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Grow Your Author Mailing List with These 7 Essential Tools

03.06.2018 No Comments

You’ve heard over and over that the best way to promote your author career is a robust mailing list. This is true no matter the product, the business model, or the industry.

A mailing list is important, but have you ever considered whether you are using all the available tools to grow your mailing list?

I was recently inspired to audit the tools I use for my own mailing list, and I found my toolbox sadly deficient. I am doing most of the right things, but some of my tools have never left the toolbox.

The following post lists seven of the dozen or more essential tools you should have in your mailing list tool kit. (If you have a suggestion for a tool to add to this list, I’d love to hear about it.)

Email Marketing Service

While you could manage your mailing list out of your Gmail account, only a masochist would want to do that rather than use one of the companies that offer email marketing services.

MailChimp, Aweber, and their competitors will keep track of your subscribers, give you tools to write newsletters, and tell you how many subscribers have opened or clicked each newsletter, all for a low monthly fee. Some are even free to use if you have a small mailing list.

I recently published a list of companies that offer mailing list services; I’m sure you will find one that does what you need.

Plugin

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an author in possession of a website must be in need of a pop-up plugin to promote the authors mailing list.

This is not strictly true – you can build sign-up forms on the email marketing service company’s website, and then embed the form in your site – but the simple fact is, having a mailing list plugin on your site does make it a whole lot easier to create new forms that blend well with the design of your site, update the forms, and generally manage the process of adding names to your mailing list.

Desirable Freebie Content

Thanks to the GDPR, you can no longer trade a free ebook for an email address and then add the address to your mailing list; now you have to actually get someone’s permission to send them emails.

But even though the new rules have put an end to that questionable marketing practice, you can still use free content to attract new subscribers. Think about who you want to subscribe to your mailing list, and then  create a short ebook that will appeal to them. It can be one of your short stories, or a short non-fiction work that ties in to your novels, or it might be an edited collection of the notes you made will doing background research.

Web Hosting Secrets Revealed has a good post on this topic.

Appealing Pitch

You’re probably thinking that you should pitch your mailing list on the landing page (or pop-up), and you’re right – but that isn’t the only place you will need to use a pitch. Before you can get someone to the sing-up page you will first need to get them to click a link. This is why you need to craft several different pitches ranging in length from a tweet to a Facebook update.

Your pitch needs to convey how the reader will benefit from subscribing, and I don’t mean just the free content. Tell them what they will gain from joining your mailing list, and how they can use the info you provide.

Marketing Sherpa can tell you more.

Killer Landing Page

Any indie author serious about growing their mailing list must invest in marketing campaigns with sales and lead generation goals. You have to get your name out there, and after someone clicks a link to learn more about you or your book it is the job of the landing page to clinch the deal.

Where a regular web page may have links to other parts of your site and lots of useful info, a landing page usually only tells visitors enough to get them interested in signing on the bottom line. All distracting info is removed, leaving just a pitch.

Jay Lemming has more detail on the Alli blog.

Attractive Welcome Email

If you thought your task was done once someone had signed up for your mailing list, think again. Your welcome email is your chance to establish a bond with your new subscriber.

You can tell the reader how to connect with you on social media, where you will be holding public events,  what books you are currently working on, and you can link to pages on your author site that share details about the books you write.

Vertical Response has useful tips on crafting a welcome email and examples you can study.

GDPR-Compliant Privacy Page

In mid-2016 Europe enacted new privacy rules that affected how marketers, websites, companies, and others can store a user’s information. Those rules took effect in late May 2018. For the most part the GDPR won’t apply to your author site, but there is one part you should follow if only because it is a good idea (it is also legally required).

Add a privacy policy on your website (or some other place that visitors can find it) that explains what information you collect, how it is gathered, etc. Be sure to tell visitors how they can request their info, and other rights they have under the GDPR.

What do you use to grow your mailing list?

I’d love to know what you’re using to grow your mailing list. Do you think they’re working? Also, what do you think of the tools and services I’ve mentioned in this post?

Amazon Changes KDP Rules on Bonus Content

02.06.2018 No Comments

Amazon has not yet responded to yesterday’s story about a book-stuffing scammer, but they have quietly changed the rules to make it more clear that book stuffing is not allowed.

According to the new rules bonus content can make up no more than 10% of an ebook:

If you choose to include bonus content (e.g., other stories, or previews of other books that are not part of your book’s title), it should be relevant to the customer and should not disrupt the reading experience. To meet these guidelines, we require placing additional content at the end of the book, and listing the bonus content in your book’s table of contents.

To provide an optimal customer experience, bonus content should make up no more than around 10% of your book. If you would like to include multiple stories within your book, consider creating a collection of works. When selecting your book’s title, always make sure to follow the Metadata Guidelines.

Primary and bonus content must meet all program guidelines (e.g., bonus content in KDP Select titles must be exclusive). Translated content must be high quality and not machine generated. Disruptive links and promises of gifts or rewards are never allowed.

