Cheating the Readers

I’ve never been quiet about my initial opposition to e-readers.  I just couldn’t imagine giving up my beloved books and I wasn’t convinced it was the next big thing that industry insiders claimed it was. As time has shown, I was wrong. Electronic reading devices are everywhere, even on smart phones. 

That’s not all I was wrong about. I was wrong to oppose the e-reader without giving it a fair shot. I loved touching and feeling books, still do. I had such a hard time envisioning the loss of real books that I was probably one of the last holdouts.

Then something happened that forced my hand, or rather changed my mind. The works of more and more authors, especially emerging authors, weren’t being released in print. They were only being released for e-readers. I had a choice. I could miss out on the books or I could jump on the e-reading band wagon. I chose the latter and for those of you who know me, you know what a difficult choice that was. I don’t do well with technological change. I was still using floppies after the advent of the USB for Pete’s sake.

Since breaking down and buying an e-reader, I’ve never looked back. Most of the books I buy are e-books. I still love my hard bound and paperback books, but I have just as much love for their electronic counterparts.

As a writer, I’ve also discovered the value of e-books. They’re cheaper to produce which allows you to reach a larger audience. E-books also spend less time in production which means they can be released quicker. And writers can release e-books directly to their readers without having to secure a publisher. For an indie author, this is a godsend. It’s also the source of bone I have to pick with indie authors.

Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my indie book purchases which I’m sure you’ve noticed too. The price of the book doesn’t seem commensurate with the amount of content. For example, the other day I paid $4.99 for a book from an author I’d just discovered and really enjoyed. I was more than a little unhappy to discover the book was only sixty-three pages long on my e-reader. Five dollars for a sixty-three page novel seems a bit much to me, especially when I’d paid $2.99 for a four hundred page novel of another author.

I realize being irritated at having to pay $4.99 for a sixty-three page novel might make me sound cheap. After all, most paperbacks cost more than that. True, but those books are typically a lot longer than sixty-three pages.

In the writer’s defense, what you type in your word processing program is always longer than the formatted novel.  My last novel was more than four-hundred pages in MS Word yet the Nook version is less than two-hundred pages. I also understand indie authors are relying on royalties and higher prices net bigger royalty checks, but there’s a bigger picture to consider here.

If you want to reach more readers, keep your prices reasonable, especially if you’re a new writer. And yes, $4.99 is reasonable if your book is novel length. Novellas, at least in my opinion, should not be priced as high as full length novels are. Charging more for less content may frustrate readers who may not feel a big enough connection to your work to continue to be a faithful, purchasing reader. Worse, you can risk alienating readers who are feeling let down after spending a lot of money for what they see as little return on their investment.

As a reader, I felt cheated having spent so much for so little. I can’t change what other authors do, but I can promise you that as long as it’s up to me, I’m not going to cheat the readers. I’ll always do my best to see that you get what you paid for.

Getting on the Right Marketing Track

When it comes to my writing, there are a few things I’m not good at.  One of those is being able to summarize my story in one or two lines, something usually known as a tagline. The other thing I’m just plain awful at is marketing my work.

Over the years, I’ve tried a few different things, most of which came to me courtesy of some bestselling marketing books I forked out good money for. Not only did I fork out good money for these books, but I made sure they were specific to the subject of how to market for writers. Early in my career, my budget was very limited so I tended to stick to the lower cost ideas offered in these books.

While I would have loved to take out full page ads in the New York Times or even a quarter page in a writer’s magazine, that was beyond my reach. Instead, I sent mass emails to friends and family begging them to buy my book and spread the word. I tried sending post cards, printed from my home computer of course, to people I thought had an interest in romance novels. I gave out cards to my coworkers announcing the release of the book which included links for purchase. I started a website. I reviewed books by other romance authors and made sure to indicate in the review that I was the author of the book Letters from Linc. I participated in a couple of blog interviews. I sent my books to interested reviewers. I entered them for consideration into contests. Once, I even managed to secure a table at a local charity event where I gave away gift bags with all homemade items that included; a post card, a business card, a window cling and a bumper sticker.

Despite my best low budget efforts, my books didn’t fly off the shelves. Now, all these years later, I’ve got a little more money a few new ideas. Most of these ideas come courtesy of social media. I pay attention to how other authors market their books and draw inspiration from those who are good writers that are selling well.

One of the newer things I’ve seen is the use of eye-catching pictures featuring lines from the novel over the top of them. Typically, the picture also includes the title of the book, name of the author and a link to buy. The nature of the picture depends on the genre of the book. For example, a romance author might use a picture of a couple kissing to promote her book.

Having seen this for some time now, I’ve found myself wondering how well this really works. I know it works to some degree since I’m often introduced to new books by these homespun ads. I will say there have been a couple of times where I’ve purchased books featured on these ads and wished I hadn’t.

Despite being sometimes disappointed with the books I’ve found this way, I still wanted to give it a try for myself. My plan was to do one unique ad a week and post it on all of my social media sites. Since I started this two weeks ago, I suppose it’s too early to say whether or not it’s working and to what extent. So far, the impact has been minimal. I haven’t seen a huge spike in sales that I can correlate to this strategy. The fact that I can say there’s been even the slightest increase shows I’m on the right track and as long as it’s even marginally helpful, I plan to continue using it. Like the little engine that could, I’m just going to keep chugging away!

Characters Count

I’ve never been one of those writers who completed an outline of her story before starting to work on it. I did a character outline once but only because I was asked to do so by an interested literary agent. As a standard practice, I don’t map anything out. I sit down and write.

For the most part, this practice hasn’t let me down. I did run into an issue in one of my paranormal young adult books in which I introduced a character as the girlfriend of my male lead. I went on to show the twin brother of the male lead meeting his brother’s girlfriend for the first time at a party. It didn’t take long for alert readers to catch a glaring mistake in this. Earlier in the story, I had shown how these characters should have already met.

I doubt an outline of my story or the characters could have saved this oversight, but it reminded me of something I once read in Jack M. Bickham’s book The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And how to Avoid Them).  In his book, Bickham pointed out the importance of making certain that facts are correct, even in a fiction novel. He cited an instance in which an author had written a Western novel and his hero used a gun that wasn’t made until two years after the date in which the story was set.  Several readers caught this mistake and pointed it out in their reviews.

At the moment, I’m currently working on my third in a four-book contemporary romance series. Last weekend, I was able to devote quite a bit of time to that story. When I finished work on Sunday night, I saved everything, shut down my computer and headed off to the shower. As I washed my hair, something in the story was nagging me. Did the family relationships of the characters match up to what I had in the first book? Since the first book is already out, readers know the answer so I needed to make sure I had it right.

As soon as I was out of the shower, I pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and my copy of This Time. I began to write the names of the characters and how each of them was related to one another. What I ended up with was not only a family tree but the realization that I just saved myself from making a huge error in my third novel. I almost took a brother and sister and turned them into ex-husband and ex-wife. I know what you’re going to say; how could I have missed that? Seeing as how this pair plays small roles in the series, they’re a bit harder to remember than my main players.

Whatever the reason for the slip, the responsibility to prevent that from happening rests on me. As a professional writer, it’s my duty to make sure I’m giving readers the best possible product which means its error free. In this case, the error wasn’t with the punctuation, grammar or spelling and not something my spell check would have caught.

Needless to say, a valuable lesson has been learned. I need to make sure I’m doing a better job of accounting for my characters and their role in my stories. They count so I need to count them. From now on, especially in the case of a multi-book series, I will be making character outlines or at the very least a family tree.