Edith’s War a blog about self publishing

Book Clubs are beautiful things, a surge of e-book sales, and a welcome cheque

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Happy Valentine’s Day. This is more of an update than a blog, since pretty much all I’ve done since the last blog is beaver away at the next novel. I think it goes well. Words pop out every day and slowly mount up. Some days the words seem brilliant and some days paragraphs seem barely literate. It all depends on one’s frame of mind. But, having reached the half-way stage, I recently re-read my manuscript in one pass, as objectively as possible, and was pleased with the result.
Apart from write, I’ve visited a couple of book clubs and talked to members about Edith’s War, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I was amazed how easily members talked about Edith, Will, Shamus, et al as though they were all people they knew intimately. In fact many members had insights into their characters and motivation that I hadn’t seen myself, which was slightly alarming in a Frankenstein-ish way.
Book clubs usually mean direct sales (from me, rather than a book store) which has helped fill the coffers somewhat. Also, for some unknown reason, there’s been a surge of e-book sales — some forty or so. It’s impossible to pinpoint why such sales surges happen. It is possible however to track where they happen — the majority were in the U.S.A. with a few in Canada and one or two in Europe. Which doesn’t help solve the question why, if anything it makes the reason more mystifying.
Book club and e-book sales, plus a welcome cheque from my distributor, means I’m edging towards break-even — just under $3,000 to go. But consider the fact that it’s taken almost 2 years (during which time I’ve earned zero for myself), and one can’t help but wonder why one bothers...
...for the writing of course, which gets me out of bed in the morning and I can afford to do without actually starving. So onwards and upwards. But first, just for fun, here are a couple of short segments from a longer interview I did recently with Lana Richards, host of Cogeco TV’s program, ‘By The Book.’ The first segment is about the book itself, the second about the self-publishing process. http://bit.ly/A1FAeG http://bit.ly/yPKcIQ

Lest we forget: bookstores that sold only books, and an independent who marches to a different drum

