I’ve not changed the price of my first book on Amazon in a year and a half. My guess is that frequent price change or even free days will not do much for your sales and won’t result in many new reviews. Nonetheless, I thought I’d make my book free for a day and see what happens.

The day is about half over, and per the KDP report Amazon offers, I’ve had about 70 downloads. Given that I barely advertised it — a few tweets only — that is not too surprising. But there are a few surprising things.

First, my book is #1 in the Kindle store for free downloads for “History>Military>Vietnam War”. That did surprise me at first, but when I thought about it…it probably shouldn’t have. The reason is that it is not a very big genre; there are not a lot of free downloads in that category today. In fact, there are only 5 at the moment.

My book was #2 and #6 in two more categories, as you can see above. Those categories have over a hundred books listed, so being #4 and #8 and being #2,261 overall is a more respectable accomplishment.

What has not happened, is that I have not gotten any more reviews. Of course, it is too early to expect any new reviews, so that is no shock.

But getting more reviews is what I am most interested in over the next few weeks. I’ll report back later and provide an update on this count.

If giving away lots of books does not result in any more reviews, I probably won’t do it again. Time will tell…

Other thoughts and experiences?

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A recent article argued that there is a formula to writing bestsellers. The article says the algorithm is “built to predict, with 80 percent accuracy, which novels will become mega-bestsellers. What does it like? “Young, strong heroines who are also misfits (the type found in The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). No sex, just ‘human closeness.’ Frequent use of the verb ‘need.’ Lots of contractions. Not a lot of exclamation marks. Dogs, yes; cats, meh.” So if you are writing a novel and want to trump your competition, you should abide what this book says, right? Let’s see how I’m doing with my upcoming science fiction novel:

* Young, strong, heroine — check.
* Misfit — check.
* No sex — this one is an in betweener…you’ll have to read the novel to understand.
* Human closeness — check.
* Frequent use of the verb “need” — hmm… 154 times in a novel of 116k words…I can work on this one.
* Lots of contractions — I probably need more, so this is fixable.
* Not a lot of exclamation marks — I’ve got too many. I can fix this.
* Dogs — Several of them.
* Cats — One. Dead.

I suppose if I put an image of a young woman on the cover… Bestseller, here I come!

Maybe…

Joking aside… The problem with such methods is that they are “chaser” models. That is, they can tell you what has been popular. They aren’t so good at telling you what will be popular next. Additionally, the more people use such models, the faster they will saturate the market’s desire for such writing.

This is not to say they are worthless, just that they have limits (obviously). And if the market or trend is moving too fast, if you take 2 years to react, the market may have moved on by the time you get your book to market.

And I don’t think this is overly profound. There are other, simple ways to do similar types of research. For instance, you can use Google Trends (with a variety of filters, to include for books) to see what search terms are popular and which way they are trending. Further, you can search Amazon to see how many books there are of a given genre or category, and then map that to what is and is not trending as a search term. You can then divide the number of searches by the number of available books. Doing this will quickly show you some very different ratios, which may or may not imply that there could be opportunities.

Write To Market is another view on how to write what will sell well, though the data collection method detailed is more qualitative.

Also keep in mind that this research is based on a small sample size and only bestsellers — not good sellers, for instance — and is only predicted to be accurate 80% of the time. That is a damn big margin for error. And even if it is correct, there is a lot of room to write books that sell very, very well outside the 5000 “mega bestsellers” they have looked at. I’d be more than happy if my book is just a typical bestseller.

All said, writing a great story — however defined — is still the better bet. Though their research is interesting to think about, it is not going to sway my view on how to write, and I don’t think it is going to have much of an impact on the publishing industry, as one publishing insider noted in the article — this is just one more piece of evaluating a manuscript.

Check out the article and tell me what you think.

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Traditionally Publish or Self-Publish? This is a more complex question than it first appears. You also have to answer 1) What are your objectives? 2) What are you willing to do/not do yourself to help sell your book(s)?

I have modest experience with both traditional and self-publishing: 20 years ago I wrote a novel, printed it, put it in a box and sent it to what back then was a medium size, independent publisher of military history that was trying to break into the fiction market. I had no agent and put a letter in the box to the effect of ‘let me know if you want to publish this.’ A few weeks later I got a thick envelope back. They loved the book and had sent me contracts for it and two more books. I signed all three contracts and they sent me advances for all three.

After a year of editing the first novel, they shut down their fiction line and told me I could keep the advances. At that point, I secured an agent with JCA, and we went to work finding another publisher, but after a couple close calls we both gave up, and I got on with my life in business.

When I look back on what happened, my sense now is that my first novel had its strengths but in sum was not so strong. And perhaps the publisher was not so good at telling the difference, which is why they ended their foray into fiction after one huge bestseller and lots of duds. In any event, the novel still sits in a box in the back of a dark closet and will probably never be published.

I’ve been in marketing, product management and sales in the business world for 20+ years, which is relevant. There is a famous book in the technology world called Crossing the Chasm. To summarize, it argues that to launch a successful new technology product you need to: 1) Make a great product, 2) Get it in front of interested buyers, 3) Get early adopters to talk it up among their peers so that their peers then buy it. After that, a virtuous “tornado” follows that results in the product “selling itself.”

Hmm… Sounds like: 1) Write a great book, 2) Get it in front of people interested in that genre, 3) Get them to write positive reviews in the hope that after 30+ positive reviews sales become self-perpetuating.

