BLACKOUT is ON SALE! (or 66% Off Now!)

Tip of the Day: Join BookBub for daily ebook deals emailed directly to you!

In anticipation of the upcoming official release of DESERTED, BLACKOUT is on sale for just $.99 for a limited time on Amazon and B&N!

Read about bro and sis Leo and Jenny's NY and PA adventures in book #1 before being whisked off to Las Vegas in book #2....

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Gift or Curse?

Tip of the Day: Um, uh.... Be kind to chickens. They come from broken homes. (That's one of my mom's favorite jokes. I suppose it also qualifies as a tip.) ;)

We self-pubs seem very focused on the raw numbers. How many ebooks we sell. How much we make per month.

It's almost an obsession. We have access to data our trad pub friends are dying to see. Or so they think....

Sometimes I think it's a curse to know exactly, on a minute-by-minute basis, how I'm doing. I made an announcement on Facebook about a new book and within minutes, I knew how many people jumped over to Amazon to buy it. You'd think that would be great. It's really not.

In the beginning, I was super-focused on my sales. I checked about nine thousand times a day. Now I check once a day, in the morning, and enter the numbers into my spreadsheet. I used to check every sales outlet every day. Now I only check Amazon (though iTunes is coming in a very close second lately - thanks, Australia!).

Many writers say this can help you market better. They say it can help you keep track of what matters to readers. They say lots of things.

I say it simply drives us insane. Don't get me wrong, I love the business side of self-publishing. I grew up in a family business and owning my own corporation is very fulfilling. But sometimes I think too much information at our fingertips is more distracting than advantageous.

It makes us proud at times, but it can also make us horribly insecure. A couple months ago, when my sales fell off of the Amazonian cliff, I panicked. I tried everything in my marketing toolbox to bring sales back. It worked - a bit - but I never did get back into the high sales I'd had earlier in the year. It's fair to say I was a smidgeon depressed for a couple of weeks. Now? Meh.

It took some time, but I remembered I didn't get in this business to rake in cash. I did it because writing is the ONLY career I've ever wanted with all of my heart. I wanted to write something other people might like. I've done that. Maybe that should be enough.

Happy Friday!!!!

Megg, Miss Enchanted ePubber

What I'm Looking For (or Show Me the Funny!*)

*with apologies to Jerry Maguire

Tip of the Day, Librarian Edition: The public library is not a social services office, but remember that sometimes it feels that way.

I'm not an agent or editor, but as a YA Librarian, I have a "wish list" of books I'd like to see on my shelves, too. While I can't sell or produce these types of books, I can buy them, talk about them to my colleagues, put them on library book lists for patrons, put them face-out on displays, and directly set them into the hands of readers. Here's my current YA wish list:



1. Realistic, contemporary books with boy main characters that are funny but grounded. (Examples: SETH BAUMGARTNER'S LOVE MANIFESTO by Eric Luper; FOOD, GIRLS, & OTHER THINGS I CAN'T HAVE by Allen Zadoff; NOTES FROM THE MIDNIGHT DRIVER by Jordan Sonnenblick) Girls will read these books, AND I can give them to boys who are looking for something humorous.



2. Teen books with tween appeal. (Exampls: THE GALLAGHER GIRLS SERIES by Ally Carter; JUST ONE WISH by Janette Rallison; THE ESPRESSOLOGIST by our Kristina Springer) Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade girls particularly will come to me while I'm working reference in the children's room and ask for some "more good books from the teen area." *PLEASE NOTE: This is very different than the PARENTS who come to me in this scenario and say that their kids are "very advanced readers" who need teen books since they've outgrown the middle grade novels -- but the books can't involve romantic relationships or kissing or or or....* These girls just want to expand their library and book horizons with more "innocent" titles that feature slightly older scenarios and characters.

3. Contemporary fiction with non-white characters on the cover -- that aren't stories about the hood/drugs/race "issues". I want Sarah Dessen with an Indian girl on the cover. I want Jordan Sonnenblick with a Chinese boy on the cover. (*Edited to add: YES! A Jordan Sonnenblick novel DOES already exist with a Chinese boy on the cover and the story is funny and the cover is great -- ZEN AND THE ART OF FAKING IT -- and I'd love more like this to put face-out on my shelves.) This wish is more to the publishers than the authors, although count me amongst readers who want to see characters from all over the globe in my books so if you can write them, bring it on! I have so many non-white teens in my town who don't see themselves on the covers of YA books -- but they read a ton, and when I give them a book that features a teen who is Fill-in-the-Blank-American like they are, they are so happy.

I have to throw some middle-grade wish list titles too:



1. True science fiction with boy and girl characters. (Examples: a "younger" ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card; CHRONAL ENGINE by Greg Leitich Smith) I get this question from a lot of student teachers, and it's a good extension for all the kids who ask for Star Wars books all the time and are looking to expand their base.

2. Ditto (3) above in the YA section, but for middle grade fiction (non-white kids on the covers of just good contemporary fiction).

All right, who's gonna write them? :)

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A Christmas miracle - sales numbers easily available!

Tip of the day: Trader Joe's eggnog cookies are delicious - you should try them even if you don't care for eggnog. 

So, if you were on twitter yesterday, you may have heard agents and authors talking about the new deal between BookScan and Amazon. (You can read the article that announced it HERE). If an author participates in the Amazon Author program, he/she can access BookScan sales numbers for books he/she wrote and see sales figures for four weeks time.

