Kindle Sales, Redux...

Perhaps I should stop using words like "redux." Anywho, I thought I'd report on the Kindle sales I'm making since I'd been kind enough to whine about them earlier in the month.

I'm happy to report that though I had projected a total of 4 (four) sales for the month of September, and though I'd later reported that after hundreds of dollars in giveaways at the latest iteration of Bouchercon (fabulous event, by the way) my sales had jumped to 5 (five) for the month, I am now at a total of 8 (eight) sales for September and think I have an outside chance at 10 (yes, ten).

Strange, however, that not a single one of all those sales is of my best collection - Killing Ways 2. Note that this collection isn't just the second collection I put out. It is also as much better than Killing Ways 1 as 2 is greater than 1 - that is, one hundred percent better. Not to discourage you, however, here is a link to my first collection. Not as good as the second, but probably better than anything else you'll spend 99 cents on this year. Except for the second collection, of course...

The Kindle Novel

A long, long time ago at a Bouchercon far, far away, John Rickards had a lot of fun mocking, yea, verily, mocking my goatsucker novel. He misheard the name and then said things filled with wickedness... I think he did not believe that such a book existed. He thought that the book was as mythical as the beastie.

BUT THE GOATSUCKER LIVES!!!

Okay, maybe not the goatsucker (though maybe; stranger things have happened). But the book certainly does live. I call it Lucy Cruz and the Chupacabra Killings. It will be a Kindle by the weekend. Just reading through a final pass of edits. I changed the book I unwisely mentioned to Rickards from a setting in 1991 to a setting in 2010. That means my photojournalist shouldn't talk about film - instead she talks about memory cards.

You may disbelieve if you like. Chupacabra is coming...

Ebook Apocalypse...

I was reading JA Konrath's blog the other day and came across something I thought might not actually be true. Konrath assumed (and he's said this before) that there is nowhere for his Kindle money-making power to go but up. The reasoning is that more Kindles are sold each day, adding to the number of potential readers, and, without too much of a leap, more actual readers/ebook buyers. This part sounds right.

But maybe I'm just a little too nervous. I see a potential problem. Assume that Kindles keep selling at an amazing rate. Assume they win the lion's share of the ereader market. Then wouldn't Amazon be smart to lower the royalty rate that they pay out to authors? And if every ereader were a Kindle (or if most were) then what could author's do but accept the new rate? And by offering a high rate now, Amazon encourages writers to flock to them (not exclusively... yet) even leaving behind the until recently coveted print contract.

And if Amazon does get the lion's share of the ereader market (once the dust has settled in a couple of years) it's not like there would be easy alternatives for writers. Unlike products put out by print publishers, the technology of ereaders is not compatible. If I have a Nook, I can't read a Kindle file (I'm guessing). So if I get a Kindle following (complete with groupies) and I don't like Kindle's new rules, it's not like I can just tell the fans to catch my next book on Nook or iPad. I mean would Joe Konrath be willing to tell Amazon to take a hike if they lowered his royalty rate from 70% to 40%? He might. I don't know Joe well. But he'd be losing a lot of readers. Most writers making as much money off of Amazon as Joe makes (or, to be real, even 10% of what he makes) would take the cut and still put up their wares for sale with Amazon. And if the royalty rate were cut to, say, 20%, how many writers could pass up making that number of sales?

Of course, my worst case scenario is for a future that's still a few years away and may never actually appear. Amazon may be fighting it out with the other ereaders for decades. In fact, the fight may never end as new technologies replace what's cutting edge today. I have a two year old daughter and I know for a fact that she won't be taking a Kindle to college.

It's probably nothing. Don't worry. Think of me as that man standing in the middle of the street screaming about pod people and drive on by, honking your horn. You're right to ignore me. I haven't slept in days...

Reviewers and Marketing

In trying to figure out how to market ebooks (another steep learning curve) I've been told that the way to make sales on Amazon is to get Amazon reviewers. Fair enough. Not sure how that works (That is, having a bunch of reviews up doesn't drive people to your book's page, does it?) but I'm willing to give it a go.

My new collection - Killing Ways 2 will be seeing the light of day within a week or so and I'd like some reviews. It is six stories long and totals about 22k words. The stories are all noir-ish type stories, all previously published; one of them won a Derringer award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and another story was nominated for a Derringer, so they're not bad.

If you've got a blog that you're willing to review the book on (good, bad, or indifferent - it's your blog) or if you're willing to type up a few words for Amazon when the book goes live, let me know and I'll send you a pdf file with the stories.

