Tag Archives: Kindle Direct Publishing

Why Do eBook Authors Quit?

30 Monday May 2016

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Because nobody buys the book, of course.

Sure, there are some awful efforts  posted online, but some good reads only sell a few copies before they are forgotten. It’s frustrating to craft a project that goes nowhere, and most of us would rather be writing the next book before spending hours divining the power of keywords or solving the mysteries of  promotions for a finished work.

So here it is: Whether it’s a toaster or a novel, online sales are driven by customer reviews.

After all, if someone commits to reading Stephen King, James Patterson or Nora Roberts, they pretty much know what to expect. But who the hell is D. S. Cooper? That is why writers want to leave the reader with a jolt of emotion and the burning desire to tell someone about this book I just read! You want them to write a review as soon as they put the book down. And if I ever figure out how to do that, I’ll become a successful Kindle author!

It is very nice and productive to get feedback from readers on my website, especially when it develops into a continuing correspondence, but those e-mails do little to entice other readers, since only Amazon reviews push future sales on Kindle. So I’ll go ahead and belabor the point: If you want people to read your book  you’ve got to have some stars on the Amazon sales page.

On the other hand, no one likes to get snarked, or to get panned by a reader channeling a NY Times reviewer with broad criticisms such as, “needs more character development,” or “the author needs to set the scene better.”  That sort of stuffing always leaves me wondering if the reviewer even read the book.

But for all I know, the worst reviews are probably right on. After all, I’m just some guy with a notebook computer and an irrepressible urge to spin a yarn.

None To A Million

27 Monday Jul 2015

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Writers are each a solitary actor with an audience of none to a million.

That’s my theory; writing is a non-simultaneous performance art. We act out our stories as we write — we perform them in our minds, just as surely as if we were on stage — without knowing how many people will be in the audience when the house lights come up. The writer must feel all the emotion as she writes; the reader gets it later. And who knows how many readers there will be?

Some can hold their game face as they write, hardly betraying the highs and lows of their feelings as they put words on the page. Others mumble their dialogs or speak the words aloud. Some pace at their writing station and pantomime the action. No wonder so many writers prefer to work alone!

I’ve read that JK Rowling was waiting on a train platform without a pen when she had the idea for a scrawny bespectacled boy who did not know that he was a wizard. Imagine if she had entered into a conversation with a fellow traveler, and that thought had been lost? Later, she penned her Harry Potter novels in the public room of a pub overlooking Edinburgh Castle. Could anyone watching her face then have sensed the brilliance of the words which she was putting on paper?

Alas, few of us have imaginations so powerful and so impervious to distraction as JK Rowling. So we retreat to quiet places. We train our family and friends to respect our diurnal periods of self imposed solitude. In the end, we put it out there. We publish electronically.

Will anyone read our words?

Flight From Katama

25 Saturday Jul 2015

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Set in 1969, this novella plays off the ‘Chappaquiddick Incident,’ with young charter pilot Billy Coates and his friends from Cape Cod tossed into the world of presidential politics by a fictional twist. It was fun to write, because I lived in Falmouth in the Seventies and I first learned to fly there. The characters came easily, since I  had known a few young locals like Billy in that seaside resort town, with his stalwart pal Ned Rogers and love interest Benedita Lopes.

Flight From Katama was my first self-published project, appearing on Amazon eight months ago. I intended it to be a short ‘Two Hour Quick Read’ which I could initially offer as a free promotion to introduce me and my writing. But readers have really responded well to the characters, so I’m planning to bring them back in a ‘Billy Coates Series’ of eBooks.

The biggest mistake I made on this project was the title. Pilots from all over the country might recognize ‘Katama’ as the popular grass airstrip at Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, but most readers wouldn’t know that. So given the way that Amazon suggests books by interests and keywords, ‘Flight From Chappaquiddick’ might have sold many more copies.

Live and learn.

My First Disaster

23 Thursday Jul 2015

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Much of my writing ends up in the recycling bin, and I know that I’m not alone in that regard. If you are reading this blog, you may be a writer, and this might all sound very familiar.

I started to write my first novel at least a dozen times over the years, but I could never charge further than about 70 pages into the story before work or travel broke my stride. A few of these attempts dating back 20 years or more are stashed away in my filing cabinet or somewhere in my basement, growing mold. No one has ever read them.

After my forced retirement, I took the advice of many writers and got up 5 a.m. each morning, made a pot of coffee, and sat down with my computer. I turned off my cell phone and tapped the keys until 9 or 10 o’clock, and then printed the pages and added them to the stack. Ten months later, I had 1245 pages of Moons of the Sierra Maestra, which I rushed off to friends and family for reading.

It was awful.

So, I did what we all do: I began editing and re-writing, preparing a final manuscript to mail off to some agents or publishers. I suppose that I might have spent the rest of my life perfecting that masterpiece if I had not decided to put it aside “just for a few weeks” to write a little novella. I had been toying with the idea for Flight From Katama for years, so why not try a small project as an eBook, just to see what this self-publishing thing is all about?

I still have a lot to learn as a writer, but pushing that one little project through to completion for Amazon Kindle was the best move I ever made.