing a connection was not his preferred method of establishing a relationship, unless there was no other option available or if time was an issue. He preferred a slow, methodical approach. I reflected on that earlier lesson and used that to start a casual friendship with Farid. I decided that I would start the next time he came to see me about a patient’s car, rather than me suddenly initiating something without pretext. I didn’t have long to wait; two days later, Farid came inside asking me to find a patient and let them know they had a flat tire. The patient was having his eyes dilated, which meant that whenever we released them, they would go outside wearing these insane wraparound Terminator-esque glasses so they didn’t fry their retinas in the daylight. He wasn’t going to be able to do much about a flat tire. I went outside and let Farid know the situation and then hung around while we debated the best course of action. Farid decided he would replace the tire with the spare so the patient could at least make it home. I got the patient’s car keys and together we replaced the deflated tire.

From there, the friendship grew organically. I made a point of swinging by to see how he was doing. During the summer months, the parking lot was an inferno and Farid kept a small fan going nearly all the time, even though he never complained about the heat. Gradually, the friendship grew and Farid was telling me about his family, what part of Lebanon he came from, and even began tutoring me in some very basic Arabic. And contrary to the picture I’d formed of him based on my limited interaction before striking up the friendship, Farid didn’t work at the parking lot – he and his brother owned it, along with several others in the Boston area. They were, in fact, quite wealthy and chose to work hard every day simply because that was what had been instilled in them by their father before they came to the US. Farid often spoke of his home and the olive trees that grew on his land in northern Lebanon. We spoke at length about how the civil war had devastated his country and how much he wished an end to the violence so that Lebanon could return to peace. Beirut, he told me, had once been the crown jewel of the Mediterranean and judging by the stories he told me, it must have been.

While this was going on, Tom would routinely ask about our conversations, question me about aspects of Farid’s life and friends and family. I realized that Tom’s exercise had numerous components to it, and on one level was actually producing fairly decent intelligence about a certain demographic within the Boston community. It was a fascinating lesson for me about the importance of making sure I maintained an open mind and refrained from injecting any of my subjectivity onto the situation. In Tom’s words, I was simply supposed to let Farid talk about whatever he wanted and let it go from there.

Had I not had an open mind, I would have never gotten to know Farid as well as I did. I would never have had the opportunity to see my own life enriched by his acquaintance, nor would I have had the opportunity to learn a great deal about the Lebanese immigrants who lived in the Boston area at that time. I also would not have had the chance to be introduced to a friend of Farid’s who would later turn out to be far more important than I knew then.

Tom’s lesson of keeping an open mind was one he swore by. In Tom’s neighborhood, he was surrounded by all manner of folks – recent immigrants from all over the world, college kids, gays and lesbians, families, corporate bankers, and more. And yet Tom knew how to blend seamlessly with each group – which always amazed me. Here was this grizzled old vet who’d seen his share of awful stuff in his lifetime and who, by most people’s standards, would have every right to be this opinionated, rigid man who clung to his stereotypes like they were a life preserver. Yet Tom was as open and welcoming as he could be. He knew how to talk to folks and, more importantly, listen. He made sure they felt entirely comfortable when he was around and as a result, they talked more and more. So much so, that Tom knew where the trouble was long before it arrived and was able to let the police and others know ahead of time. It was because of his open mind that he was so effective and keeping the peace in that neighborhood. Had he been judgmental or condescending toward one or more of the various demographics that lived there, he would never have had such a finger on the pulse of that place.

There are all too many examples of intelligence gathering gone awry – data collected to force a certain agenda or outcome or congressional action even. But truly good intelligence comes from where you sometimes least expect it and is only capable of being gathered if one has an open mind – not one closed off to the possibilities and potential that exist all around us. There’s no real sense in trying to gather information if you already have formed an opinion about someone or something; your ego and subjectivity have already compromised the data. Keeping an open mind is critical to being able to see and create opportunities where they may not have existed before. A narrow mind, on the other hand, constrained by the whims of ego is incapable of accurate and reliable intelligence gathering and only useful to those who seek to manipulate you.

in common sense / intelligence gathering 101 / life thoughts / Uncategorized 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Advice for New Indie Authors

By Jon F. Merz

I chimed in earlier today on Brian Keene’s blog about guest poster Glen Kirsch writing about his success with indie publishing and folks wondering whether Brian would be well-advised to think about a similar route. I posted a few of my own experiences to-date, but it got me thinking about what my advice would be to new writers and older, established writers who are considering the indie route. So here, then, are my thoughts on the topic. Bear in mind, this is my opinion only, but it’s based on roughly eighteen months worth of sales data.

NOTE: for the purposes of this post, I’ll assume your books are thoroughly awesome and reader-ready. No need to rehash the tired old maxims of “rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.”