For more information, see our content guidelines and Terms and Conditions.

You can find a previous version of this page in the Wayback Machine.

The rules change was inspired by yesterday’s story about a scammer who is cheating Kindle Unlimited via the book-stuffing con. They were stuffing whole novels in the back of each book, effectively making the book an anthology mis-labeled as a single book, and then collected the maximum payout in Kindle Unlimited by tricking readers into visiting the past page of the ebook.

Amazon has not yet commented on yesterday’s story, nor have they banned the scammer. It’s not clear why; the scammer is clearly violating both the spirit and the letter of several existing rules.

How to Cheat the Kindle Store (and Get Away With it!): The Chance Carter Story

01.06.2018 No Comments

For quite some time now I have been reporting on Amazon’s over-reliance on poorly programmed bots that punish the innocent while letting scammers run rampant.

Today I have an example scammer to show you. "Chance Carter" is the nom de trompeur for one of the scammers currently infesting the Kindle Store. They are running a book stuffing scam in Kindle Unlimited, and have apparently been operating there with impunity for years. At the same time, "Carter" is also breaking Amazon’s rule on incentivized reviews via an ingenious "contest" trick.

Update: Amazon has responded to my coverage and the public outcry by first banning the KDP account behind Carter, and then banning other book stuffers.

The book-stuffing con is one of the long-running problems in Kindle Unlimited.

In the first year of Kindle Unlimited, scammers took advantage of the system by uploading ebooks so short that they got paid after only a few pages were read. Amazon put a stop to that in July 2015 by switching to a system that paid based on pages read, and in response the scammers invented the book-stuffing con and started uploading really long books.

The way that the book-stuffing con works is that scammers stuff lots of extra content into an ebook before uploading it to Kindle Unlimited, and then trick readers into jumping to the end of the book.

Thanks to a flaw in the Kindle platform, namely that the platform knows your location in a book but not how many pages you have actually read, the scammers can get paid for a user having "read" a book in Kindle Unlimited by getting the user to jump to the last page.

This has been a known problem in Kindle Unlimited for over two years now. Amazon has responded by limiting the length of ebooks in KU, and banning practices like putting a TOC at the end of a book, but neither has really had any impact on scammers.

Chance Carter is the perfect example of both how the book-stuffing con works, and how Amazon is completely incapable of stopping the scammers.

Carter’s trick is to publish a ghost-written novel, stuff an extra six or seven of their ghost-written novels in the back, and then add a free ebook offer on the last page as bait for unsuspecting readers.

Each of the six or seven novels in the back of the ebook Stranded are also published in the Kindle Store under their own title, and each has a bunch of extra novels in the back.

This is a blatant violation of Amazon’s existing rules for KDP (see the section on disappointing content) and yet Amazon can’t seem to spot Carter’s operation, or that of the other scammers.

Remember, some of the scammers have grown so large that Amazon took them to arbitration. While this may have been intended as an object lesson, what it really did was show that there were massive scam operations going on in the Kindle Store.

And operation is a good word for it, because not only does Carter publish scam books, they also instruct readers how to support the scam:

And Carter goes one better; they also encourage reviews through a contest:

This, too, is against Amazon’s rules on incentivized reviews.

Amazon is not the first huge tech company to lose control of its ebookstore; in 2015 I showed how Google Play Books was so infested with piracy that Google had to shut down its book publisher portal, and start vetting everyone before letting them sell ebooks in Google Play Books.

One key difference between Amazon and Google, however, is that Amazon is unable to stop the major scammers while at the same is letting its bots go after innocent authors.

David Gaughran recounted his experience yesterday on Twitter.

Here’s how enforcement of rules and sanctioning is totally broken at Amazon right now. Last August, I got in trouble with Amazon. I remember clearly what happened because it was my birthday and I was dying in bed with a virus.

Amazon’s Kafkaesque "Compliance Team" sent me a nastygram. Said I was breaching the exclusivity terms of Select. I had no idea what they were talking about, of course, I’ve always played it straight and never took any risks.

Turned out a tiny German ebookstore had a bug and inadvertently reactivated a load of dead listings from 2013. Lots of authors were affected. It was nothing to do with me. I got no benefit from it. But Amazon dropped the hammer.

They threatened to boot me from Select and take away my page reads, and even close my account. For a bug on a site, nothing to do with me.

Not only that, Amazon cancelled my Countdown deal without even telling me. Cost me hundreds of dollars in promo. I was advertising a 99c deal to my readers that didn’t exist. It was a real dick move. I appealed – no good.

Even worse than what happened to me are the authors who were rank stripped, page stripped and had accounts closed because Amazon is using a dumb automated system to catch scammers which doesn’t work.

The human cost of the actions of cheap crooks like Chance Carter are real. One of my close friends was rank stripped when she was just getting her career back on track. It upset her so much she has given up writing. Thanks Amazon for nothing.

O O O

It is clear at this point that letting large automated systems run without human supervision is a failed idea.

