Category Archives: James Bell

Three Things I Wish I’d Known Before Self-Publishing

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by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

We don’t know what we don’t know.

After self-publishing eight books in six years, I can definitively say, no matter how much knowledge I think I have, there’s always waaaaay more to learn.

Here are three things I wish I’d known when I started.

1. Exclusive or wide? The decision whether to publish exclusive or wide is a complicated choice without clear answers. But it’s also one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Give it serious consideration.

First, let’s translate terms in the language of self-pub speak.

Exclusive means you publish and sell your books solely through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

Going wide means, in addition to Amazon, you sell your books through other distributors (Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, etc.).

The self-pub learning curve is steep and it’s a good idea to become familiar with the basic process first before you consider branching out. There’s a reference list at the end of this post to help. 

Because Amazon is the major marketplace, I recommend starting with them for your first self-publication. But be careful you don’t inadvertently make choices that might cause problems if you later decide to go wide. The devil is in the details which I’ll expand on in a minute.

Here are some KDP pros:

  • The majority of self-published books are sold through Amazon, so it makes economic sense to go with the biggest marketplace. Many authors build entire careers creating, publishing, and selling their books only through Amazon. TKZ’s own Jim Bell has done well by staying exclusive.
  • KDP provides an excellent system that walks the author through the steps. One doesn’t need to be a tech-savvy programmer to produce an attractive professional-looking book using their Kindle Create program.
  • Through KDP, you can publish ebooks, print, hardcover, audio, and additional options. Paperbacks are good quality and author copies are at a reasonable cost.
  • Their market reach is second to none.
  • They offer exclusive promotions via Kindle Select to encourage the author to stay within their universe.

However, that universe has drawbacks. Here are a few cons:

  • They change rules without notice, often in ways that seem capricious and punitive.
  • An author’s account may be suspended or terminated for violating their lengthy terms and conditions. Sometimes algorithms make the decision and bots don’t offer explanations. Recourse is difficult.  If an author can’t sell books, they are out of business.
  • KDP doesn’t allow you to offer a book for free (as a reader magnet) without a complicated workaround that requires frequent updating.
  • Most independent booksellers will not deal with Amazon.

KDP’s “Expanded Distribution” is one of the devilish details mentioned above. The terms imply the ability to distribute to markets outside of Amazon.

This is their explanation:

“Booksellers and libraries purchase paperbacks from large distributors. If you enroll your paperback in Expanded Distribution, we’ll make your book available to distributors so booksellers and libraries can find your book and order it…Booksellers and libraries around the world may purchase books from these distributors. It’s free to enroll your paperback in Expanded Distribution, and it allows your book to be made broadly available outside of Amazon.”

Sound great, right? But notice the wording (the emphasis is mine). They “make your book available to distributors so booksellers and libraries can find your book and order it.” They “may” purchase your books.

That doesn’t mean they will. 

The reality is most bookstores are unlikely to purchase books from the source that threatens their ability to stay in business. Can you blame them for not buying bullets from an enemy that wants to shoot them?

Additionally, bookstore and library computer systems are set up to order books through distributors like Ingram, not Amazon. Even if patrons request your book, a library will likely say no because it’s more time and trouble than it’s worth.

So, if you click  the “expanded distribution” button, you actually lose some ability to sell through other distributors.

Fortunately, this is easy to reverse: if you clicked the expanded distribution button (as I did originally), simply unclick it.

After several years of exclusivity with Amazon, I decided to go wide. Most sales still come from Amazon but I prefer to have eggs in several different baskets.

KDP is a good, easy-to-learn system to get your started in self-publishing but you may decide not to spend the rest of your career there. The lesson is to leave your options open. Terms and conditions change over time and what sounds fine today may not work for you in the future.

2. Amazon isn’t the only game in town. There are many self-publishing alternatives: Ingram Spark, Draft2Digital (D2D), BookBaby, Lulu, Smashwords (now merged with D2D), Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc. All those choices can overwhelm a new self-publisher.

Fasten your seatbelts. This next section is complicated.

Since I’d rather write than learn about different self-pubbing systems, initially I took the path of least resistance and stayed exclusive with Amazon. I used their Kindle Create program to design and format.