I’m not going to belabor all the oft-repeated things about the pros and cons of TP or SP. I will say for those thinking about “self-publishing” that it is dividing into two groups: Those who upload a manuscript to Amazon and push the “publish” button and never sell more than 10 copies, and those who take on self-publishing as a complex business that requires discipline and thoughtful preparation across multiple functions to be successful. Though it is a little bit tangential, take a look at this recent article by Joanna Penn about the thought, time and money she puts into ramping her sales.

Of course, saying there are only two kinds of self-publishers is an oversimplification because there is really a sliding scale between the two. That said, if any of us is thinking about self-publishing and are not brutally self-critical in preparing our manuscript (to including hiring a good editor), and are not ready or able to do the many, many things and put in as much work on our marketing and promotion plan (and some money) as we did on our book, then we will be better off trying to land an agent and hoping our agent can then land a publisher. And, yes, for them to do all that work they are going to make you sign away many of your rights and much of your revenue. But they don’t work for free.

Even at that, few traditionally published writers make enough money to live on, and often don’t cover their advances, so they never get asked to publish another book. This is not a slam on traditional publishing. As a group, self-published authors do worse.

Lastly, I don’t think making a profit on our first book should be a goal no matter which way we go. To be successful long-term, we should (IMHO) plow all our income back into marketing and promotion, building a following for our next book. It is kind of like Crossing a Chasm…our first book or two is building a clientele. Only after that can we expect to reap significant profits.

My first novella — which was self-published — has made it to the top 10 of nine of Amazon’s bestseller lists. Several of the lists are pretty damn obscure, but a few are big and competetive. I’m most proud of having made it to #1 in its niche in the UK, which was not an easy feat. And I’ve sold well over 2500 copies in less than 21 months. More importantly, my book has stayed near the top of its primary niche in both the US and the UK for well over a year now, which makes me a proud father. For some insight into what I’ve done to help achieve this, check out this blog on book marketing and promotion.

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I stumbled on a powerful and simple way to make a 3D book cover for free. Several sites offer book cover makers, but they all seem to either want your email address, have poor resolution or offer only a few predefined views from which you must pick. I found one that with a little bit of “post production” work on your part will leave you with a very nice ebook cover or paperback book cover, much as you see above and in my sidebar. Now you can do your own book cover design, and see it in 3D.  Let me show you how it’s done.

Boxshot has a powerful and user-friendly tool. To use it, you need images of your front cover, back cover and spine. They all need to be to the proper dimensions though it seems that the tool can adjust a bit to accommodate slight variations.

If you don’t have files of all these handy, but you have a book on Amazon or another site, you can easily use the Microsoft Snipping Tool to capture a high-resolution copy of what you need from the Amazon site as I did below.

Then go to the boxshot site and upload them in the three appropriate spots. Below you will see that at this point I have uploaded only the front cover at the boxshot site. The blue-themed back and spine images you see below are the stock images you will find on the site that I had not yet replaced when I took this screenshot.

If you find your spine is too narrow for any text (you might have to experiment a bit before you come to a conclusion), use a tall and skinny rectangle of the color of your cover for the spine.

When you are done, you will be able to rotate the image in every direction until you get to the one you want. Play with the orientation. For their low res offerings, if you rotate or tilt your book too much, their book cover creator can introduce noticeable distortion into the image. When you get the orientation you like, click the “download your image button”. Here’s where it gets a bit tricky.

They will offer you three options: one is free and is lower resolution and comes with their logo watermarked in a few places. The other two options are not free, but they offer you higher resolutions versions without their logo. I’m confident that you will get a beautiful rendering if you go with their paid options. However, I would not pay the first time. You might not be happy with it.

For the first time, download the free version of your 3D book cover image to make sure you are happy with it and understand the entire process. After you download your image, if you like the orientation but want the higher res version without their logo, repeat the process and purchase the one you want.

Note that they can’t make your source material better than it is even if you go with their highest resolution offering. That is, if your original file is low resolution and “fuzzy”, even if you buy the high-resolution version of the book cover you have created, it is going to be a high-resolution rendering of a fuzzy image. You don’t want that. This is another reason to test before you buy.

Alternatively, if you are happy with the resolution of their free offering but don’t want their logo in the picture (literally) you can do this: save the free image in your “pictures” folder on your computer after you download it, open MS PowerPoint, import the picture of your book’s 3D cover. Then, using the Snipping Tool, grab a rectangle of white from the side of the PowerPoint slide, paste it anywhere on the page, then move it, rotate it and adjust the size until it covers the logo you don’t want. You may have to play with it a few times to get what you need. Once you get your “white out” block in place, use the Snipping Tool again to grab a picture of the entire 3D image of your book cover, save it in your “pictures” folder, and then use it on your WordPress site or flyers or anywhere else you need it.

Using images I already had (which I created in Canva), it took me all of three minutes to create my book cover design and then each of the two 3D book cover images you see to the right side of this screen and the one at the top of this page. Higher resolution would be nice, but I’m fond of free, too. Your first time it will probably take you closer to ten minutes, but after you do it a few times you’ll be doing them in three minutes, also.

Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to write me. And share with everyone any other ideas about book cover creators. It is important that you have a great image of your book not only on your various websites but also for handouts, email signature blocks, etc. Whether you use the free or paid versions, boxshot has some powerful tools that can help.

As a reminder: I have no affiliate relationships with any vendor, including boxshot. All things I say on my website about any vendor’s products are my own opinion.

I’ve also written two other guides you might find helpful. The first (which is by far my most popular blog) details how to use the Hemingway App and Grammarly together as a simple, free and powerful editing tool. The second provides step-by-step instructions on how to get great book reviews from Amazon’s top reviewers.

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