We can see the consequence of bots run amok in Youtube’s ContentID, which has a history of false copyright claims, as well as a dozen other examples including the 2012 Hugo livestream getting blocked because it showed clips of the episodes that won awards.

In Google Play Books we have a tacit admission that the only way to keep pirates out of the store is to add humans to the control loop.

And even Amazon’s smaller competitor Kobo has realized that automation can only do so much without human supervision. Christine Munroe told me that Kobo has flesh and blood people vetting content:

From a self-published content perspective, we have created two systems: first, trust tiers at the account level where trusted account content goes through with low intervention, known spam/scam offenders are thoroughly vetted, and a substantial in-between yellow tier requires a combination of automation and human approval or rejection. Second, our analysis system scans for piracy and adult content.

Our Publisher Operations team works hand in hand with automation to classify all incoming content, as quickly and seamlessly as possible. When classifications are unclear or flagged, humans must intervene. Currently, our team looks at 65% of new KWL content being published every day, on average.

When do you suppose Amazon will figure this out?

P.S. Numerous complaints have been filed about Carter, and I also brought them to Amazon’s attention last night. That account was still active when I published this post.

Amazon to Block Australian Customers from Using Amazon.com, & They Could Lose Acess to Their eBooks

31.05.2018 No Comments

In its infinite wisdom, Amazon has decided that its Australian customers will no longer be allowed to shop from its main site, and have their orders shipped from overseas. Instead, these unwanted customers will have to buy from Amazon’s Australian site.

And that could be a huge issue for Australian Kindle users.

From Sydney Morning Herald:

Australians will be blocked from shopping on Amazon’s international websites and restricted to using its smaller local platform as the e-commerce giant responds to the government’s new GST rules on online purchases.

The move is seen as a win for local retailers which had lobbied for the 10 per cent tax to apply to all goods purchased from offshore retailers – not just on those greater than $1000.

…

Amazon said that Amazon.com, its American website, and other overseas sites would no longer ship to Australian addresses from July 1.

…

Shoppers visiting those sites will be redirected to Amazon.com.au, which launched late last year and stocks about 60 million products, compared to almost half a billion on its US site.

July 1 is the date new rules come into effect forcing online retailers to apply the 10 per cent GST to all online purchases being shipped to Australia from overseas.

This is going to be a minor annoyance for most of Amazon customers but possibly a huge problem for Kindle users.

You see, Amazon has set up its Kindle platform in such a way that you can only have a Kindle app or ereader attached to a specific account with one of its websites. If you have accounts through both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr, you can only register an app or a Kindle through one account.

Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but with customers being forced to switch to Amazon’s Australian site it means that they could lose access to their ebooks:

Note: I am using the indefinite phrasing in this post because I have not confirmed the accuracy of this initial report. Amazon was queried before this post was published, but has not responded.

Amazon has forced customers to switch Kindle Stores in the past, with different results.

Back in 2013, customers in Canada, Japan, and Brazil were all blocked from buying from Amazon.com. In at least some of the cases I found back then, users were able to transfer their accounts, but only at the cost of their purchase history, gift card credits, and wishlists. Users also lost books that were not available from Amazon in their respective national markets, as well as other content.

At the very least, Amazon’s customers are facing a painful disruption, and for no good reason.

 

Goodreads is Beta-Testing a New Android App

29.05.2018 No Comments

Goodreads  has been quietly testing a new version of its Android app which is described by early users as "a bit nicer to navigate, with less nesting in areas like the "My Books" tab". The beta app, which so far as I can tell was just launched, is promised to be "faster, redesigned, and overall more usable".

It’s currently missing some features, and according to the FAQ the developers are still working on adding features so you can:

  • Find and add your Facebook friends
  • Add custom shelves (tags)
  • Add books to your custom shelves (tags)
  • View your Kindle Notes & Highlights support
  • Use the app without creating an account or logging

You can find the app in Google Play, and read more about it in the FAQ.

Android Police

AAP Reports Trade Revenues Up 6.3%, eBook Revenues Down 3.2% in First Quarter

28.05.2018 No Comments

The American Association of Publishers reported a surprising jump in trade revenues on Friday. Overall revenues rose 6.2% ($143.2 million) while trade revenues were up 6.2%, to $1.59 billion.

In comparison, revenues rose 1% during the same period last year.

These figures reflect the revenues for the legacy publishers who send their data to the AAP, of course.

Press release

Publishers’ revenue increased by $143.2 million (+6.2%) for the first quarter of 2018 (Jan – March) compared to the same period in 2017. These numbers include sales for all tracked categories (Trade – fiction/non-fiction/religious, PreK-12 Instructional Materials, Higher Education Course Materials, Professional Publishing, and University Presses). The increases are attributed primarily to strong growth in trade (consumer) books in January and February.

Trade books increased by $94.7 million (+6.3%) to $1.59 billion in the first quarter of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017, with growth in Adult Books, Children & Young Adult Books and Religious Presses. Publishers also saw increased revenue for Professional Books, University Presses and Higher Ed Course Materials.

