E-publishing is making ways of sharing stories feasible that weren’t when physical books were the only option for self-publishers. We’ve seen a return of novellas and short stories, as well as a surge in serialized fiction, both by independent authors and by publishers (Amazon has been putting out Kindle Serials for several months now).

Though I mull over the idea of writing a serial now and then, I haven’t put anything together yet (unless you want to count certain cliffhangers at the ends of certain novels… ahem), but I’ve got a great guest post for you today from someone who’s done a lot of research in regard to the effectiveness of publishing serialized ebooks as a way to earn an income as an author.

Monetizing Serialized Fiction by Zachary Bonelli

Thank you for having me on your blog, Lindsay.

My name is Zachary Bonelli. I’ve been writing in my free time for over a decade. Last year I decided to take the story I’d been working on forever, Voyage, and realize it as science fiction serial.

Voyage’s format eluded me for a long time. Like most writers, I’d just assumed I was writing a novel. If it’s that long as a whole, what else would it be, right?

One of the most liberating moments in my career as a writer was the moment I realized Voyage was not a traditional novel, but in fact a serial. I was finally able to give myself permission to tell the story in the way I wanted to tell it, unrestricted by the conventions of novels, which were holding my story back.

The most important way that a novel differs from a serial is that a novel’s chapters cannot stand independently of the novel as a whole, whereas each episode of a serial can.

Voyage consists of largely independent, novella-length episodes that weave together to form a bigger narrative. Serialization was definitely the right choice for this project in terms of style and execution.

But was it the right choice in terms of marketing?

Choosing to go serialized is a mixed bag. There are some big advantages, but also some important disadvantages to consider. At nine episodes into my massive seventy episode arc, and with a second serial on the way soon, here’s what I’ve learned about working with this format.

Pros

Higher Return on Investment

A few months back, I did an interview on Google+ with developmental editor David Arney on the topic of return on investment for serialized fiction as opposed to the standard novel. David pulled items from Amazon’s Top 100 list, approximated their word count based on page length, then worked out the return on investment for each book.

While the novels averaged a mere $8.15 per hour, the serialized fiction averaged $20.89. Releasing smaller works more often, it turns out, causes revenue per word to shoot through the roof. [Click to tweet]

Customers are less likely to feel reticent about many small purchases spread out over time, even if they are many in succession, and even if they add up to more than what they would have spent on a single large purchase.

Here’s a concrete example. Let’s say you’ve got a 100,000 word epic novel. If it’s possible to break that epic into 10 episodes of 10,000 words each, then you can charge $.99 for each one as opposed to $3.99-$6.99 for the whole thing. And, you can still market the collected epic after the individual episodes have run their course.

More Frequent Releases

We’re all aware of the awesome impact of social media. Facebook, Google+, and Twitter permeate our modern collective conscious. I’ve even heard mumblings that they now are our collective consciousness.

Whether you find that prospective frightening or exciting, the fact remains that the mechanics of social media play well with the mechanics of publishing serialized fiction.

We all know that we’re only supposed to blog and tweet and post when we have something relevant to say about our work. Just spewing out your book’s Amazon link ad nauseum is likely going to get you ignored. When you have a single novel, you get to push its release, then maybe when it gets a review, or maybe when something relevant in the real world relates to your book.

When you have a serial, a legitimate reason to post is every time you release an episode. Not to mention any time any of the above legitimate reasons applies to any single episode you’ve ever released.

More Engaged Readership

More frequent releases mean a more engaged readership. Each episode that you release on schedule adds to the perception that you are a dependable source for new content.

Post your release schedule on your website. Make it public once you’re sure you can meet the deadlines. And whatever you do, make sure you have enough content built up in advance that your schedule isn’t blown away if something unforeseen happens in your personal life (or your other career, if you’ve got one).

For example, you can see my timeline for releasing Voyage: Embarkation and Insomnium are public and therefore do not change. The second Voyage arc, Windbound, has a tentative release schedule, but I haven’t made the page public, because it might yet change.

Narrative Structure Opportunities

Since a novel is a single, giant block of narrative, you really have no control over where the reader will put the book down and pick it up again. A serial gives you more control.

By strategically placing the breaks between stories or by skillfully weaving just the right detail into an episode’s closure, you can make the reader squirm. You can make them need to know what happens next. And since you control the release schedule, it will, by definition be a week or two or three before the reader can continue the story.

I’ve written before about how I feel that the cliffhanger can be used manipulatively. But in terms of raw, profit-driving potential, it’s hard to ignore just how effective this trick is. Simply have the conclusion of an episode leave the main characters in some dangerous situation, unresolved.

I need to reiterate here the two things that drive me nuts about cliffhangers. First, your cliffhanger should not come out of left field, a kind of inverse deus ex machina. Your cliffhanger will feel “thrown in.” I recommend it be the natural consequence of your narrative’s progression. Second, do not resolve cliffhangers in a way that relies on luck or circumstance. These are the two easiest ways to make a cliffhanger feel hollow and forced.

There are other narrative techniques you can use. The serial gives you the unique opportunity to explore characters across a wide variety of stories and situations. How do they respond to this change? How do they grow over time? A novel usually follows characters over one stage of growth and development. A serial gives you the opportunity to explore many stages and for many characters.

Cons

Perhaps Not the Greatest Entry Point

One of the most disheartening moments of my career as an independent author so far came when Goodreads posted the results of their 2012 user surveys. See the section titled “Please, Sir, I Want Some More.”

As the graph clearly shows, readers are fairly interested in reading serialized fiction from well known, established authors. However, for an unknown author, interest plummets to an abysmal 54% of Goodreads users saying that they are not at all interested in reading serialized fiction from someone new.

