Billboards

[BookCat]

Steve: I went to your website and looked at your About Me expecting to find information about you as a writer. This is not what I found. What you've written there may deter some people from wanting to read your work. Imho it's best to avoid politics and religion.

[skb]

Originally Posted by BookCat

Steve: I went to your website and looked at your About Me expecting to find information about you as a writer. This is not what I found. What you've written there may deter some people from wanting to read your work. Imho it's best to avoid politics and religion.

Oh my. I just looked. I have to agree with @BookCat. For me, that "about me" is a real turn off. I'm sorry Steve, but that just screams "avoid! avoid!" to me.

Your mileage may, of course, vary.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by skb

Oh my. I just looked. I have to agree with @BookCat. For me, that "about me" is a real turn off. I'm sorry Steve, but that just screams "avoid! avoid!" to me.

Your mileage may, of course, vary.

Same here. I don't care what religion (or otherwise) the authors I read choose to follow; I do care about whether it looks like their books are going to preach religion at me. And that shrieks "preachy".

There is a niche market for Christian SF, I'm sure. But I think it's on the small side.

(Your website also has a number of technical/design issues.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by skb

Oh my. I just looked. I have to agree with @BookCat. For me, that "about me" is a real turn off. I'm sorry Steve, but that just screams "avoid! avoid!" to me.

Your mileage may, of course, vary.

I just looked too. Oh my is right. It screams run away now and don't look back.

That about me page reminded me of Sunday school. If I want a sermon, I shall find a church. Not good.

Sorry Steve.
Now I really advise against the billboard.

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by gmw

Hey, I'm in obscurity too. We should meet up some time. ... But it's pretty crowded here, we may have to book ahead to get two seats together.

Yeah, it seems like the ball room is getting too crowded these days for anyone to really be seen.

I presume the costs you give are just the space rental, production of artwork to go up onto the board is going to add even more, yes?

A friend of mine would be doing the artwork. The cost of printing and installing is included in the $500/m price tag as you're locked in for 6 months at a crack. So technically you're paying like $200 a month towards the printing and install and the rest is space rental.

The whole price thing is difficult to guess at. Yes, there are a lot of people that won't even look at a new indy author unless they can get the work free. (And a lot that won't even look then.)

lol, I've actually been doing this for about 25 years. I only started publishing them about 2010 after some friends convinced me to take the leap. Before that I was content just writing and sharing with friends and neighbors. I even won a few writing awards along the way. Sure, they're obscure awards, but they're still awards. ^_^

But there are also a lot of people that think "free" is a sign of worthless. My own opinion is that price, at the level that most indies charge, is of less importance than other forms of marketing. A few dollars is effectively nothing compared to asking the person to invest their time in reading your book.

Oddly enough, I have friends who keep kicking me to start charging for my books, but I'm unsure of a "value" or "worth" I could slap on the books that would draw people in without scaring them away by being too much or too little. I'm open to ideas on any of my series if you wanna chuck some ideas out there.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Steven: Amazon is the big bookstore.

Now as to your friend: it seems everyone and their elephants wants to write a book these days.

Yeah, tell me about it. I get crowded out on Amazon because of that, as GMW kinda pointed out. Plus I absolutely suck at marketing. My problem is I haven't found anyone who is really good at it. At least not yet.

Oh and just a little food for thought. 2 is twice one. 3 is 3 times one. Just add zeros. So your friend could have gone from 10 to 30. 100 to 300. 1000 to 3000. My guess is the middle one since I doubt your friend could do a good publishing job for 3000 people in a month unless he had a staff.

Yeah, he had like a staff of 8 or more. I forget how many. But once the billboard went up they went from a casual 10-15 a month to "OMG bar the doors, they keep coming!" lol. I think he did 60 new titles in one month after the billboard. So it did help. He laughs now because he actually had to turn people away. :P

Originally Posted by BookCat

Steve: I went to your website and looked at your About Me expecting to find information about you as a writer. This is not what I found. What you've written there may deter some people from wanting to read your work. Imho it's best to avoid politics and religion.

It's funny you should say that as part of what I write is Christian books and pocket guides. The scifi part is just because I've been a scifi nerd for years. It might turn some away, but if so, then so be it. I do admit I have a sort of mixed target audience, but it's what works for me. Plus I ran a top 10 Linux site for several years with a writer's profile similar to that one and nobody had any issues with it. ^_^

Now, on a side note, completely skipping the whole billboard idea (apparently it's not gonna work until I get other things sorted out), if I do start charging for my books, what would you say is a fair price to charge? Like I said earlier, I don't want to go too high or low for what I'm offering.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

[...] Plus I absolutely suck at marketing. My problem is I haven't found anyone who is really good at it. At least not yet.

If you want someone to tell you what not-to-do, I'm your man.

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

[...] Now, on a side note, completely skipping the whole billboard idea (apparently it's not gonna work until I get other things sorted out), if I do start charging for my books, what would you say is a fair price to charge? Like I said earlier, I don't want to go too high or low for what I'm offering.

I think skipping the billboard is wise. Try and work out a bigger strategy and if the billboard fits that then think about it again then.

And speaking of strategies, I hope it will be okay if I add this link to VyderScope's article about what worked for him. (He's not around to speak for himself these days so this, I hope, is no different to linking any other blog article. Our wise moderators will correct my post if I'm wrong.) It's interesting and, in terms of the amount of published material you have already, I think something like that might work for you if you're willing to put in that level of upfront effort to get multiple books ready to release in sequence like that. For myself, I don't have enough stuff already out, and I'm struggling to find the time to work on one book at the moment.

