Author Boot Camp

Click here to Listen to this post as Audio. (Right-click to download.)

As some of you already know, back on December 27th, I released a sample of my first short story collection A Long Way from Disney on Amazon’s Kindle store and used social media strategies to market it. I did this for various reasons, but mainly because, as I said here on OC before, I believe authors need to take on the roll of scientists and experiment with what’s possible in today’s publishing world. (If you're interested in how I publicized this, see my recent posts at AuthorBootCamp.com.)
From a scientific point of view, the experiment was a great success. I learned a great deal, which I’ll discuss below. I sold a lot of books (at $.99 each): around 350 in the first week, and I got my name and stories in front of a lot of new people. I also heard from a number of them who read the book right away and really loved it! For you authors out there, I hope you can relate: Getting positive feedback on your work from total strangers is about the best feedback there is.
[For those of you keeping score at home, those sales put $260 into Amazon’s pockets and $140 into mine. Not too shabby, I don’t think, but also not the split an author might hope for.]

Okay, without any further delay: Here are the Results (What I’ve learned) from Experiment 1:

1) Timing can be essential. I positioned myself to hit the Kindle store just after Xmas, thinking that with many newly gifted Kindles out there, a lot more Kindle ebooks would be selling and that I could cash in on this rush. I was correct in this prediction (Amazon sold more ebooks than paper copies over Christmas), but what I didn’t predict was how much harder this made it to reach the Top 100 Kindle bestseller list, a goal I had set for myself. I wanted to hit the top 100 because it would give the book additional exposure and stimulate more buying from newbie Kindle owners looking for quick, cheap content.

This is Part II of how I carried out my Amazon Kindle rush for the ebook of my story collection A LONG WAY FROM DISNEY. Here I'll be covering my secondary steps to publicizing this event and getting attention/sales. To read Part I and see my first steps, see this post. An intial discussion of why I wanted to do this is here.

So, after setting out to "rush the charts" on Sunday and carrying out my initial steps in Post I, I didn't stop there. Here's what I did next:  

1) I sent out more emails, not only sending to people who're members of the sites I run, but also to lists of friends, students and acquaintences over the years. Yes, I kind of keep all of these. It might be extreme to fall back on these, but I have yet to hear a complaint from anybody. In some ways, it's a cool (potential) way of touching base again with old friends.

Note: I always make sure to keep these emails a) short and b) very friendly, never pushy.

2) I also posted the info about this release to the Yahoo Groups I'm a member of.

3) Having exhausted my Facebook group (adding a fan page as well would be a thought), I also went to my Myspace account, which I rarely use these days and posted there in blog and bulletin forms. I also went to old faithful writers' communities online such as Redroom and Crimespace to put the word out there.

4) I hit the Kindle discussions on Amazon's site and the website Kindleboards to post about my new release and the experiment I was running. These met with mixed success. Generally a lot of writers do this type of fly-by posts and so the effect is dilluted. To really succeed at this, you need to spend more time on these sites contributing to the Greater Good.

5) Having hit my list on Facebook and the discussions above, I found the Kindle fan groups on Facebook (there are three of them) and joined, then posted info about my book on them. These fanpages are ones I'll continue to follow up on in the coming days.

6) I mentioned in Post I about the Facebook event I started for the event. I went back to the page for this event and contacted the "maybe will attend" replies to tell them that they didn't need a Kindle to participate, in case that was a stopping point for them.

Note: I thought this was an important point to push, that people could buy the book and join the rush with any PC computer and this software (http://bit.ly/3bIDY1) or an iPhone or iPod Touch using this software (http://bit.ly/5B8aCt).

7) During the time I did all of this and after as well, I kept up a persistent presence for the first 30 hours or so (until I got really tired of it) on Twitter and Facebook. I did this by using Tweetdeck, a free App that enables me to watch any messages people send me on Twitter (direct and general @sethharwood) so I can respond easily. I also use Tweetdeck to post updates to my Facebook and Twitter accounts simultaneously. It's very cool and really makes things easier. I should also say that user/paritipant interactions and enthusiasm really drive a rush like this. If I'm just tweeting away and nobody responds to what I'm saying, it can get tired fast. When others start Re-Tweeting my posts and commenting on what I'm doing, even cheering me on, this really kicks things into high gear!

That's it for now. The last thing I'm doing will be kicking off a contest for people who blog or post about the story collection on Amazon. More about this, and a list of the results I've achieved, to come!

One more cool thing I'll share is that my experiment actually made the homepage of the Walt Disney Company's corporate website. Check it out!

Disney on KindleHappy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Super Kwanza, and let's have a dynamite New Year's Eve!

It's time for us to try something new in publishing as an Author Boot Camp experiment. That's right, we're here in the test kitchen! Click here to listen to audio.

Publishing Experiment 1: Bringing out a collection of stories (A Long Way from Disney) on the Kindle format. If we know anything for sure about publishing right now, it’s that it is changing. Authors, I believe, must become the scientists running experiments with new technology, new publicity strategies, marketing, you name it. There’s just too much money involved for the big (and some small) presses to carry out the kind of testing and idea-trying that needs to be done. That leaves us independent authors to try things out on our own.

In that spirit, I’m releasing a collection of short stories on the Kindle format just after Christmas. A Long Way from Disney is officially out now, but I'm "releasing it" on Sunday Dec. 27th, a day I'm calling Disney Commando Sunday! The thinking here is that by asking people to all buy the book on a single day, I can go after the top of Amazon's Kindle bestseller chart and garner more attention (sales) there, especially with the after XMas new Kindle owners!

I’ve priced the collection low ($.99). because I’m more interested in how many copies of the book I can get out there than in how much money I can make off sales. For those who’ll be counting, the $.99 price point will give me 35 cents and amazon a hefty 64 cents per book sold. They’ll win out regardless, but it’s their sandbox and I want to play.

You can buy this Kindle book on any computer once you've established a Kindle reader preference/Kindle account. You have three choices here. You can do this with:

1) An actual Kindle. 2) An iPhone running the Kindle App (download) or 3) Any PC running the new Amazon Kindle software for PC (download here).

You cannot buy the Kindle book for anyone else, and no one can buy more than one copy. It's certainly an interesting set of rules, isn't it? Well, this is what Amazon has set up. If you'd like to aid this experiment, please forward this blog post to other authors, readers, Kindle owners, and experimenters in the publishing field. It should be interesting to see what this can generate with a minimum of publicity and zero budget.

If you'd like to sample any of the short stories from this collection, you can hear any/all of them free online here (http://sethharwood.com/long_way_from_disney) and find out more about the Kindle experiment here. I hope you'll choose to come along and help make some waves with this idea. I do think that the more successes independent authors have with new means of getting things done, the better it will be for all of publishing. Perhaps that'll be our next debate.

I'll be back later this week with a few stories from the collection and then again next Sunday for the big sales kickoff! See you...

The DIY Author Returneth (Again)

In this great post, former editor and book critic for Publisher's Weekly and the SF Chronicle Pat Holt goes beyond what one can do with a kindle release of his or her book, talks about what she sees from Konrath's model, podcasting and all of the new DIY approaches to publishing.

Pat's a tough critic of big publishing and has a lot to say about how things can work going forward. With years of experience backing her, she really sets the stage here for a grand perspective on what's what right now!

We had 44 attendees for the Stanford University edition of AuthorBootCamp -- we sold out all seats! Look at these inquisitive faces, all soaking up the knowledge dished out by Seth and Scott. We will do Stanford again in a few months, and hopefully will start adding other universities as well.