Well, bummer.

I am committed to the serialized format. Voyage is a serialized story by its nature, and I will pursue it to completion as such.

However, if you have the option of starting a new project as either a novel or a serial, the data speaks for itself.

Remember the upsides! If serials are your passion, perhaps you could write a few short stories and novellas first, put those out, then start your serialized fiction.

Lindsay has written before about not putting all your eggs in one basket. By maintaining a diverse portfolio of writing, you can spread risk around.

More Inventory to Manage

Above I talked about how great it is to have so many books out there on the market. Well, there’s a dark side to that benefit. You’ve got to manage that inventory. To boot, you will lose more time to releases because they will happen more frequently and for smaller works. And oh, if only you knew how much time I lose to updating the backmatter in extant Voyage episodes. Oi.

This is definitely something to consider when starting a serial. If your serial is twenty episodes long, are you going to update the backmatter on each ebook as a new one becomes available? How are you going to communicate to readers at the end of an episode when the next one will become available and how to get it? Will you have to update the messaging after every release?

This kind of work compounds upon itself. At episode two’s release, you have to update episode one. At three’s release, you update one and two. At four’s release, one, two and three. This is called a linear growth curve. And it is not fun. Trust me.

Build in coping mechanisms. For example, in Voyage, I plan to make the backmatter for all episodes in the Embarkation arc static once the Windbound arc begins. In other words, I won’t have to update those at every release anymore.

Readership Communication Issues

Novels have a long literary history. The narrative form goes back at least a couple of centuries. The standards and expected styles of novels are very clearly established, and they have been more or less stable since the inception of the form.

Serials, though they’ve been around almost as long, do not enjoy consistency over their history or any establishment of standards. They started with writers like Charles Dickens and Herman Melville in the nineteenth century, but petered out quickly into the twentieth. They experienced some stops and starts in the professional publishing world, little side roads along the way, never leaving the realm of genre, before finally getting appropriated fully by television in the 1960’s.

Readers and feedback givers who don’t understand the rules of serialized fiction, or that you’re even writing a serial, may judge your serial on the terms of a novel. This is not good.

My famous example of this is my botched attempt to market multiple episodes of Embarkation together in chunks I called “parts.” It was only after an angry blog comment from a potential customer, who thought I was attempting to sell groups of unfinished novel chapters, that I realized I had a communication problem.

Episodes can be marketed individually because they can stand on their own, and the term “episode” communicates that intent. Call your episodes just that—episodes. Don’t use a different term like “part” or “chapter.” This will just create confusion.

I am still working on what you call the book collections of episodes that form a story arc. So far, “arc” and “sequence” are all I’ve got. Sean Platt and David Wright group their works into “seasons,” but that term is a remnant of a time in cable television history when episodes of television shows aired over the course of a particular yearly season in a cycle of filming, production and release. I’m not a fan of that term, but if it became standard for serialized fiction, I’d adopt it to clarify my market positioning.

Eventually, one term or the other will win out, and all of us doing serials will adopt that. Until then, feel free to contribute to the diaspora of lexical choices.

Challenges Managing a Sprawling Multiverse

I highly recommend joining a writing critique group. It’s one of the best things you can do for your development as a writer.

I get a lot of feedback from my peers, most of it useful, some of it not to my liking, and on some rare occasions, I find myself reeling at the things I hear. This is all part of growing as a writer.

However, there is one type of feedback on Voyage that has never, ever been silly or frivolous or inane: consistency of world details.

It is very hard to manage all your details in a novel. But a novel is one story. Maybe two or three intertwining stories. The number of stories in a serial is the number of episodes you have. And all of those have to be both internally consistent, and consistent in the larger context of your serial’s mega-narrative. As a result, it is woefully easy for an episode’s details to come into conflict with previously established story.

Get lots of eyes on your work before release, and build up a group of smart beta readers who pay close attention to details.

~

Serialized fiction has its share of positives and negatives, just like any other format. After writing in the serialized fiction format for many years, it’s my belief that doing a serial, even a short one, can be very beneficial, especially as part of a larger portfolio of writing.

~

Zachary Bonelli is the author of the ongoing Voyage Along the Catastrophe of Notions series. It is currently in the middle of its first sequence, Embarkation. He is active on the Google+ Science Fiction Writers community, and muses about serialized fiction, and randomly as well, on his blog.

Insomnium, Zachary’s second serial, is due out this October. He is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the series’ cover art on Kickstarter.

If you take a look at the indie authors doing well out there (i.e. those who’ve been able to quit the day job and write full time), most of them have a number of books out. I had four novels and several shorter stories out before I started thinking, “Hm, maybe this could be the day job.” Now I have eight novels out, and it is the day job. Just having novels out isn’t the only factor though; six of my eight books are part of a series (and the others are part of a mini two-book series that ties in with the first).

A lot of successful authors, self-published and otherwise, have a core series that accounts for the majority of their income. So if you’re starting out, you should definitely focus on putting out a series… right?

Well, maybe. I thought I’d take a look at some of the pros and cons of focusing all your efforts into publishing multiple books in a series.