Again, I'm not looking to control the outcome of your review, just trying to ensure that there are some reviews out there. I think the stories are quality stuff and you'll be happy (unless you don't like noir/hardboiled).

If you're wondering whether it would be worth your time, you can, of course, splurge on my first collection Killing Ways:Stories. It's $.99 until the end of the month.

Kindle Questions

Okay, I still don't have a Kindle, and I haven't yet downloaded a Kindle "app." I'm planning on it. Just wondering if my home computer can handle it... And I haven't read up on what the restrictions are. If I buy a kindle book and download it to my desktop, can I email it to myself so I can read it at home?

And if I buy a Kindle today, won't it be obsolete in a year or two? Then what do I do? I'm sure Amazon's website can answer this for me, no?

And if I download books to my hard-drive, won't I eventually fill up the hard-drive? And by eventually, I mean quickly. How do people use their phones as Kindle machines? I mean, how many books can a cell phone hold? Or are you supposed to discard the books after you read them? Not sure I'd be happy about that.

Of course, it's not like I have unlimited shelf space either.

Anyway, time to do some downloading.

Screwtape...And Marketing

I was thinking about my story "The Devil's Snare: A Comedy" yesterday for no particular reason and at some point in my cogitations I thought the story was similar to C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I Lewis's book, a senior demon writes letters of advice to a junior demon who is trying to subvert his assigned human. The skewed point of view lends the book some humor amid some serious theology.

My story is told by the Devil himself as he tries to tempt an elderly lady. Things don't go exactly as he plans, but then, he's the Devil, so how bad can things get? Like Lewis, some humor, some serious thinking. I figured, if you like Lewis's effort, you'll like mine, so I went to Amazon and added a "tag," a label that buyers can use to find books in a category. I put down "Screwtape."

Now, Lewis is a popular author and outside of the Narnia books, Screwtape is probably his most popular work. When you go to the Kindle store at Amazon and type in "Screwtape," you get my short story 8th and I'm wondering about that. While I think there is a similarity and the actual titles of the two works share nothing in common, I wonder if I'm misleading readers. For instance, might someone think my story is some sort of C.S. Lewis fan-fiction that actually uses Screwtape as a character? Nothing in my description suggests that, but what if?

Well, I don't think I've done anything wrong - the buyer who thought they were getting Lewis fan-fiction would be making that assumption based on very little. But I don't know if there is a "tag" etiquette. If I haven't, then this seems like a good way to "position" one's work - look for similar authors and use their names/titles, etc as tags. Let me know. I'm curious to hear from more tech savvy readers.

Title Contest - Last Call

I really need a title for my next collection of short stories. Here's what I said earlier today:

It has a total of six stories (Revolver? Six-Shooters?) Two stories star Stupendous Jones (aka Stoop the Thief) a young boy who lives by his wits on the streets of NYC. Real heartbreakers, I think.

Two other stories are about Ray Cruz, a real tough guy, hired killer who has no qualms beating the living p**p out of you to get what he wants.

Another story is called "Elena Speaks of the City, Under Siege." Probably one of my best stories, it's about a young woman trying to keep it together in a Sarajevo-like environment. What is Sarajevo-like? It's a city under siege, of course.

And lastly, I have a story called "Early Fall." It's about a woman who tries to save a very young prostitute from her own addictions and the meanness of the streets. The woman has her own demons to wrestle with and the police are not too helpful either.

My first thought was something like Stoop the Thief and Other Urban Heroes but that somehow sounds a bit bland. Here are other attempts:

City without Mercy: Stories
Mercy Free Zone: Stories
Pitiless City

You see I'm no good at this. Stop me. Come up with a title I can use, and I'll send you a book.

The books I have on hand include signed hardcovers by SJ Rozan, Laura Joh Rowland, Alafair Burke, and if it's testaterone your crave, how about a Lee Child paperback?

Title Time, Redux

I really am straining for a title for my next Kindle collection. It has a total of six stories (Revolver? Six-Shooters?) Two stories star Stupendous Jones (aka Stoop the Thief) a young boy who lives by his wits on the streets of NYC. Real heartbreakers, I think.

Two other stories are about Ray Cruz, a real tough guy, hired killer who has no qualms beating the living p**p out of you to get what he wants.

Another story is called "Elena Speaks of the City, Under Siege." Probably one of my best stories, it's about a young woman trying to keep it together in a Sarajevo-like environment. What is Sarajevo-like? It's a city under siege, of course.