But…you can use Create files only on KDP. If you want to go wide, you can’t take those files to different distributors. To reach other markets, you have to create different file versions of your books.

For several years, the need to learn additional programs intimidated me and prevented me from going wide.

Then I read Terry’s excellent 2020 post about Draft2Digital.

At last, here was a publishing system easy enough for the tech-challenged writer! With Terry’s coaching, I went wide using D2D.

With Draft2Digital, you upload a Word file to their system. Then use their excellent templates to design and format a professional-looking ebook, paperback, or both. There is no cost to use their formatting service. Free really is free.

D2D creates formatted book files that can then be uploaded to B&N, Apple, Kobo, etc.

Since I’m too lazy to learn the quirks of each market’s system, I let D2D do the distribution. I select markets where I want to sell and D2D takes care of the rest, uploading the files to each market’s particular specifications. They also keep track of and pay royalties. For that service, they take a percentage of sales. Because they provide great value with free formatting, I don’t mind paying 10%. For me, it’s worth it.

You can also upload files directly to the various markets and save the fee.

However, I don’t recommend using D2D distribute to Amazon. In fact, Amazon erects so many roadblocks, D2D provides a checklist to overcome them:

“In order to better serve our authors, Draft2Digital first requires that you take steps to gain access to Amazon as a digital store option. As soon as each step is verified by our team, Amazon will be activated as an option for your account.”

I should have listened to those warning bells before I tried an experiment with the seventh book in my series, Until Proven Guilty.

At that time, with six self-published books under my belt, I felt pretty comfortable and confident about the process.

You know what they say about pride going before the fall.

Instead of the usual process of uploading the book to Amazon first, then uploading to D2D, I chose to have D2D distribute UPG to Amazon, along with the other markets. That way, I figured, only one sales link was needed. Easy peasy, right?

Wrong.

Using D2D as the distributor caused problems with Amazon that I’d never encountered before.

Normally a new book in a series is automatically linked to the other books in the series. But this time, the new book wouldn’t link. That glitch required repeated contacts with KDP.

An even worse obstacle cropped up. For several weeks after publication, customers couldn’t find the book. Even when they typed “Until Proven Guilty by Debbie Burke” directly into the Amazon search box, a message said that title couldn’t be located. Many more contacts with KDP finally resolved the problem.

But that delay was especially bad for a new book launch.

I’m guessing the reason for these problems is because KDP prefers the author chooses Amazon as their primary distributor. Using D2D as the distributor disrupts their system and makes the bots cranky.

Lesson learned. Now, I upload to Amazon first. Then I upload to D2D for other markets. That means two sales link buttons, one for Amazon and one for everyone else, but that’s a small inconvenience. The problems have not recurred since.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a few words about Ingram. They are biggest distributor and the one used by most booksellers and libraries. Ingram Spark (IS) is their branch for self-published books. Through them, your physical books can be ordered by any store, including retailers like Walmart and Target.

IS books are print on demand (POD) and the quality is excellent although their prices are a little higher than KDP’s POD.

At some point, you may want to upload your books to IS because that gives your books the widest distribution.

But… their system is somewhat difficult to navigate, according to discussions among various writing groups I belong to. For now Ingram is a task I’ll put off for the future.

Since I haven’t used other self-pub options (Book Baby, Lulu, etc.), I didn’t address them. The above only describes my personal experience with KDP and D2D. YMMV.

3. ISBNs. When I first published, ISBNs seemed like a trivial detail, but I later discovered they are important for distribution and sales of print books.

Although ebooks generally sell the most, a significant number of readers prefer a physical book. Paperbacks account for a quarter to a third of my sales. 

KDP produces a good quality print-on-demand book at a reasonable price, so I used them.

But…I ran into problems with ISBNs.

What are ISBNs? This is the American Library Association explanation:

“The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a 13-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally.”

Why does the ISBN matter? That is essentially your book’s unique fingerprint and how it’s located in the Books in Print database. If you want bookstores and libraries to be able to order physical copies of your books, you need ISBNs.

Side note: ISBNs aren’t necessary for ebooks.

How do you get ISBNs?