Some First Quarter trends include:

  • Publishers saw revenue gains in Adult Books, Professional Books, and University Presses continuing trends from 2017
  • Adult Books saw double-digit growth in January (+13.7%) and February (+12.4%)
  • While eBook revenue decreased for the quarter, March saw 1.5% growth for the format
  • Downloaded audiobooks continue their rapid growth, with publisher revenue up 32.1% for the first quarter

First Quarter 2018: Trade Book Revenue (in millions)

Jan. – March 2018

Jan. – March 2017

Percent Change
Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction

$1,087.3

$1,033.1

+5.2%
Children/YA

$389.9

$368.1

+5.9%
Religious Presses

$109.8

$91.1

+20.6%
Total

$1,587.0

$1,492.3

+6.3%

Trade Book Formats

In the first quarter, print books generally continued their growth from 2017. Revenue from print books totaled $1.14 billion, up about $67.7 million (+6.3%), from the first quarter of 2017. The increase is attributed to growth in trade’s two largest formats – hardback books (+12.0%) and paperback books (+3.2%).

Downloaded audio continued its significant growth into the first quarter of 2018, up by +32.1% over the first quarter 2017. In the first quarter of 2018, the format added $24.0 million in revenue growth compared to the same period last year, making it the format with the second highest revenue growth – just behind hardback books (up $57.1 million).

While eBooks declined by -3.2% for the quarter, they had one month of growth. Publisher revenue for eBooks grew 1.5% in March 2018 compared to March 2017, with Adult eBooks being the reason for the increase.

Total Trade Net Revenue by Format (in millions)

Jan. – March 2018

Jan. – March 2017

 Percent Change
Hardback

$532.6

$475.5

+12.0%
Paperback & Mass Market

$575.0

$561.3

+2.4%
eBooks

$270.2

$279.0

-3.2%
Downloaded Audio

$98.8

$74.8

+32.1%
Physical Audio

$8.9

$9.2

-3.6%
Board Books

$28.2

$31.3

-10.1%
Other

$73.3

$61.1

+19.9%

Education, Professional and Scholarly Publishing

Trends from 2017 continued through the first quarter of 2018, with revenue growth in Professional Books (business, medical, law, scientific and technical books), University Presses, and Higher Education Course Materials. Prek-12 Instructional Materials was the only tracked category that saw a decline in the first quarter.

First Quarter 2018: Education and Scholarly Publishing (in millions)

Jan. – March 2018

Jan. – March 2017

Percent Change
Higher Ed Course Materials

$511.8

$460.0

+11.2%
PreK-12 Instructional Materials

$215.4

$234.5

-8.2%
Professional Books

$131.9

$119.6

+10.3%
University Presses

$13.1

$12.6

+4.1%
Total

$872.2

$826.7

5.5%

Publisher net revenue is tracked monthly by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and includes revenue from about 1,100 publishers, with participation subject to change over time. AAP also tracks revenue annually with AAP’s StatShot Annual Report, which includes reporting from additional publishers and data about unit sales and channels. For more information about purchasing the StatShot Monthly and StatShot Annual, email [email protected].

Amazon Has Banned ARC Reviews, and Forgot to Tell Anyone

24.05.2018 No Comments

Companies like Amazon often have two sets of policies. The first type are the official policies that can be found on the T&C pages (such as the $50 minimum purchase before you can post reviews), but Amazon also has other non-official policies that have not been spelled out or announced and instead have to be discovered and complied with in a process akin to navigating a minefield (and just as stressful).

Amazon’s new policy on advanced reader copies (ARC) books definitely falls into the latter category.

Update: This problem has reportedly been fixed. Amazon hasn’t responded to my queries, but a couple sources have told me that these reviews are no longer being blocked.

You won’t find this policy mentioned on Amazon’s site, but numerous authors are reporting on KBoards, Facebook, and elsewhere that Amazon is no longer letting people post un-verified book reviews before a book launches.

Edit: I misunderstood the reports; this is after a book launches, not before.

If you buy the book from Amazon, you can post the review, but if you get a free copy from the author, publisher, or NetGalley (like many reviewers do) you will instead see this message when you try to post the review:

Sorry, we are unable to accept your review of this product.

This product currently has limitations on submitting reviews. This may be because we detected unusual reviewing behavior on this product, or to maintain the best possible shopping experience. For more information, see the Customer Review Guidelines.

I have seen dozens of reports from authors who say that this message has appeared on traditionally published books and independently published books alike.

While free review copies is still allowed under Amazon’s official policies, clearly they have been banned under some unofficial policy that Amazon has not told anyone about.

The most likely reason for the non-announcement is that Amazon has let its bots decide which early reviews are legit. These are the same bots that cannot tell the difference between a paid review and a legit review.  These bots are also responsible for punishing innocent authors for supposedly fraudulent activity in Kindle Unlimited.