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:35:26 -0500

After making my most recent Chapters bookstore ‘appearance’ a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been ruminating about the transition of bookstores from independent high street shops to chains of big box stores. Then two events took place. First, I finished Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel, The Stranger’s Child, and, second, the latest issue of the New Yorker arrived. ‘Huh?” I hear you say.
Here’s how they relate:  The Stranger’s Child is about — among other things — how facts, people, and events fade from memory with the passing of time, and are eventually deemed irrelevant and are forgotten. Some may remember through the mists of time that Chapters was the first book ‘superstore’ chain in Canada, formed after the 1994 takeover of Coles and SmithBooks. Chapters soon became the largest book retailer in Canada with more than 70 superstores. I doubt that anybody, including the Chapters founders, would dispute that its presence spelt the demise of hundreds of high street independent bookshops, who simply couldn’t compete with Chapters with its blanket marketing and the discounts it was able to offer.
Many will remember that soon after, in 1996, Heather Reisman founded Indigo Books and Music and, full of optimism, opened more than ten superstores to compete with Chapters. But maybe time has blurred the memory that by early 2001 Reisman had persuaded the Competition Bureau that Indigo would not be a viable business unless it was able to purchase Chapters, as it was attempting to do in a hostile takeover. Thus Chapters/Indigo was born and the stores belonging to the two separate chains, which originally had their own identities and style, quickly morphed into one corporate identity with stores appearing identical.
As I was ‘appearing’ in a Chapters store the other day, C.E.O. Heather Reisman appeared on a flying visit. As I watched I was impressed by the way she treated staff and customers respectfully and affably. But I noticed the lion’s share of attention was given to the mounds of merchandise — which now take up considerable floor space in Chapters/Indigo stores. After Ms Reisman left I asked the manager how the visit had gone and mentioned the attention paid to blankets, holiday decorations and stuffed toys rather than to book displays. She sadly acknowledged that, were it not for merchandise sales, she’d probably be out of a job.
Which brings me to the extremely germane cover of the December 5, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, which shows a perplexed customer in a bookstore being shown a single shelf of books, while other items fill the rest of the shelves — busts of Shakespeare, portraits of authors, caps displaying author names. Also visible are e-readers, t-shirts and lunch pails. Books themselves barely have a presence in a store that boasts BOOKS in huge letters on its front window. See: http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2011-12-05
So what’s my point? Obviously nobody, not least Heather Reisman, could have predicted back when Chapters was born and when Chapters/Indigo was formed, the plethora of merchandise other than books that it’s obviously necessary to sell to keep big box bookstores in business. Admittedly Chapters/Indigo still sells a lot of books, mine included, for which I’m very grateful. But I wonder for how much longer? How depleted is the list of titles they offer and how soon will it be before they can only afford to carry sure-fired bestsellers guaranteed to make a profit?
Back to the sentiment of distorted memory, and the passage of time rendering events irrelevant, as expressed in The Stranger’s Child. It’s increasingly difficult to remember the quantity and quality of small high-street book shops packed with obscure and controversial titles as well as the obvious best-sellers and classics, with not a mug, blanket, or stuffed toy in sight. And even if we remember them, perhaps the model for such stores is irrelevant now, given other threats like on-line sales and the increasingly popular e-book. But, having been at a recent book reading event organized by one of the few surviving independent book stores, Different Drummer Books in Burlington, I’m not so sure.  I was pleasantly stunned by the literally hundreds of customers who’d turned out on a cold, wet morning to hear local authors read. I can’t help but believe that all the stores that didn’t survive — and who we now barely remember — would still be selling only books, and not busts of Shakespeare and coffee mugs, were it not for the opening of superstores, who themselves seem now to be under siege.
It’s ironic that Different Drummer Books thrives by selling books in Burlington, while Chapters/Indigo clutches at geegaws for its existence country-wide. Why? Because Burlington is where Chapters and Indigo both opened their first superstores.

Care-giving for the mature novel — it ain’t over ‘til the last copy sells (or the remainder bin calls)