Pros

• As I’ve mentioned, if a series takes off, it can not only pay the bills every month, but it can become that reliable source of income that allows you the freedom to quit the day job (while there are no guarantees in publishing, it’s likely that you’ll have X number of people buying your new releases when you put them out, so you can predict your income months in advance, something that’s hard to do if every book is a new, unrelated one that might — or might not — appeal to readers).
• It can grow on people, making them more likely to share the series via word-of-mouth. With rare exceptions, most books are pretty forgettable, especially as the months and years pass and you read lots of other things. The more books a person reads with a certain set of characters, though, the more likely that series will stick in their memories, and the more likely, too, that they might think to share the title with friends looking for new reads. It’s unlikely that Harry Potter would have been a huge phenomenon if Rowling had stopped at Book 1!
• Advertising dollars can go a long way. I’ve talked about everything from paid advertising to doing book tours and submitting to review sites here. With a lot of these things, it’s difficult to break even (even if the only investment is time — time is valuable!) on the sales of one book. If your book is priced at $2.99, and you make $2 per sale, a $200 advertisement has to move a lot of copies for you. (The numbers are far worse for $0.99 novels.) But, if you have a series, and you can expect a certain number of people who try Book 1 to go on and buy the next five books, you stand to make more from your time or your advertising dollar.

Cons

• The big one here, and I’ve seen it often, is what if Book 1 doesn’t catch on? If, for whatever reason, people don’t twig to it, nobody’s going to buy the others in the series. And if you’ve invested a lot of time in writing a sprawling six-book epic… ouch.
• You might be missing out on more success by sticking to one series. Now, if you’re doing well with your first series, this might not be an issue, but maybe you’re selling a few hundred books a month and thinking that’s not bad, but in the meantime you have this idea for a different series that you’re putting off because you’re focusing on the first series. And what if that other series is the one that might really take off? In this case, you might be limiting yourself.
• If Book 1 of your series is your first novel, it may very well be the weakest novel you have out. Ask any seasoned writer, and she usually cringes a bit when talking about her first published novel. And it’s not uncommon to see reader reviews along the lines of, “If you stick with the series, it’s gets better in the second book.” Well, not everyone is going to stick with the series. Book 4 might be where you really hit your stride, but you’re having to focus on selling Book 1 because that’s where people start.

Is there a way to balance the pros and cons?

I think so. Whether this is feasible for you or not is going to depend on how prolific and how patient you are, but you may want to start two or three different series, or at least put out a couple of stand-alone books that could be turned into a series if they do well. Once you have these starter books out, you can spend time on advertising each one and see which has the most potential.

I inadvertently did this myself, publishing the two novels I had ready, Encrypted and Emperor’s Edge in the first month that I got started. I’d always had a series planned for the Emperor’s Edge characters, but if Encrypted had taken off for some reason (I confess, that was my second novel, and I’ve always thought it was a better story than EE1), I could have developed a series with the characters. Early on, I also gave pure steampunk a try with my Flash Gold novellas. It’s hard to compare novellas with novels (I’ve always found that my book-length works sell better), but if those had started selling extremely well, I could have written more of them. (I’m still planning to write a couple more, but they’re in no danger of dethroning EE as my flagship series, so I’ve had my focus on EE this last couple of years.)

What do you guys think? Have you had better luck focusing on one series or in writing multiple series? Or are you a screw-series-I-prefer-stand-alone-novels-thank-you-very-much person?

If you’ve ever thought about writing with another author, you might enjoy today’s guest post with Catherine Nault and Mana Findley. They met online and have written Shadow War: Innocence, their first book (something they managed in a few short months) and are working on their second, all without ever meeting face-to-face. They have some resources and advice to share with others who may be thinking of going this route.

I’ll let them take over from here!

Collaborating and Co-Authoring Books

Thank you, Lindsay, for hosting us today.

Without further ado, on to the introductions. We are the writing duo Catherine Nault and Mana Findley. Just over eight months ago, we decided to write together, and recently published our first novel, Shadow War: Innocence, with a second book in the Shadow War series due out by the end of summer. Over the past few months, we’ve learned a lot about writing, editing and publishing a book, and how to work with each other. To some, this may not sound like a big achievement, but to us, it is. You see, we’ve never met face to face!

Co-authoring a book with someone you only know through online communications brought unique challenges we needed to address and are still now learning to manage. Here are a few of the lessons we learned along the way. But first, a little background on both of us.

Our meeting and getting to know each other

CN: It all started on Lindsay’s forum, where we connected and started working together on some short stories (ok, fanfiction… what can I say, we’re fans!). Then came the idea of making our association somewhat more serious and working on a longer, original novel. There were many hurdles to overcome, not the least of which being that we barely knew each other.

MF: Catherine and I realized early on in our association that each of us “see” different parts of the same scene. Yet, our writing styles function well together. We compensate for each other’s weaknesses and we combine our strengths to produce better writing than we’d do individually.

Right as we were finishing one short story, Catherine approached me with an idea about one of the main characters in what would become Shadow War. After lots of back and forth in which the original idea morphed into a complete story arc (at least three books!), we decided to try to to write our own novel.

Our writing ways

CN: Shadow War: Innocence was our first attempt at a “formal” writing system between us, and we learned a lot by trial and error. Our first challenge was finding a way to both work on our draft together. With me in Canada and Mana in the States, the distance separating us is not easily traveled. The best way we found of doing so was by using Google Drive. In Drive, two or more people can write in the same document at the same time, and the changes will appear immediately for everyone to see. It’s not a perfect solution, but it serves our purposes as it allows us to both see and edit each other’s writing in real time.

Apart from Google Drive, we use instant messenger to keep in contact and discuss plot points, disagreement, editing, and anything else that’s needed to keep working (and uh… lots of things not in any way linked to writing).

MF: Innocence was written in chapter format. I kept a spreadsheet of the chapters and the general scene contents. I used that document every day to keep track of where I was, and referred back to it for continuity checks. Writing in chapter format was nice for story flow, but hard as could be when you needed to move a scene around.

