Reality Bites

Preparing for today’s post, I did my usual wading around the internet in search of anything that might strike my fancy. There was John Legend telling us if we didn’t want to listen (or read or watch or whatever) “art” by liberal artists then we would have a great deal less “art” to enjoy. There was an article in the Irish Times wondering if Irish authors make enough.  There was an article by a literary agent forecasting how the publishing industry would respond to the new year. So many possibilities and yet, if you really think about it, nothing new.

Then I ran across a couple of articles that caught my eye. The first, and thanks to The Passive Voice — touches on something that has the potential to impact a number of indie authors. Let’s face it. There are few, if any, of us who have chosen the indie route to publishing who wouldn’t love to walk into the local bookstore and find our books on the shelves. After all, we’ve been programmed for years to believe that is one of the final indicators that we are a “real” author. Unfortunately, the reality is that our chances are slim. Sure, we might be lucky enough to have a locally owned bookstore willing to stock our books and let us have signings there but the bog box stores still look at us as second-class writers.

So, indies have gone looking for ways around that. The most common way is using Lightning Source. After all, it has the “benefit” of not being associated with Amazon. We’ve seen how Barnes & Noble, the big boy in booksellers in the US, has said it will never, ever stock anything with an Amazon tie and, well, Createspace is owned by Amazon.

Of course, there are a couple of problems with that. First, B&N and others might not stock our books but they will order them if a customer comes in and asks. Or they should, if they want to keep the customer. After all, one of the benefits of having an ISBN is that it lists your title in Books in Print. It also means your print book will be listed in their online catalog. I can go right now to BN’s online store and find my print books even though I have no e-books in the store. So, it comes down to whether or not corporate buyers will pick your book up to be stocked in their stores and the answer is a resounding “no”, not unless you are making such waves on social media that they can’t ignore it.

But there is another player in this part of the market I hadn’t heard of before: BAM! Publish. As you can probably guess from the name, this is a program associated with Books-A-Million. You can check out this article for some background about Books-A-Million and their association with indie publishing. The short version is, they came late to the program — 2015 — and now they have this BAM! Publish program to help get your print books onto the shelves. Except, does it really and, if it does, is it worth the price?

Honestly, if half of what the article says is true, this program is a perfect example of doing your homework before entering into a business relationship. In this particular case, the only way those using the BAM platform can get into the stores is to buy one of their packages, none of which are cheap, or to buy 1,000 copies of your book. Hmm, what does that sound like? Can anyone say “vanity press”? Or how about “rip-off”?

So, as tempting as it is to do whatever it takes to get your books onto the shelves in your local bookstore, you have to consider the cost and consider if it is really worth it. In other words, as I told my critique group this past weekend, we have to remember that writing is a business and treat it as such. That means looking at the financial realities and remembering that anything we pay to produce and distribute out books has to be recovered in sales before we make a profit. So, will that $1100 or more ever be recovered or are you just throwing money away?

A couple of other notes. For those of you who use KDP to publish your e-books, the interface has changed recently. When I logged on last week to upload a new title, I came to a sliding halt. The page didn’t look the same. Whaaaat?

Yes, the bookshelf still looks like it has for, well, pretty much forever. But when you go to the “Add New Title” option, everything changes. The first change is that you choose the language of your release before you do anything else. The rest of the page is basically the same as before except for a couple of things. The first is the order is rearranged. The second is what used to be a 2-page process is now 3 pages.

Again, not a big change but a change and it can throw you if you aren’t expecting it.

The biggest changes, in my opinion, come when at the bottom of the first page and on the second. The first is the pre-order option. You’ll find that at the bottom of the first page. If you choose to offer your title for pre-order, you can no make changes in the book up to three days prior to your release date. You can also offer up to 10 titles for pre-order at a time. Best of all, you now have a countdown clock both at the top of the page as well as at the bottom telling you exactly how long you have left to update the file.

The next real change comes when you upload your interior file. You still do it basically the same way you have been able to in the past. There are multiple formats you can upload, etc. Almost as soon as you upload the file, you can preview it on the upload page. That’s helpful but it really doesn’t give you the full feel for how the book will look on a Kindle or in the Kindle app. So you have to wait until you can download the mobi file of what you just uploaded.

And the key word here is wait. When I uploaded my book, it took approximately 10 minutes before the downloadable file was ready. I never had to wait that long before and certainly not after the online previewer was available. Perhaps that was a glitch in the system but I have heard from other authors that they have experienced the same thing.

Also, before this change in interface, Amazon would give you a list of possible misspellings in your work. That was helpful, especially if you were uploading the final file. It wasn’t 100% accurate but it often caught something my editor and I missed. That function is gone.

The final change is you can now use your KDP dashboard to upload your print book as well. Simply go to that book in your bookshelf and click the “Create paperback” link. It will open a new page, all part of your KDP dashboard, The nice thing about this is that everything you entered about the book when you set up your e-book entry is carried over. Oh, you may have to do some tweaking — as in I have to move my middle initial from the “first name” block for the e-book to the “middle name” block. But your book title, series title, author name, book description, categories and key words are all there. That leaves you to click the save and continue button at the bottom of the page and start working on your interior file as well as your cover flat.

For ease of use, if nothing else, I applaud this change.

Oh, I guess this is where I tell you what book I uploaded.

Dagger of Elanna (Sword of the Gods Book 2)

Plots form, betrayals are planned and war nears.

Cait Hawkener has come to accept she might never remember her life before that terrible morning almost two years ago when she woke in the slavers’ camp. That life is now behind her, thanks to Fallon Mevarel and the Order of Arelion. Now a member of the Order, Cait has pledged her life to making sure no one else falls victim as she did.

But danger once more grows, not only for Cait but to those she calls friends. Evil no longer hides in the shadows and conspirators grow bold as they move against the Order and those who look to it for protection. When Cait accepts the call to go to the aid of one of the Order’s allies, she does not know she is walking into the middle of conspiracy and betrayal, the roots of which might help answer some of the questions about her own past.