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:24:50 -0400

I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn’t write anything unless I had something useful to impart about self-publishing. So, it having been summer and me having been gallivanting around Eastern Canada and/or working at home on a new novel, I’ve had nothing to add here for almost four months. But I recently received an e-mail from one of the many ‘Self-publishing Self Help’ sites I desperately subscribed to when I was naïve and innocent and first worked on self-publishing Edith’s War. The e-mail touted a tutorial entitled “Old Age: How to stave off the inevitable decline in your book’s sales.” I wasn’t about to cough up the hundred bucks it cost to learn what pearls of wisdom the site might impart about ensuring the health of a book’s golden years (there must be a multi-million-dollar business out there in self-publishing advice to wide-eyed wannabe authors). Besides, my latest statement from the Edith’s War distributor included a $400 cheque, plus I’d made a couple of hundred dollars worth of private sales through the summer. But the touted “Old Age” tutorial prompted me to accept that I needed a rejuvenation strategy to extend my novel’s life beyond the eighteen months that have passed since it first hit the shelves. Some may be interested to know what plans are to reinvigorate my ‘mature’ book:
• More bookstore ‘appearances’ around Toronto and environs. I’ve done three since late September and have four more lined up before the holiday season. Fortunately I quite enjoy hanging out and introducing Edith’s War to likely readers. There’s alway a customer with a war story, always a young aspiring writer to encourage, always one or two who buy a copy just to support the author. And there also seem to be more and more e-reader customers on each successive visit who are in the store to choose books which they then go home and download.
• Inspired by self-publishing author Amanda Hocking, whose multi-million sales of her paranormal young adult romance novels she attributes mainly to book bloggers, I searched for book bloggers with the intention of doing guest blogs for them or to have them review the book. Trouble is, it takes hours to try and find appropriate book bloggers. After considerable effort I only managed to snag one guest blog. So I was pleased when a fellow author told me about TLC Book Tours, who specialize in setting up ‘virtual’ book tours with bloggers they’ve researched and who supposedly ‘match’ an author’s book. I’m in the process of negotiating a virtual book tour through them. See: http://tlcbooktours.com/ Report to come.
• I’m trying to fix up at least one reading in a local library on or near Remembrance Day. One fell in my lap today: an opportunity to go to Burlington library and talk about my experiences to a class who are taking a course on publishing.
• The Canadian private member’s bill calling for an apology to Italians is now at the committee stage (see blog entry http://www.edithswarselfpublish.com/Site/Blog/Entries/2010/5/2_EWsoundbite01.html). I’m tracking it to be ready to piggy-back on any publicity that will ensue once it’s finalized and an apology is forthcoming.
• I’m exhibiting at Self-Publishing Book Expo in New York later this month http://www.selfpubbookexpo.com/ No idea what to expect, but will report back on my return.
I could go on, but I think I’ve probably illustrated that — although many writers think their work is done once they hand in a manuscript — the fact is most authors, even those who publish with a conventional publisher, never stop work on a book until it dies and goes out of print.
Unless of course the author dies first. At one of my bookstore appearances my eye happened to fall on a novel titled A Confederacy of Dunces. To make a long story short: young author, John Kennedy Toole, wrote this book in the 1960s; tragically, he committed suicide after he was unable to find a publisher; eleven years later the novel was published due to the persistence of Toole’s mother; it immediately became a best seller and was critically acclaimed; Toole was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Confederacy of Dunces is now considered a canonical work of the Southern United States and promises to be in print for years to come. Now there’s no way my 96-year-old mother, feisty as she can be, would be as persistent as Toole’s. So, even if I could fake my own suicide, I think I’m better off sticking with a few bookstore appearances and a virtual tour.

On winning Gold at Independent Publisher Book Awards, but not being in NYC to pick up the bling

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:07:15 -0400

You’ve got to hand it to our American cousins, if anything is worth doing in the U.S. of A. it’s worth doing HUGE. On my return last Thursday from seven weeks in the United Kingdom, an oversized and heavy envelope was waiting outside my door from the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards, held in New York during my absence. Risking a hernia, I hefted the envelope into my apartment where it landed with a thud on my kitchen counter. Inside was a giant piece of bling — a gold metal disc the size of a hockey puck — that even rapper Lil Wayne might judge to be overindulgent. I couldn’t resist unravelling the blue satin ribbon, at least the width of a 4G phone, and placing it around my neck. The behemoth of a medal dangled weightily, threatening to crush my sternum. I raised my arms in triumphant Olympic-podium style, and then I faked a bite of the glittering metal disc for the imaginary host of flashing cameras in front of my fireplace — emulating my idol, champion tennis player Rafael Nadal.
I have to say that the excess of my medal was refreshing after the restraint of the United Kingdom, where any hint of ostentatious display is anathema (the Royal Family excepted, of course) and where achievement tends to be so understated one might believe it was a subject of shame. I know of what I speak, as a Brit I realize I’m capable of perverse modesty. But I love my winner’s bling and, were it not for my innate English reserve, would wear it out in public every single day for the next year. Maybe I’ll pluck up the courage to wear it at the next book signing. I regret not being in New York to pick up my medal in true American, unabashed style, and be recorded, like Nadal, by actual flashing cameras, but duty called. My brother and I were in Liverpool helping our 95-year-old mother move from her apartment to an assisted-living home.
It occurred to me, while we were lugging my mother’s unwanted clothes to charity shops and her discarded possessions to the dump, that she and the handful of elderly women in her new home were the last of the Ediths. It won’t be long before her generation — who eked out World War II on the home front — will be gone. The thought made me glad I’d written Edith’s War, because it adds to the record and memory of a soon-to-be-lost group who lived through remarkable times ... and, of course, I’m delirious about the bling.