1. Buy Scrivener: Scrivener is a fantastic word processing program that I now use for all of my writing. Coming from MS Word, it was a bit of a learning curve, for sure, but Scrivener boasts some excellent video tutorials that explain everything. Scrivener’s best feature is “compile,” which allows you to take your manuscript and turn it into an ebook, perfectly suitable for uploading to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as any other platform (iBooks, Kobo, etc.) that use the .epub file format. Scrivener formats both for Kindle (.mobi format) and regular .epub format. It’s quick, easy, and saves you a ton of money that you’d otherwise have to pay a professional ebook formatter. You can order Scrivener using these links (and yes, I am an affiliate, but only because I love the product so much!) Buy Scrivener 2 for Mac OS X (Regular Licence) | Buy Scrivener for Windows (Regular Licence)

2. Find an Artist: Find a great cover artist who can turn out NYC-quality cover art for your books. The goal is to NOT look indie. You don’t want consumers passing your books by because of sub-standard covers the scream indie publishing. Like it or not, many readers still equate indie publishing with self-published vanity crap. Your goal is to visually align yourself with the stuff coming out of New York, even if you’re doing the indie route. To that end, you need a damned good cover artist to render some great covers for you. I have a fantastic graphic designer who handles my Lawson Vampire series covers, re-did a cover for my horror novel Vicarious (I did the original), and even created the look for my latest release THE NINJA APPRENTICE. Consider the fact that paying for a great cover is an investment in your business. People tend to be visually-oriented, especially when it comes to online book shopping. You want something that really looks great, still looks good shrunk down to thumbnail size, and excites readers.

3. Write a Series: Seriously. If readers like your series, they will be anxious for more and that means you now have a built-in audience ready to buy your next adventure. So if you intend to create a series, get with your cover artist above and develop a “look” for the series. Going back to my Lawson Vampire series for a moment, you’ll notice that all of the covers feature Brandon Stumpf, the actor who plays Lawson in THE FIXER TV series. The font is the same, the design is the same. My graphic designer and I have built up brand awareness with these covers, even going so far as to do color overlays to help readers know at a glance that the blue overlay means it’s a novel, green for novella, and red for a short story. This is the kind of thing that you, as an indie author, now have complete control over. Use it to maximize your new business.

4. Build Your Personal Brand: Okay, you’re an author. So what? So are a veritable ton of other people. A bestselling author? Again, so what? In this day and age, you need to find something about yourself that is hopefully unique (or at least rare) and then use that to help you establish your author brand. I thought long and hard about what I do and who I am and eventually distilled my platform down to three things: writer, producer, ninja. I obviously write books, but I also have a production company with my good friend Jaime Hassett. And then I’ve been studying authentic Ninjutsu for over twenty years. There aren’t too many other authors who can say the same thing. So it works. Now, if you go to my Facebook fan page, or my Google+ page, or my Twitter account, or my LinkedIn page, or pretty much everywhere else, you’ll see that tagline: writer, producer, ninja. It’s been working very well for me and helps people quickly gain insight into what I do.

5. Study Social Media: The indie publishing route is far more effective today thanks to the rise of social media. You absolutely, positively NEED to study this stuff. I know, I know…so many of you are going to whine about not having time to write and all that related bullshit. Get over it. If you’re going the indie route – even partially – then you need to understand what the hell is going on with social media. It’s not enough to have an antiquated Livejournal account: hardly anyone is there anymore. (Don’t believe me? While Livejournal might have just over 37 million accounts, of those only 1.7 million are “active in some way” according to Livejournal’s own stats. And only a bit over 125,000 have updated in the last 24 hours.) You need to have a Facebook Page, a Google+ page, and a Twitter account at the very least. Then you need to know how to use those platforms to their maximum effect. Each is different. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Also, you need an active blog and a well-designed, visually-attractive website. I know a lot of horror authors who think that the bleeding eyeballs are the coolest thing ever. Maybe. But not on your professional website. Remember, this is a business now. Those days of doing the writer/hermit thing are over. You want to do indie and make a good living, you need to get out there and press the social media flesh.

6. Study Celebrity: You might laugh at this, but there are lessons to be learned from people who make their living in the public spotlight. They know how to interact with people, get their fans excited, and more. Writers have typically shunned such things in the past, but again, the indie route necessitates at least some interaction with the world at large. So the next time you attend a writer awards function, leave the Wrangler acid-washed jeans and death metal T-shirt at home. Instead, opt for a button-down shirt, blazer, dressy jeans, and shoes. Make sure how you present yourself in public matches up with how you portray yourself online.