The official supplier of ISBNs is Bowker. They are pricy: $125 for one, $295 for ten, $575 for 100. You must use a different ISBN for each format of the same book. In other words, if you publish paperback, hardback, large print, and audiobook editions, each requires a separate ISBN. That expense adds up quickly, which is daunting for a new self-publisher.

The other option: use the free ISBNs provided by KDP. However…that leads to another devilish detail.

Trying to save money, I used KDP’s free ISBNs. Later I learned free comes with a price.

The price is:

“Those numbers can only be used within the Amazon system. The free ISBN from KDP can only be used on KDP for distribution to Amazon and its distributors. It cannot be used with another publisher or self-publishing service.”

When I decided to go wide, those free ISBNs from KDP didn’t work for other markets like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo.

Even if your books are published using a business name (e.g. XYZ Thriller Press), the ISBN still identifies it as originating from KDP. Bookstores can recognize those free numbers and often will not order from them.

Case in point: in this year’s Christmas card from my college roommate, she mentioned she’d tried to buy my latest book Deep Fake Double Down in paperback from B&N. The ebook was available from B&N but not a print book. She prefers to purchase from B&N  but, being a good friend, she went ahead and bought the paperback from Amazon.

My ISBN mistake really hit home with the opening of a new B&N store in my town. The manager offered to feature local authors but their computer system can’t order my books using KDP’s ISBN. He graciously agreed to take books on consignment but that is only a temporary arrangement for the grand opening. In the future, I will need to publish updated paperback versions with my own ISBNs so B&N can order them.

D2D can also provide a free ISBN. This is how they handle it:

Draft2Digital will automatically assign an ISBN to any book published through our system free of charge.

The ISBN recording agency will denote Draft2Digital as the “vendor of record” on their website for any ISBN D2D purchases, but that label does not give us any rights to your work nor will it show publicly. All of our digital stores will continue to show the publisher name you choose (or, if you left the publisher name blank, it will show your author name).

In retrospect, I wish I had bitten that expensive bullet at the outset and bought my own ISBNs from Bowker. After all, that’s part of the cost of doing business and self-publishing is a business.

~~~

None of my errors has proved fatal (yet!). I’m sure I’ll make new ones in the future. Thankfully most mistakes or wrong choices can be reversed. Fixing them just takes time…time you’d rather spend writing.

Fortunately, lots of solid information about self-publishing is available. Here are several sources I trust:

Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi);

Dave Chesson (excellent advice about Kindle Direct Publishing);

Joanna Penn (tenured, respected expert);

Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) offers this comprehensive resource list.

We don’t know what we don’t know but, with time, we learn.

Then we learn there’s always more to learn.

~~~

TKZers: if you self-pub, what do you wish you’d known when you started?

If you haven’t self-pubbed yet, what question concerns you the most?

 

Hats Off to Writing Heroes

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I re-scheduled the post I had originally written for today after I heard that James Scott Bell had been presented a Lifetime Achievement Award at the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference over the weekend.

Congratulations, Jim!

There are many award-winning writers who contribute and comment here at TKZ, but a Lifetime Award is surely special.

JSB’s Plot and Structure was one of the first two craft-of-writing books I read when I decided to write a novel. (Many thanks to my friend Rachel Hills for recommending it.) His book taught me not only the elements of structure, but the very first chapter convinced me that even if I didn’t have the elusive writing “talent,” I could still be an accomplished author by studying and applying the craft. It was a lesson I took to heart. My bookshelves groan under the weight of a lot of craft-of-writing books, many written by Mr. Bell. Those books have served me well, like having a writer’s GPS to show me the way.

But Jim has done more than provide us with great craft books. He writes fiction, teaches courses, posts on TKZ and other blogs, and has provided many of us with encouragement and mentorship. As a newly published author in 2019, I asked him to be my interview guest on my blog. I expected him to reply that he was too busy, but he graciously agreed and has been an annual guest since then, spreading wisdom and knowledge to my readers.

Please join me in a round of applause for TKZ’s own writing hero: James Scott Bell.

* * *

So, TKZers: Who are your writing heroes? Tell us about them.

 

 

 

Cover Story

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

 

Recently, Jim Bell wrote about baseball legend Honus Wagner, a shortstop in the early 20th century, and one of the first inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Here’s a story for Valentine’s Day about how Honus played matchmaker between me and my wonderful cover artist, Brian Hoffman, right here at The Kill Zone.