And lastly, I have a story called "Early Fall." It's about a woman who tries to save a very young prostitute from her own addictions and the meanness of the streets. The woman has her own demons to wrestle with and the police are not too helpful either.

My first thought was something like Stoop the Thief and Other Urban Heroes but that somehow sounds a bit bland. Here are other attempts:

City without Mercy: Stories
Mercy Free Zone: Stories
Pitiless City

You see I'm no good at this. Stop me. Come up with a title I can use, and I'll send you a book.

Title Time

Part of the fun/agony of producing the ebooks I've been working on is coming up with good titles. Perhaps I've acquired some stodggy habits being an English professor for so many years, I tend toward Blah, Blah, Blah, and Other Stories. See for instance, my Killing Ways: Stories. It does the basics - it tells you there's some killing, and it tells you it's not a novel but a collection instead. but it doesn't grab you like I'm Gonna Git You Sucka*.

I've got another collection coming up. Six stories. (Makes me consider something like Revolver, but it's not like a gun plays a part in every story, just 4 out of 6). I've described them before, so I'll do it again:

Two "Stoop the Thief" stories, one published in CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE years ago and the other published in an anthology from Bleak House called UNCAGE ME! The marvellous Jennifer Jordan accepted both stories for which I'm grateful. The second story was even nominated for a prize which was an honor. It also got me a very nice mention in Publisher's Weekly.

The next two stories would be Ray Cruz stories. Ray's a meanie. In any event, the first was also published in CRIMESPREE, the second came out in PLOTS WITH GUNS.

Then there'd be another CRIMESPREE selection: "Elena Speaks of the City, Under Siege." This one actually won a prize and it may well be the only second person story you'll ever love. Or read even. They're kind of rare.

And finally, a story that was published in BRONX NOIR from Akashic Books and edited by SJ ROZAN: "Early Fall." It's quite dark and based on a real person I knew. It's sort of a tribute to a real street battler who dedicated her life to helping prostitutes and addicts get off the junk and get clean.

The title I've got so far is Stoop the Thief and Other Urban Heroes Note the slight variation on the usual style. But since they're all urban stories, I'm wondering if something like "No Mercy Zone: City Stories" or "Killer City: Stories" Or "The Pitiless Street: Stories" Or...well, you see I'm no good at this. Help me out. Give me a title I can use, and if I use it, I'll send you a book. Not one of these fake electronic books either. A real book with a signature in it. Not my signature. Maybe It'll be Alafair Burke's signature. Or Laura Joh Rowland. Or Maybe SJ Rozan. Who knows? Talk to me.


* Taken.

The Kindle Plan

Okay, I have Kindle stories, but I don't have much of a plan for my Kindle career. Chances of becoming a Kindle millionaire, then, are therefore slim. But, I do have a general outline of what I'd like to accomplish, and here it is:

1 - Learn how to put stuff on Kindle properly - that is, when it is a multi-segment work like a short story collection, it should have a table of contents that allows readers to skip to the story they want. The ebooks should have decent covers especially when it's a collection or other full length book. I figure it will take me another month to learn how to do this on my own.

2 - Put all my short stories on the Kindle. This includes a total of about 30 stories, most of them previously published either for cash or FTL*. This is about 135,000 words in short stories in a total of six files - four collections and two single stories. Hopefully I can have this all up by the end of April, but I wouldn't be upset if it turned out to be the end of May.

3 - Get back the rights to THE CONCRETE MAZE from Dorchester and bring that to Kindle this Summer (or earlier, but Dorchester has heavy, dragging feet). It's my best book so far, and I'd like people to get a chance to read it.

4 - Finish a couple of original novels and bring them online in the second half of this year.

I figure that once I have all the short stories and a novel or two out there (mid-summer?) I can expect to see real money rolling in.

You'll notice that one item completely missing from my master-plan is advertising/marketing. I hate to admit it, but I really haven't given that much thought. Maybe I should refer to the Kindles in my signature line? Maybe I should tell people I know? I don't have a mailing list - always seemed rude to intrude emails into people's lives. But maybe I should start one. Somehow.
Any thoughts?



*FTL = For the love.

Whether I am single-handedly destroying the world...

Of publishing, that is. I posted yesterday about my so-far paltry ebook sales and got a fairly irate response in the comments. Now there is a lot wrong with the world of publishing, and I might be responsible for some small portion of it - for instance, if you don't like my books, I am truly sorry. But the reader who responded seemed to suggest that ebooks were ruining the publishing business including printers and bookstores. And the (now) $7.70 I'd made in the ebook trade* was a part of the ruining process.