As in those earlier cases, Amazon customer service has not been able to adequately explain why the policy has changed. This is because the Amazon employees talking to customers and authors are not the same employees running the bots.

How could they be, when no one is actually running the bots?

Update: This problem has reportedly been fixed. Amazon hasn’t responded to my queries, but a couple sources have told me that these reviews are no longer being blocked.

Amazon Continues to Pay Unfairly Low Royalty Rate in Audible Romance, But is Finally Letting Authors Out of the Program

22.05.2018 No Comments

Amazon still hasn’t fixed the ongoing fiasco that is Audible Romance. The new royalty payments for Q2 2018 today are still unreasonably low, but on the upside Amazon has allowed some authors to escape from Amazon’s sweatshop.

According to reports from KBoards, the royalty rate for the second quarter was about the same as for the first. One author said the rate was "about 10 cents per 100 minutes listened to", while another wrote that they "made about 50 cents per listen".

Last quarter, Audible paid $0.0009556 for each minute that an Audible Romance subscriber spent listening to an audiobook. That is almost the same as the rate for this quarter, and that means Amazon still hasn’t found a fix to its funding problem.

They have, however, finally started letting authors leave the program. Here’s the text of an email sent to one author:

While we are sorry to see your titles go, we are removing them from the package at your request. Please note that we will not be able to re-enter your titles to the Audible Romance Package for 12 months following removal. You may continue to earn royalties from the titles removed from the Audible Romance Package as we will not remove titles from listeners' libraries. Listener minutes will be reflected in future earnings statements.

In order to remove titles, please reply to this e-mail with the specific names and URLs that you would like removed from the Audible Romance Package. Once we receive this information, all changes will take up to 20 business days to take effect. We will send you a confirmation email once titles have been removed from the Audible Romance Package.

Thank you for your participation in the Audible Romance Package.

Launched last November, Audible Romance is a subscription service where you can listen to as many romance audiobooks as you like for a flat monthly fee. This is great for users but not for authors because, as you would expect, romance fans can consume an impressive number of audiobooks each month.

Since authors were paid from a pool funded by subscription fees, this meant that authors were paid an incredibly low rate for their work in Q1 2018 – about 57 cents for a ten hour audiobook.

That pay rate is unsustainable; it has made romance audiobooks financially unviable, but so far Amazon has not said how they are going to fix it.

If and when they do I will cover that story.

Thanks, Isobel!

 

 

Seven Drop Dead Simple Ways Authors Can Grow Their Audience in 20 Minutes or less

21.05.2018 No Comments

One of the first – and possibly the most important – things authors learn about developing their writing career is that marketing is not something you can just do once and then forget about. Instead, authors should plan on the need to promote their career on a weekly or monthly basis over the course of years.

This might sound like it will take too much time away from writing your next book, but let’s not forget that writing is a business. If you don’t spend  time promoting your work – or to put it another way, growing your audience – then there won’t be anyone around to buy your next book when it hits the Kindle Store.

All this time spent in self-promotion might sound like too much time wasted on the boring part of an author’s job, but when done right marketing doesn’t have to take more than 20 minutes. Furthermore, marketing is one of those activities that only pays off after consistent effort.

Here are seven ways you can promote your writing career, twenty minutes at a time.

1. Reach out to readers, and ask them to post a review.

If you have already published several books, and fans are emailing you or reaching out on social media, now is a good time to raise the topic of reviews. It is perfectly okay to ask them if they have posted a review; you might also drop a hint in the intro of your next newsletter.

Amazon.com is always the best place for your fan to post a review because a review will be reposted to all of Amazon’s sites, but it might also be deleted for no good reason. Amazon also requires that reviewers spend at least $50 a year on the site, which not everyone does. That’s why you might want to ask fans to post their reviews on GoodReads.

2. Publish a blog post or newsletter.

Blog posts can’t drive sales like they did back before Google killed Google Reader, but they can still be a good way to gain the interest of visitors to your website. A kick-ass evergreen post – one that is insightful and well-argued – can attract visitors even years down the line.

Similarly, a newsletter – while not as useful in the long term – is your chance to get the attention of subscribers where they live: their inbox.

If you are coming up short on ideas, here’s a tip: Take one of the topics you looked into while doing background detail and write it up in a blog post. Explain it in detail, and provide links to additional background information.

Another way to write a great newsletter is to take something that happened to you and explain what can be learned from it. Be sure to focus on lessons that will interest your readers.

I will be honest with you, though; a great blog post will take you more than 20 minutes. For example, this post you are reading right now took me eight hours to plot, research, write, and edit. That is a huge investment in time, but I am hoping that the investment will pay off over the years as the post continues to be shared and read.

3. Update/Refresh your site (this includes the SEO as well as the content).

When was the last time you updated the bookshelf section of your site?If you have recently written new background detail, or just finished answering questions from readers, now would be a good time to add the extra info. An FAQ is a good way to share details about your books, their release dates, and their background.

