Over the last few months I’ve begun making some of my work available through the Kindle Store at Amazon. Right now I think I have four novels (The Heretic, A Scream of Angels, A Tear in the Sky, Riverwatch) , a novella (More Than Life Itself) , and a short story collection (Shades of Reality) available for sale, all for under $2.00.
For the first couple of months, I sold an average of five copies. And let’s be clear – that’s not five copies of each, that’s five copies total.
Obviously, something needed to be done.
So I decided to start letting folks know the books were out there by posting about them on the various blogs I write for, making an occasional Tweet on the subject, and participating in various message board discussions. My sales started to climb and in the last few months I’ve sold an average of 100 copies per month.
I’m still nowhere near the range I’d like to be in and am certainly not bringing in the kind of sales that folks like Joe Konrath (180 books a day!) or Karen McQuestion (30,000 books this year) are, but its a start, right?
In my continued quest to increase sales of those ebooks, I’ve decided to try a new tactic. Taking my cue from people like Joe Konrath, Cory Doctorow, Scott Sigler and J.C. Hutchins, I’ve decided that I’m going to offer the complete text of my debut novel, Riverwatch, for free from my website. Each day, starting today and continuing for the next 42 days after that, I’ll be posting a new chapter from the book for your reading enjoyment.
Riverwatch was nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award when it was published back in 2003 by Pocket Books. Here’s the jacket copy:
IT HAS WAITED….IT HAS HUNGERED….
When Jake Caruso and his construction team find a hidden tunnel in the cellar of the old Blake mansion in the sleepy hamlet of Harrington Falls, Jake can’t wait to explore its depths. There, he finds an even greater mystery: a stone chamber that’s been covered up for hundreds of years — sealed shut by some long-forgotten warden.
IT HAS BEEN UNLEASHED.
When the ancient seal is broken, a reign of terror and death consumes the town’s residents. Something is stalking them — something that strikes in the darkness without warning or mercy, leaving a trail of innocent blood in its wake — and Jake comes to realize the nightmarish truth of what he has set free. It is an evil born of ages past. A creature of eternal bloodlust. And it has risen to continue its endless slaughter….
My hope is that people will discover my work and enjoy it enough to go check out some of the other material I have available, particularly the ebook versions in the Kindle store. I’ll be adding links to the bottom of each chapter to encourage people to do so. I have no idea how well this will work, if it will work at all, but I feel it is worth a try. I’ll come back and do a follow up post in thirty days to allow us to examine the pros and cons of the process.
You can find the first chapter here.
So what are your predictions? Will it work? Why or why not? Perhaps more importantly, what would you suggest to improve the chance of success?
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Actually, I interested in how your experiment turns out. I’ve been discussing the e-book route with my c.p.’s. Things are a-changing in publishing and even my gals who are traditionally published are looking at the alternatives.
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Good for you, Suzan. Diversity is always important, in my view.
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Would love to know how this goes for you.
I almost always purchase the $3 and under books from the Sony Bookstore for my Sony Reader. Will search your name on that site this evening.
Good luck!
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Robin,
I’ll definitely do a follow up post in about a month.
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Predictions? Heck, I don’t know. Trying to figure out what the public will do is beyond my level of magic.
Speaking as a reader (but not of your genre, sorry), I’m not much on reading on my computer, and a chapter a day for a month and a half just doesn’t sound worth the effort. Being forced to put down a novel tends to break the flow.
(If I read your genre) I’d be more interested if you released the whole thing at once as a free e-book. I’ve found some interesting authors by reading backlist e-books that the authors have put up for free on Smashwords.
Something to keep in mind, though, whichever way you go: be sure that what you put up is reasonably indicative of your current writing ability and style. There have been some authors whose free ‘first book’ turned me off big-time because of poor editing and poor story structure. I can say the same for print books, too. While I’m reading I do try to remember that this is their first and probably their worst, but gosh, I can only wade through so many misspellings, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, backstory infodumps, and “Hi, how are you” dialogues before I throw up my hands.
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Doug,
Thanks for the feedback.
You know, I was wondering about the same thing. A few years back I did a podcast of my novel The Heretic over the course of about 60 days and ended up with 80,000 listeners. I don’t know if print will convert as well as the audio, but figured I’d give it a try. I might just put up the free ebook in its entirety anyway, to test things out. Thanks for the suggestion!
I know exactly what you mean about quality. As this novel was nominated for two major awards, I’m hoping it will stand the test of time.
-Joe
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I keep seeing time and time again that there are 3 qualities to a successful ebook:
Price low enough to be an ‘impulse’ buy. I think you have that.
A catchy blurb. I think you have that, as well, although I looked at only two.
An eye-catching cover that scales down well to a thumbnail. I think this might be the big problem.
You might want to reconsider your cover art. I went to your author page on Amazon to peruse the thumbnails of the covers, and they are so dark that it’s hard to see what the subject of them is. They are also extremely monochromatic when scaled down. Also, the typeface of your name and the title of the book did not scale down well on the first four listed.
Nothing about them popped out or made me want to click through. So, while the price might have made the book attractive, the book cover didn’t make me want to click through. Which meant I, as a browsing reader, would most likely never see the catchy blurb.
J.A. Konrath did an experiment with covers (and titles) for Lee Goldberg. It was amazing how much of a difference it made. The before and after covers were dramatic. Plus, it made a dramatic difference in sales. That’s even better!
You may not want to go with that style of cover, but maybe the premise? With an ebook, the cover is not set in stone. Experimentation is possible!
I hope this experiment is ultimately successful. I look forward to future updates on how it is going!
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J.A.,
I’ve been wondering that very thing myself and I’ll give some serious thought to your suggestion re the covers. I read both Lee and Joe’s blogs, so I’ve already been thinking about it a bit.
I wonder if it might be more a question of genre though. Joe writes thrillers and Lee writes mysteries, both of which are more popular genres than supernatural suspense. I guess you could call my Templar books urban fantasy, which might put them into a more popular category.
Either way, it bears some thinking about. Thanks.
-Joe