In Shadow War: Betrayal, we approached the draft differently. We are writing it scene by scene, not caring about defining chapters while doing the first draft. A little like with Scrivener, it allows us to play with scene placement within the chapters as we didn’t have a detailed outline from the start. This has been good and bad. Reading the story for flow seems to be negatively affected, but moving around scenes is a heck of a lot easier.

As you can probably guess, our workflow is still a work in progress. Recently, we have also taken to leaving a note in each scene’s title for whose turn it is to edit it. It helps in being organized and assessing the amount of work left to do in the novel. We also use a website called Lino. Its biggest feature is the possibility to write digital post-it notes and “stick” them on boards. This is how I typically outline, and it has given me the ability to share my notes with Catherine.

Strengths and weaknesses of writing as a duo

CN: Writing with someone is not that different than being in a relationship. I sometimes joke that we need to learn to communicate and compromise like any couple would. At first, I was mostly afraid to suggest changes in the book without seeming pushy or overly critical.

Original Cover

Money was another issue, or more specifically, the spending of it. Since we’re just starting with the business side of writing, our royalties are still low. Still, there are some purchases we needed to consider: editing, cover art, website, and a few more that I’m probably forgetting. Some of those were easily solved: Mana is a programmer so she built our website herself; our awesome editor is also a friend from the Emperor’s Edge forum and she agreed to help us out in exchange for help building her own website. But there are some expenses we couldn’t avoid. We released Innocence with a cover we did ourselves, but it was clear it would be only a temporary solution. This probably was one of our hardest discussions since starting to work together, but after a lot of back and forth and some time to think about it, we decided to bite the bullet and pay for a professionally-made cover.

But without Mana to write with me, I don’t think I would ever have managed to release anything. She’s my everyday cheerleader, my critique partner, my best friend, and I couldn’t have done it without her.

MF: I think our strengths and weaknesses are similar to those of a single author. Everyone suffers through continuity changes and keeping the story straight. The distance adds a level to our organization. Since we can’t keep physical notes, everything from character sheets to world building and timelines has to be online where the other person can read it and add to it if needed.

During the nitty gritty of editing, we take turns reading what was written before and making it our own through highlights and strikethroughs of words. We alert the other to changes and they go in and approve/deny those changes and add their own touches. After several passes we end up with our agreed upon final draft.

As for Catherine’s last statement, I would have to say the same.

Challenges going forward

CN: We have so many projects in mind that we can continue writing together for years to come. Right now, our biggest challenge is probably to keep communicating about problems as they come up, and hope not to get into the fight of the century. Oh, and also actually sell books…

MF: I believe we will work through any communication issues, or other writing hang ups. My biggest challenge is time. I have several irons in the fire, as they say, and creating the time to write is difficult.

In conclusion

We appreciate you hosting us today. We enjoyed discussing how we collaborate. Somehow, it seems a lot more complicated when we try explaining it than simply doing it.

You can visit Catherine and Mana at their website,  follow them on Twitter or say, “Hi” on Facebook. Their first Shadow Wars book is available at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and other stores.

I get a lot of variations of this question from writers who are working on their first book and are planning to self-publish (or seek an agent and a traditional deal) in a few months. Since I didn’t have much of a master plan myself (it went like this: a) release first novel and b) try everything to sell it), but things eventually worked out for me, I usually say focus on writing more books and don’t worry much about the marketing for now.

Buuut, people don’t want to hear that. Go figure.

And I get it. When it’s your first book, it’s a big deal. If you’re anything like I was, it might have taken seven years to get that book to the point where you’re ready to share it. Who knows when the next one will be ready? Also, how will you know if it’s worth doing a series or a spinoff until enough people read the first that you have a gauge as to its commercial potential? Or, if you’re seeking an agent/publisher, how do you show that you have people who will buy that first book before you start querying it? (Yes, I understand that agents/publishers do check up on a potential author’s “platform” these days.)

So let me do a what-I’d-do-if-I-were-starting-today-knowing-what-I-know-now post. I’ll pretend I’m finishing up my first book and plan to publish it (or query it) in a few months.

Establishing a Fan Base Before You’re Ready to Publish/Query Your First Book

What I wouldn’t do

I’ll start out by talking about what many people do (I did too) and why that doesn’t work very well. A few months before the book is ready to go, they start a blog (usually on writing or the writing process), get on Twitter, and get on Facebook. They try to increase traffic/comments to their blog by commenting on all the other writing blogs out there. They try to increase Twitter followers by following the other writers out there (or maybe they’ll do a little better and realize they need readers who love their genre, and they’ll follow folks who mention books, science fiction, etc. in their Twitter bios). They’ll run contests or lobby other writers for likes to their Facebook page.

This is all largely ineffective (though it can make you appear popular, which may be enough for agents/publishers, but it won’t get you anywhere with sales). Why? Very few of these people will end up being your target readers, AKA people who love your writing style, your characters, and the type of story you weave.

It’s not that establishing connections with other writers and with readers in general can’t be useful (later on, after the launch, you may want to do some guest blog posts or interviews on their sites), but as far as building a fan base ahead of time goes, it’s a lot of work and not particularly effective.

What I would do

So there’s the “what not to do” side. What should you do? First off, realize that the people you really want subscribing to your blog, following you on Twitter, and liking your author page on Facebook are those who have read your work and LIKED it. Sure, it’s okay if you have other people (because I write about self-publishing and book promotion here, I get a lot of folks signing up for my newsletter who haven’t read my books), as you never know when someone might buy something to support you or might recommend you to others, but these shouldn’t be the people you target. You want readers who enjoy your work.