I still get chills when I remember how Brian and I “met”.

In 2017, the first novel (Instrument of the Devil) in my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series was traditionally published. They provided a cover that was predominantly lizard green, not my favorite color. But they paid me, so I went along with it.

Original cover

 

Six months later, they closed their doors, leaving me orphaned. The second book in the series was ready to publish and a third was in the works. After considering options, I decided to self-publish the subsequent books.

But self-publishing meant providing my own covers.

A professional design company did several cover drafts but I didn’t like any of them. Being a DIYer, I tried creating covers myself and wrote a post for TKZ about the process.

 

At that time, the fourth book Dead Man’s Bluff was close to publication but had not yet been released. No one except my critique group and editor had read it.

After that post, I received a gracious email from TKZ regular, Brian Hoffman. He said he enjoyed my posts and had learned a lot from them. Then he added he hoped he wasn’t offending me but “Your cover for Dead Man’s Bluff looks amateurish.  I’ve made one you might like better.  It is my gift to you for all the help your columns have been to me.”

He attached this cover:

Wow, just wow!

Since the book had not yet been published, Brian had no way of knowing the McGuffin in the plot was the Honus Wagner 1909 baseball card. Yet, there on his cover was that very card!

Chills ran through me. The theme from The Twilight Zone played in my mind.

How had this complete stranger perfectly captured the essence of my story about a Florida hurricane and a stolen baseball card?

I immediately wrote back to Brian, with profuse thanks, saying of course he hadn’t offended me, far from it. He’d blown me away with the beautiful cover and his generosity.

Believing he was a professional who designed covers for a living, I asked him for a bid to redo all my books.

Bing, bang, boom. More emails arrived from him, each containing another great cover. They displayed a consistent style for the series that fitted the thriller/suspense genre. I was thrilled.

How much do I owe you? I wrote back.

Nothing. I enjoy doing them.

No way could I take his work without paying him.

If he wouldn’t give me an amount, I figured I’d send him a check for a fair market price. What’s your address?

 No answer.

After more back and forth emails—me offering to pay, him declining—we finally came to an agreement.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says: Cast thy bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days…

Brian and I continue to enjoy a great working relationship. I send him a synopsis of each new story. He sends several sample designs. We yak back and forth to fine-tune and decide on a final version. Here is his work:

Thank you, Brian!

Being member of TKZ’s community yields many rewards, both expected and unexpected.

Happy Valentine’s Day to TKZ’s family and friends from all over the globe who enrich my life as a writer and a human being.

~~~

TKZers: Have you ever received a gift you never anticipated? Have you ever given a gift the recipient didn’t expect?

~~~

 

Here’s a sneak peek at Brian’s cover for my upcoming thriller Deep Fake.

You can’t believe your eyes.

Sign up here at my website and I’ll let you know when Deep Fake is released.

How My Daughter Became an International Multi-Media Internet Superstar Overnight

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We have had a bit of excitement at casa de Hartlaub since my last post. The seed of that excitement was planted several years ago — more on that in a bit — and sprouted in March of this year. Annalisa, my sixteen year old daughter, attends The Ohio State University and during the winter-spring semester took an Intro to Photography class as a bit of a respite from her biology lectures, lab courses, and her work on a pediatric oncology research team. The photography class, taught by the informative and entertaining Shane McGeehan with lectures by Aspen Mays, required the submission of a number of projects. Annalisa fulfilled one of them by photographing a series of portraits of herself representing mainstream and counterculture fashions for each of the past ten decades. She turned the project in, earned an ‘A,’ and posted the project to her Flickr account at the beginning of April.

Strange things began to happen within a couple of weeks. Annalisa’s hit numbers, after growing steadily but modestly at first, inexplicably and suddenly began to jump exponentially, day by day, from 10,000 to 20,000 to 60,000 and so on. Will Wheaton of Star Trek: The Next Generation, re-blogged her page, which was a particular thrill for Annalisa, given that she had a crush on him in those heady days when she was four years old. Hank Green, who is a major YouTube player contributor, did as well. This was exciting enough; the tipping point, however, occurred on April 2, when Annalisa got an email from Sara Roncero-Menendez of The Huffington Post, asking for permission to use the portraits in an article about Annalisa and the project. The answer of course was yes. And we waited.