Remember, the more _interesting_ details you share, the more your fans will like your work and buy your next book.

BTW, when was the last time you changed the free ebook you offer through your mailing list signup form?

4. Schedule a sale, and pre-announce it on social media.

Everyone loves a sale, and we even like to hear about one in advance. Several authors have told me that they will schedule a sale on a backlist title on a given day, and then announced the sale on their mailing list or social media days or weeks in advance. I am told this is an effective way to both engage with fans and to boost sales.

5. Update your book listings on GoodReads.

When was the last time you updated your author account on GoodReads? (Have you claimed it yet? Why not?) Are all the descriptions, covers, and release dates correct?

Most importantly, have you posted your new book yet? GoodReads will let authors list upcoming books as early as several years before publication day. Fans can add those books to their shelves, and anyone who has a book on their shelf can get updates every time you post an update about the book. This can be a good way to generate pre-launch buzz and boost sales on publication day.

6. Read the daily HARO emails.

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is an online service that connects journalists with sources. It is free for journalists and costs the sources anywhere from nothing to $150 a month, depending on the service tier.

This can be a great way to get your name mentioned in a news publication, but since you can’t control how you are quoted there is the risk of being quoted out of context.

7. Schedule a book signing, or author reading.

Go in to your inbox and dig out those emails you were ignoring. You know the ones I mean – the emails where a bookstore, school, book fair, etc expressed interest in hearing you speak. Apologize for the delayed response, and tell them that you are interested.

Edit: While we’re at it, don’t forget the bloggers who want to interview you!

If you don’t have any emails like that then go into your outbox and find the emails you sent to event organizers that did not generate a response. Send a polite follow up email telling them you are still interested.

And if you don’t have either type of email then now would be a good time to find events you can attend. Search for writer conferences, book fairs, and author events, and you will find happenings where you can promote yourself.

My Mailing List is GDPR Compliant – How About You?

19.05.2018 No Comments

The European Union’s new privacy rules, the GDPR, takes effect next Saturday.

The new regulation requires, among its many measures, that every website publish a privacy policy detailing how they use the data they collect from customers and visitors. We also have to sanitize our mailing lists by confirming that we actually had people’s permission to send emails.

There’s obviously more to GDPR than that, and I will go into it in detail in the newsletter I am sending on Monday. This post is less about the new rules than  about our experiences with compliance.

I’d like to hear about the problems you encountered. For example, how many email addresses are you going to have to remove from your mailing list?

After a careful check, I found that I have exactly 24 emails (out of thousands of subscribers) where I hadn’t made it clear that people were signing up for a mailing list.  Those two dozen emails were given to me in exchange for a free ebook, which means I have to get their permission before sending them another email.

Have you encountered problems complying with the new rules?

If you share your story below, maybe we can help.

 

Kindle Unlimited Funding Pool, Per-Page Rate Increased in April 2018

17.05.2018 No Comments

The third largest ebook market in the world continued to grow in April 2018.

Amazon announced on Tuesday that the funding pool increased to $21.2 million in April, up from $21 million in March. At the same time the per-page rate rose to $0.00456 from $0.00449 in March and $0.00466 in February 2018.

  • US: $0.0046 (USD)
  • UK: £0.0035 (GBP)
  • Germany: €0.0031 (EUR)
  • Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy: €0.0045 (EUR)
  • Canada: $0.0046 (CAD)
  • Brazil: R$ 0.0109 (BRL)
  • Japan, Mexico, Australia, Canada, India: unknown

Here’s a list of the monthly funding pools. It does not include the bonuses paid out each month.

  • July 2014: $2.5 million (Kindle Unlimited launches early in the month)
  • August 2014: $4.7 million
  • September 2014: $5 million
  • October 2014: $5.5 million
  • November 2014: $6.5 million
  • December 2014: $7.25 million
  • January 2015 – $8.5 million
  • February 2015: $8 million
  • March 2015: $9.3 million
  • April 2015: $9.8 million
  • May 2015: $10.8 million
  • June 2015: $11.3 million
  • July 2015: $11.5 million
  • August 2015: $11.8 million
  • September 2015: $12 million
  • October 2015: $12.4 million
  • November 2015: $12.7 million
  • December 2015: $13.5 million
  • January 2016: $15 million
  • February 2016: $14 million
  • March 2016: $14.9 million
  • April 2016: $14.9 million
  • May 2016: $15.3 million
  • June 2016: $15.4 million
  • July 2016: $15.5 million
  • August 2016: $15.8 million
  • September 2016: $15.9 million
  • October 2016: $16.2 million
  • November 2016: $16.3 million
  • December 2016: $16.8 million
  • January 2017: : $17.8 million
  • February 2017: : $16.8 million
  • March 2017: $17.7 million
  • April 2017: $17.8 million
  • May 2017 :$17.9 million
  • June 2017: $18 million
  • July 2017: $19 million
  • August 2017: $19.4 million
  • September 2017: $19.5 million
  • October 2017: $19.7 million
  • November 2017: $19.8 million
  • December 2017: $19.9 million
  • January 2018: $20.9 million
  • February 2018: $20 million
  • March 2018: $21 million
  • April 2018: $21.2 million

via Self Publisher Bibel

Amazon to Shut Down Kindle Worlds

15.05.2018 No Comments

Word is percolating through several different parts of the indie author community  tonight that Amazon is going shut down Kindle Worlds, its fan fiction publishing unit, just before KW’s fifth anniversary