So, how do you find them when you haven’t released your book yet?

Ah, finally I get to the point! As I said, here’s what I would do if I were preparing for my first release today:

Start a website/blog and start posting samples of your work

Definitely grab your URL (yourname.com) early on. You can install WordPress (free) in a few minutes (most web hosts have a one-click install, or you can pay an internet-savvy friend to do it for a few bucks), and even if you’re not planning to blog, this can provide the framework for your site (more on finding a host, buying your URL, and setting up your site here), as you can create “pages” as well as “posts” with WordPress. All the free themes out there for WordPress mean you don’t need to pay anyone to design a special author site for you either (save that for later when you’re making money and need tax write-offs).

Once that’s set up, put a newsletter signup somewhere on the site (preferably on the front page or maybe on the menu so it shows up on every page). Let folks know what they’ll get if they sign up (coupons? free stories? access to early releases?)–it’s a good idea to provide an incentive.

Now post some of your work. Maybe it’s the first three chapters of your novel. Maybe you have some snippets from favorite scenes. Maybe you want to create some character interviews. Maybe you have lots of short stories that weren’t accepted for magazines/anthologies (or maybe they were and the rights have reverted back to you).

I think you’ll find you’ll get the most mileage here if these snippets tie in with your first novel. Some of my early sales success came from putting my Ice Cracker II short story out there everywhere I could. It features the two main characters from my Emperor’s Edge series (at the time, I only had the first EE book out), and it includes an excerpt of the novel at the end. I didn’t put it up on my website, because I was busy blogging about self-publishing then and trying to build an audience that way (remember, this is a do-what-I-say-not-what-I-did post), but I did put it everywhere else (more on that coming up).

Once you have some of your work up, you have something to tweet about on Twitter. I speak from experience here: people who will roll their eyes at yet another tweet advertising an ebook for sale will be more inclined to try something for free.

Give Wattpad a try

Trying to get readers to visit your website isn’t a bad idea (it’s the one place that your newsletter signup can be displayed right next to the work, so it’s ideal), but it’s a bit like having a garage sale versus putting something up on eBay. You have to work hard to drive traffic to your site, but the traffic is already there on eBay, and it’s already searching for the types of stories you write.

Wattpad has grown quite popular, and I started posting my own work there a few months ago. I’ve heard the site is more skewed toward the YA audience, especially young folks reading the stories via their smartphones, but I’ve still had some readers find EE and enjoy it (hey, even if the heroes aren’t teenagers, it’s the sort of thing I would have liked as a teen, when I wasn’t busy reading those Forgotten Realms books over and over). Within the last month or so, I’ve started hearing from Wattpad users who said they bought others in my series after finding me there, so it works.

Now, in my case, I had a whole novel I was willing to put up there. If you’re getting ready to launch your first book, you may not be ready to release it anywhere for free (though I’ve heard of authors putting a moderately-clean-but-not-yet-polished-and-professionally-edited version up on Wattpad, doing well, and having lots of folks ready to buy the final version when it was released). As with your website, you could try short stories or sample chapters. I’m sure you’ll do better if you post the whole book (I started getting a lot more readers for EE once it was marked “complete”), but that’s up to you.

Here are a couple of interviews I’ve done with authors who found some success on Wattpad:

• Can Posting Stories on Wattpad Help You Sell Books?
• How to Connect with Readers Using Wattpad

There are other sites like this, where readers are waiting for new stories to try, but Wattpad seems to be the big dog right now. You can also look into Scribd, Authonomy, and, if you have some Harry Potter or Star Trek fics buried on your hard drive, the various fan fiction sites. (As you’ve probably heard, there are quite a few authors doing extremely well now who got their starts and built their “tribes” on fan fiction sites.)

Even though I came late to Wattpad (I’m planning to start releasing the first book of my next series there, starting a few weeks before I publish the novel), I like these sites because you can reach a lot of people who aren’t the same folks hitting Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. and browsing for books. Don’t make the mistake of looking down upon readers who don’t do a lot of book buying. Lots of these folks are young people without a regular source of income yet — a few years down the line they could be devoted buyers of your books, and in the meantime they can do more than you can imagine to share your work with others, some of whom will buy now.

Publish something free on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple

You’re probably sensing a theme here… give away some of your work for free so people can try it at no risk. For these sites, it’s the garage-sale-versus-eBay analogy again. The readers are already there. You need to have something out there where they’re looking.

These sites generally want completed fiction (Smashwords, in particular, works this way), so here’s where a short story can work.

When I was getting started and making next to nothing from sales yet, I invested $200 in the cover art for that Ice Cracker II story I mentioned. I wasn’t rich and really debated on this, because it was only a 6,000-word short story. But, within a month, I’d sold enough copies of EE1 (then priced at $2.99) at Barnes & Noble and Smashwords (I didn’t know how to get Amazon to make an ebook free at the time) to pay for that cover art. It was absolutely worth the investment (you’ll want a custom cover for posting your work on Wattpad too).

You can also follow the route fellow indie Moses Siregar III took and turn the first chunk of the book you’re working on into a novella. He published that several months before the novel was ready, worked on promoting it, and had a lot of fans ready to buy the whole novel when he released it.

Later on, if you’re doing a series, you may want to try making your first book free, but I didn’t do that until I had three novels out (plus a stand-alone set in the same world).

Turning these readers into fans who are ready to buy when you finally release your book

All right, you’ve got some short stories or excerpts out there and people are reading them. Mission accomplished, right? Well, you’re half way there. The last thing you need to do is find a way to keep in contact with these folks. You want to be able to tell them when the book is ready to go, or it’s all been for naught.

