Two years ago, after amicably parting ways with my
literary agent of four years, I decide to take destiny into my own hands and
publish my books in eformat. I had a huge collection of completed and
professionally edited novels and decided that publishing one every three months
seemed feasible. So, that’s what I did.
Little did I know I was on the cusp of an indie
publishing revolution. My books were available at the right time, for the right
audience, and at the right price. Kindles and Nooks were the new “it” device to
have, and readers who were once against reading a story electronically, suddenly
realized the ease in which they could purchase and carry along their favorite
books. My sales went through the roof.
I’m not saying I was a bestselling author, but my books all ranked in the low thousands for a time. Then something strange happened, my sales started to drop. I wasn’t doing anything different than before. I still spent an average of two hours a day marketing my titles, on top of the two hours a day I spent writing new material. Yet, my rankings kept slipping.
I decided to look deeper into this new age of publishing
and what I discovered is frightening.
It seems anyone who’s ever written anything is now
publishing it on the internet. Last year, Amazon reported about 20,000 new titles
being published a month. This December it was over 80,000. That’s a lot of
competition! And these new publishing folks are savvy marketers even if they’re
not great writers. They’re using Utube, and audio conversions, and video’s, and
social media, and a thousand other techno resources to peddle their stories to
the masses.
So, where does that leave the introvert, artist, novelist
who cares about his books as if they were his children?
As I get older and more experienced in my writing, I’ve
come to realize that it is the story that is most important. It is eternal once
written. To create something that effects people, or entertains, or changes
their perspective about life, is what any real writer hopes to achieve. Sure,
there are gimmicks and tricks, and social media, and threads to artificially raise
awareness of your book, but if it was written as a piece of merchandise just to
have out there, chances are it will fail.
Last month, I researched much of the latest trends in
marketing (seo optimization, book trailers, keywords) and it made my head spin.
Whatever happened to a good story selling itself? It’s getting harder and
harder to keep up with the world.
Yup. The easy part is crafting the novel, almost nothing, in fact compared to selling it to a world anaesthetised by untold thousand new novels every month.
ReplyDeleteThe ebook market is certainly more competitive today than it was two or three years ago.
ReplyDeleteA well-written work which captures the heart of a reader will succeed through word-of-mouth.
I don't concern myself with possible competitors or how my sales are doing. If one person learns something from one of my works then I'm happy.
Excellent post. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteInsightful post. There are two sides to this and then there's the middle, which is where I sit. I am a new "indie" author who has spent way more time spinning my wheels, trying to find agent representation, than I did writing my entire trilogy. New aspiring writers, with really great manuscripts, probably got tired of the "Agent Query" process and the generic rejection that typically follows. So how do you get your material seen?
ReplyDeleteThe young,technology savvy, generation has found a way and it's called e-books. I decided, after countless query rejections, to give it a go. I mean how difficult could it be, right? At 47 years old I learned it was extremely difficult to do so! I mean converting word docx to pdf's and then to mobi & ePubs...Omg! Then there's the challenge of choosing where to go, Amazon or Smashwords and what program to select? Sounds easy to most but if you are 47 years old and typewriters were in when you were in high school, it wasn't as easy as I thought.
I managed to figure out what I needed to do to get my book self-published on Amazon. It was a long road for me, discovering I needed an editor other than my husband and cover design but eventually, I had arrived. I was a published author now!
What I didn't know was that the next hurdle would be the one that would prove to be the most difficult mountain to climb. It's the social media advantage. Most likely if you are under 30 years of age you can dive right into with ease but for me...a nightmare.
So, you are right! I have read many of "those" books that I believe you are talking about. It's true, many are horrible but every now and again I find a diamond in the rough. It's probably someone who spent months, years maybe trying to get representation and failed. My point is, I believe that good books will always find their way off the shelves or in today's world, downloaded onto one's Kindle. It may take longer to get the word out if your skills as a writer don't include "how to" use social media. I just have to have faith that even though our world is changing a good book will always make its way to the top. Until then, I'll be sitting in the middle and hoping to make that climb someday. :)
Debra