Several of my sources are comments left on KBoards, where author Jim Johnson wrote earlier today:

Heard in a couple places that Kindle Worlds is closing down. If true, it’s too bad, but not surprising. I’ve had an eye on it for a while but it never seemed to be well-managed. And the lack of metrics available to authors seemed problematic.

Apparently Amazon has told the authors who own their respective Kindle Worlds, but has not yet told KW contributors or the public that the program will close completely in July.

Another of my sources found me privately through FB, and cannot be named. That source told me that the official notice will go out tomorrow, which is apparently not true because Lindsay Buroker got the word a few hours ago:

Launched in May 2013, Kindle Worlds was the part of Amazon’s publishing unit that focused on publishing tie-in stories for existing properties like GIJoe, and various TV shows such as Veronica Mars and Vampire Diaries. Each property was set up as its own little Kindle World, and writers were invited to submit stories. The original creators of the IP could accept or decline the stories, and if a story also passed Amazon’s content standards then it was published in the Kindle Store, with the author, owner, and Amazon splitting the sale price.

Kindle Worlds later expanded to include Kindle Worlds based on the works of indie authors such as Barry Eisler, Blake Crouch, and JK Konrath. It gradually slid off the radar by 2015, but continued to publish new stories. In fact, one source on FB said they had KW stories set to be published in October.

It’s not clear what will happen to existing stories, but I am told that rights will revert to authors of each story. They will have the option of either working out a deal with the original creator in whose world the story is set, or removing any identifying details and then republishing a former KW story as a new work.

Update: Here’s the letter Amazon sent to the KW owners:

As a valued member of the Kindle Worlds licensor community, we wanted to let you know that the Kindle Worlds program is closing. We will be notifying fan authors tomorrow, May 16th.

As of May 17th, Kindle Worlds will no longer be accepting new submissions. Previously published Kindle Worlds stories will no longer be available for sale on Amazon.com on or around July 16th. The Kindle Worlds website will be closed on August 29th; we ask that all Kindle Worlds participants update and validate their banking information, mailing address, and contact information by July 31, 2018 in order to facilitate a timely final royalty payment.

Your final royalty statement will include a proactive final payment for all remaining Kindle Unlimited borrows, including borrows that have not yet met the qualified borrow threshold. We plan to remove Kindle Worlds stories from Kindle Unlimited on May 16th.

Effective as of the date we remove each fan author’s work, we will revert the rights granted to us by that fan author. Our reversion letter to each applicable fan author will provide that such reversion is subject to the rights we granted to you in the Kindle Worlds License Agreement between you and us.

For five years, Kindle Worlds has been thriving, engaging writers and readers who enjoy writing in one another’s worlds, and we’re proud of the work we’ve done together. While we are closing Kindle Worlds, Amazon is constantly innovating on behalf of our authors and readers, and we look forward to continuing to do so.

We hope that 2018 and beyond bring wonderful things for you and your stories, and we appreciate your support over the years.
Warm wishes,
The Kindle Worlds team

Have you written a Kindle World story? What do you plan to do with it now that KW is closing?

Nate’s Big List of eBook Market Analytic Tools

15.05.2018 No Comments

Finding the right niche / genre / keywords to market your book, and then parsing the sales data once your ebook is on the market, can mean the difference between a best-seller book and one no one has ever heard of.

The following post details a couple lists of tools that authors can use to target their books through market research, and then track ebook sales once the books are for sale.

This list includes all the tools I could find in a thorough search, but if you know of a tool not listed please mention it in the comments.

Market Research

The first step in publishing a best-selling book is finding out what is selling, and the following tools can help you with that.  They can parse Kindle Store rankings and tell you which genres are selling how many copies, what the best-selling books have in their descriptions, and commonly used keywords.

Name Cost Review Details
KDP Analytics free to $30 per month na Analyzes books in the Kindle Store, and tells you what is selling and why. Can use current market data to predict your sales, royalties and profit.
Kindle Spy (KD Spy) $47 na See above, can also analyze your competitors.
K-lytics $37 per month to $497 per year The Creative Penn Less a tool than a source of market research reports, KD Spy sells reports and seminars that focus on specific niche genres (clean romance, vigilante justice, female detectives, etc). Individual reports cost $27 and up; the monthly cost is to access multiple reports.
KD Researcher $17 FreeStyle Author Desktop app that lets you compile reports using data from Kindle, print, or audiobook categories on Amazon. You can limit the reports by publication year, genre, and price range. Note: It doesn’t appear to do any analytics.
KDP Rocket $97 AMZ Prof Starting with a keyword, analyzes books in the Kindle Store, and tells you what is selling and why, and by how many sellers. It will also tell you how many times the keyword has been searched for in Google and Amazon.
Kindle Samurai $20  Kboards see KDP Rocket
Keyword Inspector $39 per month  na this is a more general Amazon keyword analytics tool. I could not find relevant info on how well it would work in the Kindle Store.