I’ve already mentioned mailing lists, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, and blog subscriptions. These are the primary ways you’re going to be able to get in touch with folks, with the mailing list being ideal (people forget to check blogs, and it’s easy to get lost among the other people they follow on Twitter/Facebook, but everyone checks their email). Wherever you’re publishing these samples of your work, make sure to post your blog and social media links at the end. Don’t be afraid to ask people to follow you. Otherwise chances are they’ll forget about you, especially if you were using a short story — a novel may stick in their heads better, but some readers devour several novels a week. They might have to read three or four of your full-length books before you become an author that they remember to check up on now and then. Make things easy on yourself and encourage them to follow you right after they finish your story.

All right, gang, thank you for reading what’s become another monster post. If you’re trying any of these methods, or have others you’d like to share, please comment below. What did you do that worked to build a fan base before you launched your first book?

Is it still possible to hit it big with a first novel? To toss that puppy out there and see it rocket to the tops of the Amazon sales charts? Well, if you’ve been following the blog, you know the answer is yes, since I recently interviewed Leeland Artra who’s been having great success with his first fantasy novel. Today we have another success story.

Sue London, one of the first people I followed on Twitter (she complimented my Goblin Brothers stories, so naturally I liked her right away), released her first novel a few weeks ago and asked me to retweet one of her announcements. I did so and bought a copy (hey, it was only 99 cents). Through Twitter, I’m aware of a lot of new authors who are publishing first novels and, frankly, not much happens for most of them. Imagine my surprise when I checked Sue’s Amazon sales ranking a week or two later and her book was in the 300s. As I write this introduction, it’s sitting at 123 and has this nifty tag that shows up in a search:
#1 Best Seller in Historical Romance. Not bad, eh?

But how did she do it? Sue’s agreed to spill the beans for us today, so let’s get this interview started!

A few weeks after release, you’re rocking the Amazon sales charts with your first novel, Trials of Artemis. What did you do to get the ball rolling in the first place?

First off, thanks so much for having me come on your site for an interview. Your blog has been my “go to” source for self-publishing information and it’s very exciting to be able to contribute. Also, don’t forget that I’m still waiting for more Goblin Brothers books! Just wanted to put that out there.

This is all pretty unexpected so I can’t provide advice as much as express gratitude. This is one case where I can say “It’s not me, it’s you.” It’s Twitter buddies, Facebook buddies, and readers who were willing to give me a chance. But let me tell you my story in the hopes that there’s a pony for you in all this mess somewhere.

It all started with an idea for a Regency romance series about three girls who formed a “boys club” growing up, because they thought boys have more fun. They named their club (and therefore the series) The Haberdashers. There are twelve books scoped out for the series at this point. My original intention was to wait until at least book three before doing my big promotional push. I know how series readers are because I am one. We go very quickly from “I LOVE YOU, I WANT TO READ ALL THE BOOKS!” to “Who are you again?” when there has been a gap. So let me tell you what I didn’t do – engage a PR group, do any press releases, schedule a blog tour, intensely research what in the heck I should be doing to release a book. My plan was to do all that for the release of “Fates for Apate.” Sure, I’ve been picking up tricks over the years since I always intended to publish (specifically self-publish), but didn’t put any extra effort into “mastering the book release” prior to releasing book one.

All that aside, my first degree is in marketing so I couldn’t help doing a leeetle bit of it. I mean, no one wants their first book to bomb. But I was going to be delighted if I broke even on the expenses within the first couple of months (i.e., selling about 650 copies). Honestly, I thought my goals were insanely high and unrealistic. Heck, I’d gotten one of the major tenants of the industry “wrong.” I’d just spent ten years building a brand identity on the web of being a sci-fi geek (is it a brand when it’s really who you are?) and here I was publishing a Regency romance. People got whiplash doing a double-take. No one in my circles could believe I’d written a romance, in real life or online. Not exactly the best launching pad. Apparently you can get a lot “wrong” and still get it “right.”

To answer your question, though, what did I do to get the ball rolling?

1. Set up websites specifically for Author and Series a few months in advance. I already have a lot of blogs and websites, and I wanted something that was specific to publishing so that people didn’t have to wade through ten years of me pontificating (main blog), or stacks of my short stories and writing samples (writing blog), just to get to what they really wanted – to purchase my books or read about the series.
2. Purchased a rockin’ book cover a few months in advance. Seriously, this may have been the most important thing that I did. It is by Kim Killion at the aptly named Hot Damn Designs. The cost was about $135 and worth every penny. THANK YOU, KIM! Now I need to get a spine and back because this puppy is going to paper.
3. Purchased 100 “cover cards” from VistaPrint (large postcard size) a few months in advance and offered them autographed as an incentive for pre-purchases. Also handed them out to anyone who would stand still and left stacks of them around the Virginia Festival of the Book. They aren’t cheap, about 40 cents each. Adding envelopes and postage makes this about a $55 investment. But they are shiny and pretty and made everything more “real.”
4. Set up a Twitter account for the series at @haberdashersfic.
5. Pestered my twitter buddies (I tweet at @cmdrsue) about the fact that my book was coming out soon and they should consider pre-purchasing a copy.
6. Remembered that I have a Facebook page and posted some updates (which also auto-post to Twitter).
7. Remembered I have a writing blog and made some posts about finishing a book and getting it to publication. Those automatically posted to Twitter and G+.