Up until now, BookScan numbers were too expensive for most authors to get. Subscribing to BookScan costs thousands and thousands of dollars, from what I understand. Editors have the numbers, but they generally don't give authors those numbers unless they ask. And even then, information is usually handed out with an explanation of what it means for YOUR books and a reminder that BookScan is known for being highly inaccurate. Plus it doesn't include library sales and sales through places like Walmart, Target, etc. Apparently numbers on your statement will vary anywhere from 15-75% from BookScan numbers.

I sort of have mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, we get SO little information about how our books are selling. Royalty statements only come out twice a year and they often don't tell the whole story because returns can take a long time to show up. So, it's nice to have something that says - your books are selling, and here's how many in a week.

On the other hand, how many authors are going to know what that particular number means? I mean, pick a number. Is it good or bad? Is 500 copies a week good? 100? 50? 25? I've heard that it takes probably 4,000 - 5,000 books sold to hit the NYT list on any given week, so in that context, 500 doesn't seem that good. But then, I think - 500!? That's pretty good. I'd be happy with that! Other things that come into play - how long has the book been out? How many books were printed in the first place? Is it hardcover or paperback?

And let's say your book is down there in the 25/week range. And you get a stomach ache and go UGH! Now you have a stomach ache, but what can you do about it? Most of us do as much as we can already when it comes to promotion. So how does knowing really help us?

One person on twitter did suggest that when you tried something new promo-wise, or did some signings in a particular week, you could watch your numbers and see if it had an affect on the sales that week and take note.

My guess is that Amazon got tired of the questions - what does the Amazon ranking mean? Can't you give us more information about it? So, somehow they struck a deal with BookScan and here we are. One author on twitter asked, how long before they make us pay for this information? Good point. Give it to us free for a while, suck us in, and then start charging. It'll be interesting to see if that happens.

So... what do you think? Do you like the idea of having access to these numbers or not?

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

Amazon, Sales, and Returns - OH MY!

Tip of the day: If you think tracking Amazon rankings is a fun way to pass the time, www.titlez.com is a web site you can use to make a list of books and compare their Amazon rankings.

Yesterday Tina talked a little about the craziness of Amazon checking, and I thought I'd follow up on that and talk about why it is authors do this, even though it is totally crazy-making.

Publishing is not just a business that is slow on the front end - waiting for responses to submissions. It is also slow on the back end. Most authors don't have any idea how their books are selling until months, perhaps even years, after the book is released. Why? Because royalty statements only come out twice a year, but not only that, they reflect a period of time that was months ago. Before I show you an example, understand when I say "most" that's because if your book is selling extremely well, you'll likely know that. If you hit a list, like the NYT list, of course your editor is going to call you! And if your book goes into a second printing fairly quickly, you'll probably be notified of that also. But beyond that, it can be very hard to know exactly how your book is selling.

So, let's take a look at my second book, FAR FROM YOU, which came out December, 2008.

Now, for those of you who don't remember what was happening in December, 2008, that was back when the financial market was on the verge of collapse, companies were laying people off right and left, and it pretty much felt like the floor was about to fall out from underneath us. So, a good time to have a book released? No, not really. But what could I do? That's the thing that authors have to understand - so much of how a book sells is beyond our control. Whether the chains pick it up or not, whether a cover screams "pick-me-up!" or cries "what were they THINKING?" or a hundred other things is all beyond the author's control. And the economy at that point, when my second book baby was released, was completely out of my control.

Was I curious how much it was going to affect sales of my book? Yes, absolutely. Wouldn't you be?

So, all I had at that point was Amazon. And I could tell within the first month that FAR FROM YOU probably wasn't doing very well. While rankings don't mean anything per se, and I've been told by a professional in the industry that Amazon sales are only 2% of total sales, I think they do give us a general gauge as to how a book is doing.

In the first month that I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME was released, the ranking most of the time was below 10,000. And I think anything below 10,000, and you can be fairly certain your book is selling well, both on-line and out in the real world. And that was true for that book, because after just one month of being released, it went back for a second printing.

As far as the rankings for FAR FROM YOU during that first month? I was lucky if it got below 100,000.

So, fast forward to August, 2009, and this is when I got my first royalty statement for FAR FROM YOU (9 months after the book came out). It listed the sales for the months December 2008 - March 2009. And that's when the reporting period stopped for that statement. The problem, though? At that point, it didn't take into account returns. That is - bookstores order a number of books. And your statement will show those orders as "sales." However, the bookstore has the ability to return books that don't sell, and that's probably going to happen AFTER the first 3 months of a book's release.

So, I had to wait all the way until February, 2010 (1 year and 2 months after the book came out) to see the next six months (April 2009 - Sept 2009) to have a better picture of what was happening with the book.

And guess what? Quite a few returns! The publisher holds back some of your royalties because of the return issue, so they do expect it at some level. But until you see the statement, you have no idea how it all played out.

Some authors will have their agents or editors check bookscan, which is the database bookstores report sales to, and find out how retail sales are going. The problem with that for us who write for kids and teens is that often, a book's total sales will be off by 25-75% when talking about bookscan, because it doesn't take into account school and library sales.

Since my last royalty statement, FAR FROM YOU has made the Texas High School Reading List. It's also been rereleased in paperback with a new cover. I'm hoping those two things will help with the sales.

I'll let you know in a year or so. And in the meantime, I'll try not to let my Amazon rankings drive me too crazy!!!

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career