There are of course other tools that are designed to analyze Amazon generally rather than the book sections specifically. If you encounter one that is free to use, you should try it and let us know how well it worked.

Sales Reports

Once your ebooks start selling, you are going to want to start tracking your sales. A shift in sales is often your first clue that the market conditions have changed, and that you might want to change your prices or marketing strategy.

Here are four tools that you can use to track your sales across several retailers and distributors. Most will integrate sales data from Amazon and other retailers into a single interface, saving you the time of checking one retailer at a time. Some will even help you track book reviews left by customers.

NOTE: Several of these programs require that you give them your login credentials for KDP and elsewhere.

Name Cost Discussion Details
AKReport €8 to €16 per month  KBoards  Browser based, and only works with KDP. Offers a specialized view of KDP dashboard.
Book Report free to $19 per month  KBoards Similar in function to AKReport. Based on what I see online, Book Report is widely used.
BookTrakr varies, generally $1 to $19 per month  KBoards Collects your sales data from ebook retailers every night, and assembles them into one dashboard. Also tracks your reviews, rankings, and ratings.
Trackerbox $89  Kboards Takes all of the sales reports from Amazon, Apple, B&N, and a host of other distributors, and organizes them into a single, manageable set of reports.  Only available for Windows; a macOS app is expected by August 2018.
Readerlinks $19 per minth  Kboards This is an author services company, and one of the things it does is let you track sales per book, pages read, free downloads, etc.

 

Leaked: Kobo Clara HD Costs $129, Ships Early Next Month

14.05.2018 No Comments

Kobo’s newest ereader isn’t scheduled to ship until the end of the month, but Notebook Italia finding a leaked product listing on an Italian retailer’s website just rendered the press embargo moot.

The cat is truly out of the bag, but I am still under an embargo so I can’t tell you everything.

The Kobo Clara HD is a new 6″ ereader with a touchscreen and color-changing frontlight on top of 300 PPI Carta E-ink screen. Weighing in at 166 grams, the Clara HD measures 8.4 mm thin. Under the hood you will find 8GB of storage, Wifi, and a 1.5Ah battery, but you will not find BT or a card slot.

All in all, the specs suggest that this is a nice upgrade to Kobo’s existing 6″ ereader, but it doesn’t wow me – mostly because I don’t care for the Clara HD’s stand out feature, its color-changing frontlight.

If you do like it and have been wanting to get the new frontlight on a pocketable ereader then you are going to be very happy in just a few weeks.

The Clara HD will sell for $129 USD or 129 euros. It ships in Italy on 5 June; my embargo ends a few days short of that.

 

Internet Archive Wants You to Turn Your Site Into a Pirate Site

13.05.2018 No Comments

The Open Library is a free web library slash pirate site run by the Internet Archive. It lends ebooks, and can be used by anyone online.

A recent update added a new option where anyone with a website can embed a widget on their site that will display a book listing from the Open Library. (Amazon and other retailers offer a similar option.)

Openlibrary.org has over 3M books lining its digital shelves, but nothing quite beats being able to embed your favorite book directly on your personal site. Last week, with the help of volunteer Galen Mancino, we launched an embed tool which lets you add any Open Library book to your website or blog. Next time you write a book review, you can place its Open Library book right next to it and, if its available, enable your audience to read it with a single click.

This embed feature is at best problematic; yes, it’s a great feature, but it’s being offered by a site that hosts a lot of pirated books.

The Internet Archive has many positive activities, including rescuing abandoned software and archiving sites so they don’t vanish from the web.

The Open Library, the site where the IA distributes in-copyright and commercially available books without permission, is not one of them.

Late last year The Authors Guild, followed shortly by the SFWA, publicly stated what many had noticed going on for years: the Internet Archive was using the Open Library to lend scanned copies of print books to the public. Many of the books were and are available through retailers and library services like OverDrive, but rather than buy legal ebooks the Open Library shared pirated copies.

You can find copies of Harry Potter on their, as well as books by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and many other authors.

The Internet Archive has so far refused to address the complaints or stop the piracy. The closest they have come is to make a "good works" defense and claim that they will take the pirated books down when they receive a DMCA notice.

This is akin to a car thief insisting he’s not a car thief because he will return the car when asked. It is a threadbare defense at best, and it is further weakened by the IA repeatedly ignoring DMCA notices and only responding when threatened with a lawsuit.

And now the Open Library wants to make it easier to encourage people to use their service.

I can’t say I am happy about that, but I do admire their chutzpah.