Then late on the night of May 12, 2013 I clicked publish on Amazon.com. And waited for the book to hit the store. And then I bought a copy. At that point I thought it and my five pre-sales (thank God for friends and family, right?) might be the extent of my publishing story. By the end of day one (May 13th) I’d sold 31 copies in the Amazon store and another one on my website. It had begun.

Marketing efforts in that first week included:

1. Setting up my Amazon author page.
2. Setting up my Goodreads author page.
3. Pestering my friends on Twitter some more.
4. Sending a Trials of Artemis mug to the first person to do a review. (She had no idea that I’d even been talking about giving out a prize because she’s not in my Twitter circles, so it was interesting to have the first person be someone completely unknown to me.)
5. Posting announcements for my “fans” on Facebook (most of whom are STILL waiting for a sci-fi book).
6. Posting announcements on a bunch of my blogs and having Blogger push those to my G+ circles. Made sure to include the blog that has a Page Rank of 4 from Google.
7. Going to the follower lists for some of my favorite historical romance authors and having @haberdashersfic follow those followers.
8. Reached out to some other writers asking for a retweet. Since I’ve been a good citizen for awhile (interviewing writers at Writing Insight, retweets, etc.) I got that love back – including retweets from yourself plus top romance authors Diane Farr, Danelle Harmon, and Lauren Royal.
9. Taking a page from Amanda Hocking and reaching out to some romance readers with a polite direct tweet (you can’t do this too much or you’ll get blocked):
10. • Hi! Would you like to try our Regency romance? Only 99 cents on Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Trials-Artemis-Haberdashers-ebook/dp/B00CR70RF2/ref=la_B00CRERZB4_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368450849&sr=1-1
11. Taking the opportunity (whenever it looked like it would fit) to post a link to my book as a response to super-popular people on Twitter. I know at least one sale came from responding to Jen Yates (@cakewrecks) when she asked her followers what was up. I said my book was up <link> and got one sale and follower that I know of. Maybe more.
12. Asking @erinscafe to livetweet the novel because she had done that to hilarious effect on some other romance novels. I knew it would be a snarkfest and wanted it to be. Ended up getting props from her followers because I joined in on making fun of the book. Sales jumped by almost 100% that night. Some of Erin’s tweets:
13. • Our story begins in London, 1815. Our heroine: Jacqueline Walters, but you can call her Jack. #haberdashers
    • Jack decides to ditch the ball, and sneaks into the host’s library. I’m pretty sure this is trespassing. Very least, it’s rude. #haberdashers
    • An arm slips around her from behind in the darkened library. “What are you reading?” Someone’s asking for a knee to the groin. #haberdashers
    • “Who in the bloody hell are you?” Ah, the stranger in the library is NOT a rapist, just a guy who grabbed the wrong boob. #haberdashers
    • We’re at another ball, because in 1815 there was no Twitter and people were bored. Jack’s dance card is empty. #haberdashers
    • I would 100% be playing cards and smoking cigars in the stables in 1815, reputation be damned.#haberdashers
    • Jack points out that she’d really rather not have a husband who grabs strangers’ boobs in libraries. Good call, Jack. #haberdashers
    • Gideon and Jack almost kiss while dancing the waltz. That Footloose town had it right; dancing is a gateway sin. #haberdashers
    • Giddy was just described as a “thoroughgoing rogue,” and I’m pretty sure that’s going to be the name of my next band. #haberdashers

And that pretty much describes my big marketing “push.” The only other thing I’ve done since then is join some romance groups on Facebook. Oh, and struck a chord with another group by making my first gratitude post about Trixie Belden. They have invited me to their Clubhouse. As a huge Trixie Belden nerd I think this is awesome.

At the moment “Trials of Artemis” is selling about 600 copies a day. The only explanation I have for that is… people seem to like it. Not the most insightful analysis but there it is.

I’m always hoping to find new advertising venues that actually work out (i.e. authors make as much from sales as they paid for the ad). Did you do any advertising or has this all been word of mouth?

Nope, no paid advertising for this beyond purchasing the postcards from VistaPrint. I’ll probably try some of these when “Fates for Apate” comes out. My research will undoubtedly include reading through your website so I wish I had some really good advice to give myself right here. I have used GoogleAds for my CafePress site and that was usually somewhere around a break-even.

99-cent novels have fallen out of favor with some folks in the indie community of late (possibly because, last year, Amazon supposedly started weighting the popularity charts to favor higher priced titles). Why did you choose that price point, and how much of an impact do you think it’s had on sales?

I chose 99-cents because I’m a 99-cent novel person. I read voraciously and there’s no way I could do that with typical list-price books. So I look for 99-cent and free ebooks because there are a lot of great writers I’ve never heard of, and even a lot of big houses/authors have sales to convince us to try them. It stretches my reading budget. For me as a reader I have to LOVE your books in order to spend more than 99-cents. But if I do love your writing then I get in this weird “PRICE IS NO OBJECT!” place. Seriously, someone could probably price the first one at 99-cents and the rest at a thousand dollars and I’d be like “THAT’S FINE, I’LL GET ANOTHER JOB, I NEED ALL THE BOOKS.” You know, if they really resonated for me. Some sort of modern-day G.K. Chesterton or something.

Regarding my own sales, I have to assume that the 99-cent price point didn’t hurt. In this particular genre (Regency) there are still a lot of 99-cent books and the top ten list for Regency is usually full of them. So 99-cents is probably just a ticket to get into the show. Because I can’t contact readers from Amazon directly I’m not sure if the price point made a difference to them. (Now you can really tell I studied marketing. Without the datapoint we can’t really draw a conclusion.)