Normally, I would want to argue that my small sum of cash (still technically in the negative numbers) are no threat to any publisher. Moreover, so far, I've only published or republished short stories and there's not a publisher in the world who would want a collection of my short stories or my take on what happens when the Devil makes you a deal or my novelette about the start of Sheriff Luis Gonzalo's very first case (even before he was sheriff). No book publisher was ever going to make a dime off my stories.

But I won't make these arguments. Instead, I'm trying to think of ways to use the one mildly negative comment as a marketing tool. Other than this blog post, nothing has yet come to mind. Any thoughts?




* minus $8 that Amazon will charge me for cutting me a check in six months when I hit $100...

Kindle Success, Part III

Okay, so now I have a total of six sales with royalties adding up to about $7 if I do my math correctly. Each ebook - Killing Ways: Stories and The Devil's Snare: A Comedy - has sold three copies. Sounds like I've made some coin off of stories that hadn't earned me any money (though a few were published previously around the web on now defunct sites). But being an old fogey, I asked Amazon to send me a check instead of routing money straight to my bank so they won't send a thing until I've reached a hundred bucks and at this rate it'll be July when that happens. And they take an $8 processing fee so right now, I owe them a dollar...

Not to mention that two friends brought copies so real sales are less than they appear, but...

In the world of short story publication, any sale is a good thing.

And I've got plenty of other stories to put out there. And when they're all out there working for me instead of taking up desktop space, I might make $7 A DAY... nothing to sneeze at since that turns into $2555 a year. Given the fact that most of the two dozen short stories I've published over the years earned $0, $2500+ would definitely be welcome.

Plus, I'm working on bringing THE CONCRETE MAZE to Kindle.

We'll see.

Kindle Descriptions

I forgot that I was supposed to describe my Kindle projects here. Great marketing maven I am...

Here goes for a short story (4670 words) called "The Devil's Snare: A Comedy" :

While tempting 72 year old Edith Porter, the Devil gets a little more (or less) than he bargained for.

If I were to give the book a cover photo, it would be a bobble-head devil with its base in a twine noose. Can't find a booble-head devil.

Here goes for Killing Ways: Stories (about 41,000 words):

1 - The Most Dangerous Man in New York City: 1969-1977: Winter 1971 is the first Ray Cruz story, and it shows why Ray Cruz fits the description in the title. Ray takes on the Italian mob - all of it - and doesn't do too badly.

2 - Daughters is the second Ray Cruz story. In it, he gets out of jail and his old boss has some work for him. He's not too interested in returning to a life in crime, but then the man he's asked to take care of earns Ray's very violent hate.

3 - Family is my first flash fiction and it involves Viktor Petrenko, ex-Soviet special forces, current new York City tough guy in the rescue of a baby. Don't worry. The child will come out unharmed. Can't say the same for everybody else in the story.

4 – Viktor Petrenko, Bring Them to Their Knees Viktor is in South America when he’s offered a job he can’t refuse – rescuing a little girl kidnapped by a drug cartel. He’s equal to the task of killing, but can he save the girl?

5 – Viktor Petrenko, We Will Make You Beg shows Viktor in Rikers Island Prison in New York awaiting his trial for tax evasion. The prison toughs want to make him choose a side and New York detectives want him to start talking about a dismembered body they found, but all Viktor wants is to be left alone with his memories of the one love of his life - Elena.

6 – Viktor Petrenko, Have You No Mercy? Viktor is sentenced to prison for tax evasion, but a white collar crime puts him in among the country club set for the first time in his life. While the other prisoners hardly know what to make of him, Viktor spends his nights dreaming of the Balkan Wars – the first time he met the love of his life, Elena.

7 – Excerpt from Man of Disaster is a taste of a novel in progress that should be ready for the summer. In it, scientists on the run from paid assassins involve Viktor in their troubles, and when the love of his life, Elena is threatened, Viktor responds the only way he knows how – murderously.

8 – Into the Woods is the story of a man and his psychotic delusions – delusions that seem real to the people they disembowel…

9 – Long Distance is the story of a con man who claims that his non-speaking friend can retrieve the voices that have spoken on your phone lines even if the speaker is dead. One little old lady wants to hear the last word of her now departed husband, but the message he left may not be what she wanted to hear…

10 – Murder at DynaCorp is about the investigation of a death – the head of research firm DynaCorp was found in his office with his heart sitting on top of his chest, but with no incision on his body.

Some of these were published in Demolition Magazine run by Bryon Quertermous and one was published in Flashing in the Gutters. Excellent ezines that should have had much longer runs.