I uploaded Rise of Azraea: Book I to Amazon last June, with the intention of posting the sequel last month, and investing in some advertising once both books were up there. The sequel has been (essentially) finished for a long time now, except for a final pass through copy-editing. I'm having a hard time sitting down and doing that; an author copy-editing his or her own writing is never an optimal situation (if you saw the original title of this blog entry, you see what I mean).
However, having the past six months to watch how everything has worked out, I've learned a couple of things.
First, I've learned that there are details to my writing that I'm capable of improving on - word choice, etc., so although I wanted Book I to be done and finalized, I can look back now and see certain places where I have to say, "well, that sucked." That being the case, there's a compelling argument for updating the book. Calling it a "revised edition" wouldn't be accurate, as there'd be no real changes to the characters or events, but it would be worth updating it just so I don't obviously sound like a clueless white guy.
Second, I've learned that Amazon is not an ideal platform for self-publication, regardless of your motives. I already knew that, unless you could spare a minimum ~$400/month on advertising, it's impossible to translate self-publication on Amazon into a livelihood. I was fine with that, as I was mostly just trying to get my name out there so that agents might recognize it when I submitted other things. However, the barriers imposed by the $3.99 sales tag and the hassle of dealing with Amazon e-pubs, have limited my readership to nine people. Ultimately, I'm not too surprise - I mean, I thought I'd get twice that many readers in 6 months, but still, I didn't expect much.
Third, I've learned that (by comparison) blogs are a decent platform for self-publication. I don't know if more than 1 or 2 people 'follow' this blog - I'd be surprised if anyone really does; I update it irregularly, sometimes with obnoxious rants. Yet my readership on some posts exceeds 100 people. While that's orders of magnitude below what would define a successful blogger, the fact remains that my individual blog posts are typically read by 5 to 10 times the number of people who've looked at my novel.
Knowing what I know now, I have a couple of options.
One option is to update Book I on Amazon with the tweaks that need to be made, and then drop the price to make it more accessible. Unfortunately, I think that the inconvenience of clicking the "buy" button probably dissuades more people than the $3.99 price tag. Another option is to pull Book I off of Amazon, and post it somewhere that's more generally accessible - specifically, a blog, posting a bit at a time while I make the edits to Book I and Book II. My concern here is that the 9 people who've paid to read the book may be annoyed to find it gone and posted free elsewhere.
However, after reviewing Amazon's regulations, I'm leaning towards a middle course. Provided you aren't working through KDP Select, Amazon doesn't bar you from posting your work elsewhere. Legally, it's entirely cool for me to have the book on Amazon and on a publicly visible blog. Now, that might seem redundant, but either medium has some distinct advantages for the readers.
The blog will be posting the books a little bit at a time - actually, I've already programmed most of the publication dates, so it's set up to release about 1/3rd to 1/4th of a chapter every day, Monday through Thursday. Going by that schedule, the epilogue to Book I would go online at the end of April. Then there'd be a short break filled by the appendices, and then Book II would start to go up - I'm not sure how long Book II would take to finish on the blog. Book II is no more than 10 pages longer than Book I, but it's divided into more chapters because it's structured a bit differently. Still, it'd probably be done by the end of the summer.
Some readers will find that slow pace appealing, but others will find that intolerable, and want to finish the book immediately. Fortunately, the latter will be able to access a complete and nearly identical copy of the book already available on Amazon, and I intend to have the sequel also posted there long before it begins being published on the blog - though I may run with a lower price tag, since you'd be paying for 'early access' rather than 'exclusive content'.
And speaking of exclusive content, for people who will have read and finished the book, there'll still be some reason to check out the blog publications once and a while. I've set the blog's publishing schedule up so that a new chapter will start every Monday. However, depending on the length and pace of the chapter, that sometimes leaves a dead spot on Thursdays. Rather than have the publication schedule varying unpredictable from week to week, I intend to fill those shortfalls with bonus stuff - writer's notes covering various things.