We had no idea what would happen next. The articleappeared on April 29. The story was picked up by Buzzfeed, Independent Journal Review, Yahoo!, and then by news sites based in Vietnam, Italy, Mumbai, France, and England, among others. A young man in Turkey put together a music video featuring the portraits and a Pentatonix track. And it’s still expanding, even as I sit here typing. This, it has been explained to me, is what as “going viral.” It was never Annalisa’s intent to do so; she just wanted to create the best project she could, and then share it with her friends. Indeed.

So what does all of this have to do with you? Ah. The short version is “(M)y daughter did a class photography project and it went viral.” Here is the long version, tacked onto the beginning of what I have set forth above: Annalisa conceived of the project; spent hours turning her room into a portrait studio; spent days looking at old photographs; experimented with makeup, lighting, and shading; and took hundreds of shots before she got the ones she wanted. What everyone is seeing is but the tail end — and the relatively short end — of all of that work. That’s true of any work of art, be it your favorite book of the week, the new Parquet Courts CD, or TrueDetective; you’re getting the end result, not the weeks and months and yeah, in some cases years of work and failure and self-doubt that comprised the gestation period which ultimately resulted in the finished masterpiece being pushed out into the marketplace. You can read all of James Bell’s columns that you want, and follow that advice to the letter, but —and Jim would be the first to tell you this — you’re not going to squeeze out your masterpiece, best- selling or otherwise, viral or otherwise, in an hour or a few days or even a few weeks. You’re going to write and erase and edit and write some more and lay awake and forget about the butler (as Raymond Chandler so famously did) and erase it all and start all over until, as Will Wheaton’s boss was so fond of saying, you “make it so.”

The title of this piece notwithstanding, overnight success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the end result of many nights, and days, and weeks of work. For Annalisa, it probably started when she was three years old, and for whatever reason during dinner began taking pictures of her food after each bite, as her parents watched with amusement and dinnertimes extended for two hours. It was worth every minute then, and still is. 

 

 

Parched For Readers

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A few years ago I met a gentleman in New Orleans who had never heard of Stephen King. He was thirty-three years old at the time, a musician for whom a classical education even at the elementary level had never been a priority but who nevertheless was still knowledgeable of pop culture. Still, he was unfamiliar with King and Carrie, The Stand, The Shining, and the other King books which had been adapted for film. He didn’t have a book in his house; neither, as it happened, did his mother, or the five of his eight siblings whose homes I visited.
Stephen King, I think I can safely say, is a household name, so people such as my acquaintance who have never heard of him are probably the exception rather than the rule. That no-book thing, however…that bothers me. I know people who watch Castle, which begins its sixth season next month, who haven’t read a mystery novel in decades, if ever. Dexter? Longmire? I still find people who have no idea that these popular dramas are based on novels. Justified slyly winked at Raylan Givens’ literary origins a couple of years ago but I doubt it increased sales of Raylan, which was published on season premiere night.
James Bell’s question from last week regarding the future of publishing was an interesting one which evoked a number of interesting responses. Almost all of them, however, implicitly made an assumption that I don’t think we can make anymore, in this era of entertainment everywhere: we’re each and all of us assuming that there will still be readers. Do you walk into homes without books in evidence? When you’re out somewhere and see people reading, how many do you not see reading? How many times in the past month have you been talking to someone about the last book you’ve read and heard them say, “Gee, I haven’t read a book in years. I just don’t have the time”?
I’m not attempting to be an alarmist here, or a Chicken Little. What I think I’m seeing, however, is a situation where the problem isn’t that we’re drowning in books; it’s that we’re parched for readers, and we’re fighting a battle of attrition. There are plenty of books out there worth reading. For every book I read there is at least one, often more, that I don’t get to and that winds up on my “someday” list. That’s not the problem, as I see it. The difficulty is that for everyone one of me, and you, there are, it seems, five or six who just don’t care. They’d rather watch reality television or something like that.

Am I wrong here? Or am I pointing out the 800 pound gorilla in the room that we’re all trying to studiously ignore?