Both Chickenfreak and Steerpike have good points but I think it should be noted that when a writer ruins their reputation by putting out a bad product not everyone will see it. If they did then you'd have a career - whether good or bad.
Hi, Here's a survey which seems to show murder mysteries are different for some reason with only 11% of the top 100 ranked in the best sellers for that genre as indie. However it's about 50% for sci fi, fantasy and romance. So you may be right on that score. http://edwardwrobertson.com/self-publishing/self-publishings-share-of-the-kindle-market-by-genre/ However, a top seller ranked at those ranks sells well over a hundred copies a day. I find it hard to believe that any book that sells those numbers could be of remarkably poor quality as your post seems to suggest. Why would people buy it? Cheers, Greg.
Exactly. Which is why I self publish my novellas under a pseudonym. This way when I go to traditionally publish my novels I can use my real name. And keep the two separate identities.
I'd like to know: - How much they cost. - Whether "best sellers" are based on dollars earned or just number of copies sold--and whether free copies count as sales. - What percentage were actually read. I doubt that I can have that information, but I want it. If these self-published murder mysteries were selling at $14.99 I'd agree that that suggests that there must be some level of quality. At $.99, or free, or free on that membership program Amazon has, I don't necessarily feel that a sale is a sale. There's also something about his statistical methods and his merry assumptions that feels wrong to me. I need to take some time later to see if his assumptions seem logical or like sheer madness. Edited to add: Eh...when I search for "murder mystery" in "Kindle Store" a large percentage of the items on the first page cost zero dollars. "Murder mystery best sellers" are mostly non-zero cost, but most are still less than a drink at Starbuck's. Edited to add: I read some of the sample for the first five under "murder mystery best sellers". Yikes. Yes, they would pass high school English class, but...yikes. Edited to add: Heh. Several of the books in the first page under "murder mystery" are (1) free and (2) offer NO sample. That's an interesting ploy for getting you to "buy" the book--"buy"ing it is free, so why not download it? Do zero-dollar "sales" count as sales?
If he's using Amazon's 'Top 100' list, then I believe it won't count free books or loans with Kindle Unlimited, but it'll count a sale as a sale as a sale - so a $0.99 sale has just as much weight as a $6.99 one. His methods seem reasonably sound for the kind of post it is - it's not like he's claiming the survey is exhaustive. You could question some of his comments like: Because everyone will have their own idea of 'viable'. You're pretty safe with the conclusion that romance, sci-fi and fantasy readers in general have no problems buying self-published books. You can't really draw anything from them about how easy it is for a self-pubbed book to get into the top 100, how much money the author makes once they're there, or how much money the author makes compared to trad-pubbed books in the same genre.
I should note that the people I know who are doing well in self-publishing are also in Romance or SF/F.
Hi Peach, Sorry to be the voice of gloom, but don't do that. If you already have a name out there as an indie that's your name for life. People know it for good or ill. To suddenly become Joe Blogs assuming that's your real name, is to once more become nobody - with no readership / readers and no name recognition. The moment you do that you become the same as all the others submitting to agents etc. And if you tell agents in your cover letter that you're pubbed as John Smith etc, won't do a damned thing for you. What does it matter to them if they can't use the name readers are familiar with? In this game your best chance - and there are exceptions I admit - is to stick to the one name approach. And if you stuff it up - unpub the stuff that went wrong, fix it, and then put out more, new and better work. Build your author name. Follow the Skoda example. Cheers, Greg.
Hi Chicken, Can't answer you. But really, you want to argue that all the indie stuff up there in the best seller lists is crap? That for some reason people will buy indie crap - perhaps because it's cheap (though that's actually allowed for in Amazon's famous algorhythm) - at massive rates? That makes no sense. If it did I'd start writing crap tomorrow! I'd dump my editor and throw away the spell checkers! Save myself a truckload of hassels. Cheers, Greg.
Do you want to argue that I don't really think that the samples that I just read are junk? I do. It's not my job to explain why they're "best-sellers". My guess is that the "best-seller" algorithm is easy to game, but that's just a guess.
It's done by sales volume, weighted so that recent sales count for much more than historical ones, so it's easy to game temporarily. If you've got a decent social media following and you push them all to buy it on launch day, it's not hard to break into a top 100 list, even top 10 if you've got enough reach. You won't stay there for long, but assuming you've got access to a network like that, getting there isn't that hard. It'd be interesting to keep track of the top 100 over a time period, say check it once a week for 2 months. That feels like it'd give you a far better picture of what books were making consistent sales, and how many of those were self-pubbed as opposed to trad. An (admittedly brief) Google search hasn't turned up anyone who's tried that.
I'm pretty sure we've disagreed about this before, so I won't bother going into details this time, but for the sake of others reading the thread... This is not nearly as incontrovertible as @psychotick suggests. There are good arguments in both directions.
If/when ( hope, hope ) Edi Marchen gains a following I'll use it - who wouldn't use a pseudonym if it had a following? But right now it wouldn't make any difference to submit to an agent under another name.