I've been asked to explain how the names are pronounced, so there'll be a Thursday blog post that explains the pronunciation, and even says a little about the real-world etymology and rationale for the names. I've also got some of my own not-so-great-but-I-have-to-use-it-somewhere sketches to post, with notes about character design and such. I've got maps to post, and various notes - unnecessary details for following the story, but fun additional stuff in case someone comes across the book and wants to use Caelia for a D&D session. I'll also be moving some of the drier reference material (history, geography, etc.) over to the new blog, where it will be available alongside the book.
I hope this will sit well with everyone.
The new book-blog will be available here at https://azraea.blogspot.com/ The foreword is scheduled to go up on Sunday.
I put a content warning on the blog because of the violence in the novel. That's probably unnecessary, but I don't want anyone going into it thinking they're getting a romance novel, and being surprised when a giant centipede consumes a horse like a meat slurpee.
P.S. I believe a blog has to run at least 6 months with a certain readership with advertising to be possible, so unless it's very successful, and I miraculously produce a third book by the end of the summer to keep the blog rolling, I won't be making any income from the blog-posted book. Many thanks to the nine people who have read the book on Amazon - you know who you are, and for the most part so do I. :-p
What's more embarrassing than a grammar error in your title? Having to re-post the same blog entry four times because the computer keeps correcting it back to the error. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you my unasked for non-author advice:
ReplyDeletea) get rid of the cover. Some few authors with established readerships can allow themselves to have these type of covers, but if you want to get random attention by readers get a cover with the "full" main character on it - you might need to commission art, and that will cost (although there are alternatives), but if I've ever been convinced about anything in regarding to the randomness of Kindle publishing it's that it'll be worth it, as long as it's aesthetically pleasing afterwards. People love "badass" covers with female protagonists on it. Look at randomly successful indie novels like Mendrano's Ancient Dreams or Andrew Seiple's DIRE series or whatever.
b) Personally, I'd have gone with Kindle Unlimited, 'cause that's the other thing most successful indie authors do these days. Then, once you got a bunch of readers, and finished a series successfully, you can switch to "properly" selling your books. KU simply has the advantage of not being any barrier at all for those who have the subscription - "doesn't cost me anything, might as well look", and people who pick up random ebooks by unknown authors are the most likely to have such a subscription for obvious reasons (4$ for a book is nothing, but if I pay 10$ to read as many as I want each month, then that equals 1/3 of however many I read, and suddenly it's kinda expensive, right? Just can't compare to subscription-based stuff).
Obviously you wouldn't be allowed to post your story here then, going by KU regulations. Which is crappy move by Amazon and, really, one shouldn't support Amazon, of course, and there's a certain irony of basically bowing to them by going along with their business practices when writing a novel "about" social issues, but well, that's capitalism. Yay!
c) If you don't go the KU route and want to post things on a blog, then I'd probably also post it on some popular fiction pages - Royalroadl or Wattpad and so on. Link to your blog, put a PayPal donation button there (and turn it on on those fiction sites, too, which should be possible). Some authors only post up to a certain amount of chapters there and then if you want to read the rest you'll have to go to their blog or buy the novel (not something I like but I suppose it's a strategy) OR post some chapters with delay (like your blog is ahead a few chapters in posting schedule).
Probably not something that'll make you rich but the advantage is obviously that there are already a ton of people there and all you need to do is reach them (again, get a nice cover ^^). You are probably overestimating the readership of the blog (now how does that sound with 2 people following? ^^;) - crawlers and bots and so on probably make up the majority of the post views (theoretically blogspot shouldn't count them but it never filters all of them).
I guess you're already planning to do a bit more on the technical side with the blog page? Some extra categories for world infos and so on for quick access through some header menu and the ability to go from chapter to chapter and so on is always appreciated, I think.
d) Most important advice: be lucky. I haven't figured out yet how to do that, but maybe sacrifice a goat or cat or two?
Well, anyway ... that's all I can think of right now. ^^
Thank you for the suggestions! I'm experimenting with Wattpad, and it looks fun!
DeleteFor Rise of Azraea, making money was never really a goal - I just wanted to write something with meaning. Wild Justice is another matter - I'd like to get it published for real, but my time has gotten full and my energy is waning on that book, so it may yet end up on KU. If I get a paying job, it almost certainly will.
I'd love to have a nice looking cover, but like advertising, the money just isn't there right now.