As to price. Back when I published my first book I decided on $3.99 (and it hasn't changed). This was mostly based on the idea that most other Indy stuff around then seemed to be priced around $2.99 for 100k words and mine was 140k words. This was pretty arbitrary, but slightly supported by the fact that I would get (in my hand) around the same price per book as my print-on-demand editions. Your work, I think, is mostly 70k..100k, so I'd recommend $2.99. It's very well presented and think you can easily justify (at least) that price level.

You might want to check out this thread where I talk about the 2017 Smashwords survey - including a link to the slideshow. A lot of the survey looks at romance, which is less relevant, but it does also talk about first-book-free and boxsets that you may find relevant.

P.S. Also note that my posts sometimes sound more knowledgeable than my experience/success justifies. (Trying the power of positive thinking: if I sound like I know my stuff then maybe, eventually, it will come true. ) Please don't read too much into them, I'm only trying to be helpful. Ignore anything that doesn't make sense to you.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by BookCat

Steve: I went to your website and looked at your About Me expecting to find information about you as a writer. This is not what I found. What you've written there may deter some people from wanting to read your work. Imho it's best to avoid politics and religion.

Ain't that the truth!

[Dr. Drib]

I'm from the South and we do things a bit differently, since we're hillbillies and red-necks - so I know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

Get yourself a tractor, put some typical 'Indie BS' on some canvas and hang it on the tractor, and then ride up and down main street.

People aren't in a big hurry in a small town, so we'll actually read the typical Indie crap as it travels up and down main street. Later, you can park in Tastee Freeze or McDonald's and spend a few hours eating lunch.

Now let me tell you a secret that NO Northern Indie Writers know about: You do the same thing on your outhouse (minus the wheels, of course), and have yourself a Sunday get-together - after church is the best time - and I guarantee you that you'll pick up some new readers, especially if you print some copies and leave them in the outhouse.*


* Unless it's used for other purposes. (There is a way to guarantee this.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I'm from the South and we do things a bit differently, since we're hillbillies and red-necks - so I know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

Get yourself a tractor, put some typical 'Indie BS' on some canvas and hang it on the tractor, and then ride up and down main street.

People aren't in a big hurry in a small town, so we'll actually read the typical Indie crap as it travels up and down main street. Later, you can park in Tastee Freeze or McDonald's and spend a few hours eating lunch.

Now let me tell you a secret that NO Northern Indie Writers know about: You do the same thing on your outhouse (minus the wheels, of course), and have yourself a Sunday get-together - after church is the best time - and I guarantee you that you'll pick up some new readers, especially if you print some copies and leave them in the outhouse.*


* Unless it's used for other purposes. (There is a way to guarantee this.)

How do you guarantee it won't be used.

[Cinisajoy]

Hey Steven, for those friends that say to charge, be sure and charge them.

[Steven Lake]

Oh, don't worry, unless they're a feedback reader, they're getting charged. :P Now, as for prices, here's my thinking based on the above suggestions.

Dreamland Articles 1 and 2 - both @99c because they're only about 20k words, or 12 short stories.

Earthfleet series - $1.99 because they're around 70k (they'll probably go to 100k once I get done with the rewrites at some point, but I'll wait to change the prices until then) and I'll leave Oort Perimeter as free still.

My Christian pocket guides, hmm, those I'm unsure on. The print version is $4.99, so I might do those at $1.99 despite their small size so that they look as important as I feel them to be. It's really odd how, the more expensive something in, the more valuable people think it is, even if it's not.

And lastly, Land of the Lions and Offworld Chronicles, $2.99 as those are about 90-100k on average. With that said, what do you guys think of the new prices?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Oh, don't worry, unless they're a feedback reader, they're getting charged. :P Now, as for prices, here's my thinking based on the above suggestions.

Dreamland Articles 1 and 2 - both @99c because they're only about 20k words, or 12 short stories.

Earthfleet series - $1.99 because they're around 70k (they'll probably go to 100k once I get done with the rewrites at some point, but I'll wait to change the prices until then) and I'll leave Oort Perimeter as free still.

My Christian pocket guides, hmm, those I'm unsure on. The print version is $4.99, so I might do those at $1.99 despite their small size so that they look as important as I feel them to be. It's really odd how, the more expensive something in, the more valuable people think it is, even if it's not.

And lastly, Land of the Lions and Offworld Chronicles, $2.99 as those are about 90-100k on average. With that said, what do you guys think of the new prices?

$3.99 on your Christian guides. Or $2.99. Not 1.99. On Amazon at $2.99 you make $2. At $1.99 you only make 65 cents.

If you don't want to keep the profits, donate to your favorite charity.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

How do you guarantee it won't be used.

Have a supply of corncobs on hand.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

[...] With that said, what do you guys think of the new prices?

It's a very personal thing, you have to go with what you're comfortable with ... but I think Cinisajoy's list is better:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

$3.99 on your Christian guides. Or $2.99. Not 1.99. On Amazon at $2.99 you make $2. At $1.99 you only make 65 cents.

If you don't want to keep the profits, donate to your favorite charity.

And then you can advertise this fact (donating to charity) - people feel better if they think the money they are spending on luxuries is going to a good cause. It eases their sense of guilt about spending money on themselves.


You have enough independent series that you could consider offering a second book for free, for example the first in the Land of the Lions, or perhaps one of your short story collections. Doing this may also alleviate any concerns you have over charging $2.99 rather than $1.99 for the remaining books (though I don't think you should be concerned, it's a fair price).

I mention this mainly because the biggest problem with offering your first published book for free is that quite often the first book is a less than ideal advertisement. We (hope to) get better as we get more experience.

[BookCat]

As for the idea of donating the profits to charity, if you advertise this do ensure it's a children's charity or other good cause. Avoid specifically Christian charities as this may alienate a lot of people.