It was always my intention to price the first one in this series at 99-cents and the rest at 2.99. (The next two are already available for pre-order at that price, plus if you pre-order you get an autographed cover card!) The first one for all of my series will probably be 99-cents but I’m not sure. (Yes, there are many other series, trilogies, and books planned. Some of them will be sci-fi and fantasy.) As I walk around and talk to more people about pricing it amazes me how many readers say they don’t mind when books are $8+. Thank God for them, someone needs to keep the major publishing industry going. But I don’t want to pay that for the majority of my reading, and by my little own lonesome I don’t need that margin for what I charge. Volume can often trump margin anyway.

Did you find that once you sold X number of books, Amazon’s algorithms kicked in and have helped you rise to the top (and stick there)? Or are you still doing a lot of promotion?

I know that you’ve written about the algorithms but here’s where I admit that… I haven’t really been paying attention. I can’t explain the rise to the top, but I’m sure that once I achieved the top ten it became a phenomenon of “success breeds success.” Since I read on the Kindle app I know that they constantly push the best-sellers at you. That means all the Regency readers started seeing my book pushed in their face every time they turned their Kindle or app on. Again, the cover was a great investment because at the very least it looks professional. At best it signals “This book is HOT. And brainy.” (They ARE in a library after all.)

I am not doing a lot of promotion. I blog, I tweet, I Facebook. I do interviews if asked. But if what you’re really getting at is “how did you manage to be so successful with your first book?” my honest answer is “I have no clue. If I did then I would do it over and over again. And teach others how to as well.” Seriously, I would take you with me on that magic carpet ride, but if there is an answer in all of this I don’t know what it is. Maybe the stars aligned. Maybe I had some karma points to redeem. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the power of nice. But I can’t point to anything and say “Yep, that’s it right there. That’s the answer.”

Something is working, though. It keeps creeping up the bestsellers lists. Currently at #130 for all of Amazon so it’s possible that “Trials of Artemis” will break the Top 100 before it’s done. Back on May 19th when I was #52 in Regency and #3,392 overall (and feeling pretty good about myself for those numbers) I was smack-talking Dan Brown on my Facebook page because it was funny to act like I could take the #1 spot. Now it’s moved from funny to intriguing…

All of the reviews have certainly been helpful, too. I don’t know how you get those other than wait. Ok, you could ASK for them, but is that really the same? Only one of them is from someone I know because I *didn’t* want to ask people I knew to review it. Right now there are 15 on Amazon.com (average 4.9), 2 on Amazon.co.uk (average 4.5), and 5 ratings/2 reviews on Goodreads (average 4.0).

Do you have any parting tips you’d like to offer to new authors who will be launching a book soon?

My biggest fear is beginning to believe that because this turned out well that I know something. I don’t. I’m grateful that so many people have helped me out in ways both large in small. A retweet here, a nice review there. Someone trying out a new and unknown author for the first time. But there are some things that are common pointers in the profession so I can reiterate them.

1. Be nice. And remember that part of being nice is not always looking for something for yourself. When I started retweeting links for my favorite romance authors it wasn’t with the thought “because in three years I WILL WRITE A ROMANCE BOOK AND I WANT YOU TO RETWEET ME.” I was just being nice because I liked them. And being nice also means that when you step over a boundary and someone calls you on it that you graciously apologize. It doesn’t have to be a boundary that you expected to encounter or even deem worthy. Would you rather be proven right or sell books? The answer is sell books. When in doubt, be nice.
2. Be professional. Get a great cover. Get great editing. Meet your obligations. And from a behavior standpoint, being professional is actually just being nice in a business suit. (Not an actual business suit but, like, emotionally.)
3. Be clever. Think about what could be a fun or funny promotion. I have no idea what the ultimate impact of @erinscafe’s livetweet was but it was clever and fun. People enjoyed that I was laughing along with them. I can’t find the tweet right now but someone commented “more authors should be like you!” I also think Amanda Hocking’s direct marketing approach of contact on Twitter was clever. I still remember when I received the tweet because it was nice enough (see? nice?) that I was like “sure, I’ll check that out” and clicked on the link. Turned out it wasn’t for me and I didn’t buy it, but obviously a lot of people did. (Yes, I’m talking about this happening before she got famous.) Please note, however, that it wasn’t just that she asked me to check out her book, it was HOW she asked that made me click at the time and remember it later. For that one girl who made me click there have been hundreds if not thousands of solicitations that I’ve ignored. (See? I don’t even remember how many, much less who they were.)
4. Be yourself. (Or at least the nicest, most professional version of you.) Your book is a product and I hope that it is AWESOME. But people want to connect with people at some point, especially if you are planning to have an ongoing writing career. Sharing something of yourself is a big challenge but people appreciate the little things that make you you. If you share enough little tidbits then everyone can find something they connect to. Some people advise authors to “brand themselves” and “sell themselves” but I’m definitely not in favor of that. I want to brand my books and sell my books, but be myself. That’s how I can get away with being a big sci-fi nerd and write a best-selling Regency romance novel. And you know what? I’ve discovered that a lot of other romance writers are big ole nerds, too.
5. Bonus tip from Sue: Positive thinking. If there is any magic afoot in any of this it’s the fact that I spend at least 10 minutes every day focused on positive mantras. My inspiration comes from writers like Martha Beck (Finding Your Own North Star) and Barbara Sher (Live the Life You Love). In case you’d like to read those books, too, I set up an Amazon store of the books that motivate me.

Other than that just listen to Lindsay. She’s got the best advice around for self-published authors.

Awesome, thank you for your time, Sue!