I think that's right. And, if the pseudonym happened to have a negative connotation around it for whatever reason, I think the author would be well-advised to abandon it.
Hi Peach, I assume you're talking about commercial success as the books under you pseudo haven't achieved it. That's only one factor I'm afraid. If you submit to an agent he's going to want to know what else you've published - all names. The commercial success of your previously published work is not the only thing he wants to hear about. He wants to know that your other work was of a standard and won't embarrass a publisher should it come out later that it's yours. And you pretty much have to tell him since if it comes out later and he finds out he's going to be pissed. My advice, if you're proud of what you published under your pseudo and it is of a standard, stick with it. If you're not, unpublish and republish an upgraded version that you are proud of and is of a standard. Make your pseudo your brand. Get it out there so that readers know it. And know the sort of book - genre and quality - that they're getting if they buy one of yours. Do the Skoda thing. Treat your author name - pseudo or real - as one of your most precious investments. Cheers, Greg.
I was thinking about using a pen name but my last name is fairly uncommon so I would think it would benefit me to use my real name as it may stand out more.
Your agent works for you. She's under your control. She can want whatever she wants, but if you don't want to tell her, you don't have to. There's nothing wrong with publishing some stuff under a pseudonym and then walking away. If you decide not to walk away, that's fine, too. Do what make sense in your own situation, not what makes sense for some car manufacturer many people have never even heard of.
Hi, Tell your agent / publisher everything. Most contracts with publishers include clauses for the author to indemnify the publisher against all sorts of things - everything from law suits for plagerism to ones for disparagement of people and brands. Failure to tell your publisher / agent about previously published work - self or trade - may leave you utterly defenceless in case things go wrong, and give your agent / publisher an additional reason to dump you after having made a deal with you. They may also sue you should previously published work come out that damages sales of what they publish for you. Not a lawyer but failure to disclose seems like a noose around your neck just waiting to be tightened. Cheers, Greg.
Having previously published work isn't a crime! Don't sign a contract that says "I promise I have never published anything before" if it's not true--don't misrepresent yourself on anything meaningful. But "don't lie" isn't the same as "tell them everything". When I started my second pseudonym my agent and I discussed whether to mention my previous one to publishers. As I recall, we didn't, not until well after the contract was signed and it became clear that it would fit into the publishers' marketing plans for my new name. When I told them, there was no outrage or sense of betrayal--it was just an interesting tidbit. My agent is well-respected and works at a top boutique agency--this wasn't some shady deal. So... these industry professionals clearly don't think it was a big issue to have not mentioned it earlier, and these industry professionals clearly don't think it's a terrible idea to switch pseudonyms. I can see the argument you're making about the power of creating a brand; I can see how, in many circumstances, it's a good idea. I'm just not sure why you're so deadset against the fact that it's not always a good idea.
Yeah, your indemnifications should only be in relation to the specific work(s) contemplated by the contract, and to the relationship with the publisher around those works.
Research pros and cons, but I'm going to state my opinion: - With traditional publishing, you have to pass a minimum standard of quality. That's seen as one of the "cons" of traditional publishing, but I see it as one of the "pros". It's hard for authors to objectively judge the quality of their writing, and IMO (no, I don't have statistics or studies) an author is quite likely to publish before their work is ready. Books that are of high quality but unpublishable due to length, topic, or other reasons, certainly exist. But if your book is of a type that could be publishable, I feel that it's a mistake to go to self-publishing. And if your book is not of a type that could be publishable, then I think that you should seek some other evaluation of quality. - With traditional publishing, every aspect of the publishing is handled by professionals. Professionals will handle editing, design and layout, marketing, advertising, distribution, etc. It's pretty hard for just one person to match the abilities of several professionals. - Anyone can self-publish anything. Therefore, there are countless low-quality self-published works out there. Therefore, potential customers have no assurance whatsoever that your book will have any level of quality. So EVEN IF you are a professional-quality writer, and editor, and designer, and all those other things, potential customers are likely to distrust your book, and you are deprived of many of the relationships and distribution avenues available to traditional publishers. A self-published book might, theoretically, be glorious. But odds are that very few people will figure that out.
This is where a professional cover and professional-quality sample are invaluable. Unlike you and I, who are plugged into all this stuff, I don't think the average reader clicking through Amazon looks to see who the publisher for a work is. I don't think most of your target audience is necessarily going to realize it's a self-published book unless there is something amateurish about the cover and/or sample that gives it away.
I agree in theory--it's not as if I automatically check the publisher of every book I consider buying. I do check when the amateurish vibe of the book, or the Amazon page for the book, or something similar, leads me to wonder, and I almost always discover that the book is self-published. (The main exceptions were some nonfiction books that were the earlier products from a small publisher that grew from a very very small publisher.) Then I try to give the book a chance anyway and read any available sample. Then I usually shake my head and move on, sometimes with a shudder, sometimes mourning what could have been a good book if the author had just waited. So, in practice, I've never run into a sufficiently professional self-published book by an author that was not already traditionally published elsewhere.