1,000 copies sold, but is that a success?  Much depends on who you ask.

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:41:35 -0400

I’ve been pondering for a week or so about how to write a blog that celebrates selling 1,000 copies of Edith’s War. Part of my problem is assessing how big an achievement selling 1,000 copies represents. Is celebration appropriate? There is a distinct lack of ability to judge by comparison with sales of other books, because figures of book sales are fiercely guarded by conventional publishing houses, and by self-publishers too — especially if sales are bad to middling. If a book becomes a “best seller” figures are sometimes touted, but if specific numbers aren’t forthcoming the term “best seller” is fairly meaningless. It’s said that one only need sell 5,000 copies in Canada to be deemed a “best seller.” It’s likely that some self-titled “best sellers” haven’t even sold that many. If one is prepared to pay for their services, Nielsen BookScan will give general figures from their point-of-sale data, but I’m not sure they can give numbers for specific titles. Even if they’re able, I couldn’t afford their fee. But, to put book sales’ figures in perspective, here’s what Nielsen BookScan made public about book sales in 2004. It’s likely figures have decreased since then, since book sales in general are known to have fallen.
“950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies.”
So that would seem to make my 1,000 quite a respectable figure, especially for an unknown first-novelist who self-published and was thus at a disadvantage in relation to mainstream media, competition eligibility, etc., etc.
But everything is relative. Amazon have their own ranking system, which is quite controversial because it’s based on daily, maybe even hourly, sales. If 100 buyers decided to buy a copy of Edith’s War from Amazon.com at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, the ranking for the book would, understandably, be considerably higher at 2.05 p.m. than it had been at 1:55 p.m. But if nobody bought a copy in the next hour yet bought copies of other books, as they obviously would, the ranking for Edith’s War would fall and by 3:05 p.m. on the same Sunday the book could be back or even below where it had originally been. A single favourable review and subsequent sales can spike a book’s ranking for a few days and give an unrealistic picture of its overall success. Some people complain, rightly, that the Amazon ranking is not indicative of total sales, and is therefore useless. Nevertheless it’s probably a fairly good indicator of average book sales at Amazon, and thus one can compare one’s own book sales with those of others. Here are rankings (not numbers sold!) of a few fiction titles on Amazon.com as of yesterday evening:

Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen: #14
(Ratings 1-13 were all non-fiction)

King’s Speech, by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi: #295

Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett: #769

Twilight, Book #1, by Stephenie Meyer: #1,364

Room, by Emma Donoghue: #2,554

Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler: #6,858

The Best Laid Plans, by Terry Fallis: #62,331

Edith’s War, by Andrew Smith: #2,116,076

So, as we can see, checking the Amazon rating would be a humbling and probably depressing experience for most authors, especially if they weren’t familiar with the way the rating works. I don’t know exactly what proportion of sales of Edith’s War are made at Amazon, but I’m sure it’s small compared to personal and bookstore sales. So it’s a fairly masochistic, and meaningless, exercise for me to check the Amazon rating on any kind of regular basis. But, unfortunately, it’s human nature to do so.
Because of the amount of books sold personally by me directly to readers (huge thank you to all who bought those copies), and the higher returns I received from such sales, I’m more than half-way to breaking even on the project. So all in all probably reason — if not for champagne — for a glass or two of inexpensive Chianti. Cheers! Cin cin! Santé!

Edith’s War a blog about self publishing

Book Clubs are beautiful things, a surge of e-book sales, and a welcome cheque

Lest we forget: bookstores that sold only books, and an independent who marches to a different drum

Care-giving for the mature novel — it ain’t over ‘til the last copy sells (or the remainder bin calls)

On winning Gold at Independent Publisher Book Awards, but not being in NYC to pick up the bling

1,000 copies sold, but is that a success? Much depends on who you ask.

1,000 copies sold, but is that a success?  Much depends on who you ask.