Why do we do it?
By "we," I mean indie authors, those loveable (semi-loveable?) scamps like myself who have decided to leverage new advances in technology to make a go of it writing books without the benefit of a traditional publisher.
By "it," I mean engage in the entirety of the business? Not only why do we write our books, but for those of us serious about it, why do we scour the industry blogs and sites looking to cobble together a workable business plan, hoping to find a way to "launch" a "platform" (whatever that really means)?
After a year of full-time writing, I finally indie published my first book, Jesus Was a Time Traveler, at the beginning of December, 2012.
In the month leading up to its release, I was a terror to all those involved. I bugged my cover artist if not daily, then certainly every other day for updates on his progress. I went through the manuscript with what I thought was a fine-toothed comb, picking out all of the errors I could find.
Why did I do this? Why, to cash in on the "Holiday Rush" of ebooks that would certainly be bought in the days after Christmas, of course.
Pay no attention to the fact that Barnes and Noble was offering heavy discounts on its Nook line, or that full-service tablets had replaced dedicated e-readers as the adult toy (no, not THAT kind of "adult toy") of choice this holiday season.
So, finally having secured the electronic version of the cover, I published it on Amazon, Nook, and Kobo on December 2, 2012.
I threw up posts on Facebook, Twitter, and my own blog. I thought since I had already built a "platform" (I'm on sports talk radio and write sports here in St. Louis) that the masses would flock to buy my book immediately, and the rest would take care of itself.
I eagerly checked my numbers daily, hoping that every day would be "the break," the one day when i rocketed to the top of the Kindle 100 and started to blow away my wildest dreams of riches.
Well, maybe not quite to that extent. But I did expect to sell a "good number" of books (again, whatever that means).
The first week, I sold eight.
The second week, I sold three.
Desperate for exposure, I took out a facebook ad. Over the course of a month, it produced over a hundred and fifty "likes" on my book's facebook page, and sales perked up to "six" for a couple of weeks there, but given that I only moved a couple more copies, it made that campaign a "bust" beyond spreading some baseline level of awareness about the book among sci-fi fans throughout the country.
Not to mention that my sales in non-Amazon outlets have fallen off of a cliff. I've sold a grand total of two nook copies of my book in 2013, and exactly zero on Kobo or Smashwords.
For a couple of weeks, I admit, I was mildly depressed. What had gone wrong? Why wouldn't the world recognize the brilliance of my book?
I started reading the Kindle Boards, which only made me more depressed. Here, folks were talking about "marketing," the dirty word that I had hoped to avoid through this process.
How naive I was! Who would tell folks about my book other than myself? It's tough for any business to get along without a coherent marketing plan, and my fledgling little publisher, Orion's Comet, is just that, a business.
Writers may like to think of their books as something romantic, something beyond a common commodity, but that's exactly what books are: a product. The product may be wondrous, the product may magically transport people to other worlds, but if no one knows about the product, then I'm afraid you're screwed.
You're absolutely selling something: entertainment. You're selling entertainment in an increasingly crowded marketplace filled with all manner of other diversions.
And it seems like, outside of movie theaters, those prices are falling at a guillotine-like pace.
Of course, I still believe in my book and its power to entertain. I believe there are plenty of folks out there who would enjoy reading it, and would gladly pay a fair price for it.
But how could I possibly connect with them.
As I drove home on the highway yesterday, I thought about various businesses that move a lot of product and make the people in their industry a lot of cash.
And then it hit me:
Drug dealers.
Full disclosure: I'm not a drug user, unless you count wine and whiskey, in which case, guilty, as charged.
But I have seen a few episodes of The Wire, and every episode of Breaking Bad. I've seen countless movies (the latest was Traffic a few days ago, which may have fermented in my head to the point where it manifested itself as this idea) where against their better judgement, people spend obscene amounts of money, largely to their detriment, in order to chase their fix.
Thankfully, I don't know of many instances of books ruining lives. Yet...
The distribution networks, though, are largely the same (more on that in a later post).
The product, if high quality enough, is sold largely through word-of-mouth.
And any enterprising individual brave enough to strike out on their own is going to have to do a few things that take them out of their comfort zones.
All of these points will be addressed in later posts.
For the moment, though, I'm going to employ one new strategy at Orion's Comet to sell more books this year, a creed that's so utterly simple, yet edgy enough to set folks abuzz:
Publish Like a Drug Dealer.
You know when I said I spent all of last year writing? JWATT wasn't the only book I finished. I have three more "in the can," though they could each use a heavy edit. I'm also working on a three-part series of somewhere between novella and novel-length works (30,000 words a piece, give or take).
As I finish and prepare to release these into the world, I thought I'd blog about my ideas, progress, and lessons I learn along the way here, at my shiny new blog. Mostly to spare the readers of my regular blog from their usual enjoyment of all things football, movie, and sports-related.
So if you'll keep an open mind, join me on my journey as I try to make a go of it as an indie publisher.
And as I teach myself the lessons to publishing like a drug dealer.