7. Go Global: Understand that the indie route means you are going global. Amazon has storefronts in a half dozen countries right now with many more to come. Barnes & Noble has also talked of its intentions to go global. That means your book written in English is available in countries where English is not the first language. That’s great because it enables you to reach more consumers than previously possible with traditional publishing. It should also prompt you to think about getting your work translated. You’re no longer limited by the traditional distribution of foreign rights – meaning that if you sold rights to a German publisher, your book would only be available in Germany and anywhere else that particular publisher had the ability to distribute it. Now, you can get that book translated into German and sell it on Amazon’s German store platform and in every other Amazon country platform (potentially reaching many more German-speaking consumers than you would with a traditional subrights deal).

7a. Open Your Mind: This goes along with #7 above. The marketplace is global, so that means you will interact with people from all over the world. To that end, make sure you don’t come across as a raging racist xenophobe extremist homophobic piece of puke. Seriously. Cleanse thyself of such nonsense. Understand there are crazy people everywhere on this planet – but that there are also great people everywhere on this planet. Their views, religions, lifestyles may not be what you think is “correct” or “right” or what have you, but you need to respect them regardless. Don’t let yourself be known as a small-minded pinhead. There’s nothing unique or appealing about it.

8. Get a Newsletter: While social media is great, nothing beats having a newsletter list that is consistently growing and enables you to talk directly to thousands of people on a weekly or monthly basis. People who have subscribed to your newsletter are giving you implicit permission to talk to them directly via their email. Don’t abuse that privilege. Offer newsletter subscribers something each month – special exclusives like news, fiction, etc. I run a serialized Lawson adventure each month in my newsletter. It’s a freebie that I include as a way of saying thanks. That’s bundled around news, blog posts, advertisements of my books, shout-outs for friends of mine who are doing good for others, and more. Get a professional newsletter design, pay a monthly fee for an email service provider that offers up stats like open rate, click through rate (and URL destinations) and more. It’s another investment in your company that is well worth the cost. Then build up that list of subscribers. The more, the better.

9. Give To Get: Give more of yourself, not less. Talk to your fans and readers. Interact. The social media world means that people talk. A LOT. If they comment on your page, send you a Tweet, or an email, then you’d better be there to respond. I’m not saying drop everything and be available 24/7. But be ready to make an effort to communicate more readily. If these people are spending their hard-earned money on your products, you need to be willing to talk to them. Many companies are finding out the hard way that ignoring customers is about the worst thing you can do. And the companies who are succeeding are finding that the more they engage with their customers, the better their reputation becomes and the more people spend on their products, talk up the company, etc. etc. If one of your fans is having problems, try to help them in some way – even if it’s just taking the time to send a special email. Treat your readers and fans like gold, because they are. This isn’t something to fake – you have to be sincere in this appreciation or else people will abandon you for another author.

10. Study Tangential Businesses: More studying? Yep. Grab a few minutes of Bloomberg Television in the morning while you much on your Honeycombs. Pick up an issue of Fortune or Entrepreneur. Learn about emerging tech businesses that might impact digital publishing or spark an idea on how you can position yourself to take advantage of things long before anyone else does. Back when Myspace was relevant, I was the first author to reach out and partner with them on a serialized Lawson adventure THE COURIER. Myspace hyped it; I hyped it, and I accumulated a ton of new fans over the month-long project. That’s just one example. Savvy “authorpreneurs” (a phrase I’ve coined for this new generation of indie authors who are smart) are always on the lookout for new opportunities.

11. Set a Production Schedule: New material is essential in the indie age. A novel a year is not enough. I’m ramping my own production schedule up so that I have something new coming out every other month – whether it’s a short story, novella, novel, or non-fiction piece. If you’re still under contract for projects, split your time between working your contracted stuff and your indie stuff. Give the people what they want – and what they want is more stuff to read.

12. Expect Cycles: This is new territory and nothing is predictable…yet. 2011 started off amazing for me, but then I went through a sales slump. Even during my worst month, I was still selling several thousand ebooks and making thousands of dollars, but it was a far cry from Spring 2011. So expect that things may be up one month and down the next. The key is to never have to rely too heavily on any one single title. This is why #11 is so essential. If you can reasonably expect that each novel in your virtual shelf will sell, say, 50 copies each month then that is somewhat bankable. Multiply that across a half dozen titles and now you’ve sold 300 ebooks and made anywhere from $600 bucks to several thousand. As long as you reach that minimum threshold each month, you’ve got the makings of a fairly consistent income. And then every time you add a new title, you’re basically giving yourself a raise. Not bad.

Best of luck as you forge a path in the indie world. I hope this post has been useful to you. If you’ve enjoyed it, please share it around with others. Thanks for reading!

in Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / how I write / lawson / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / THE FIXER TV series / the ninja apprentice / Uncategorized / writing 0 comments