Tag: ebooks

On book sales: Mostly bad news division

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about this on Twitter recently so I may as well talk about it here:  the 99 cent price point failed utterly to drive any additional sales.  In fact, I haven’t sold a book since July 25th.  For the last few days, The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 has returned to its original $2.99 price point.  I had always planned to perma-free the book sooner or later, so the lack of sales lately may be accelerating that decision.  We’ll see.

Smashwords claims that I have literally no sales at all from Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore, or Smashwords itself.  I don’t know how seriously to take this as I know that I bought a copy of the damn book through the iBookstore, so I’ve had at least one sale that way.  It does tell me that there have been eighteen downloads of the sample chapter, which I feel should have generated at least one sale by now, but who the hell knows.

I mentioned this a day or two ago, but my next book, Skylights, has got a page up on Goodreads.  If you’re a Goodreads user, feel free to drop the book into your “to read” shelf if you like, and send me a friend request while you’re at it.  I’m eagerly anticipating the day when I have more friends on Goodreads than I do on Facebook.  The way things are going, it’s not going to be long.

Follow-up on “Question for Readers”

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading2 Comments

The following is a non-exhaustive and in no particular order list of authors whose new books are always purchased immediately and in hardcover.  I’m going to forget some.

  • John Scalzi
  • Warren Ellis
  • Salman Rushdie
  • China Mieville
  • Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant (note: her books are not always reliably released in HC)
  • Django Wexler
  • Scott Lynch (with his next book)
  • John Irving
  • Helene Wecker
  • Brandon Sanderson
  • GRRM (but I do it out of spite)
  • Stephen King
  • Kevin Hearne
  • Patrick Rothfuss

The following are authors whose books, so far, I’m always buying, but buy in paperback:

  • Alastair Reynolds
  • Charlie Stross
  • Tana French

As soon as these folk start seeing hardback releases, they’re upgraded on the spot:

  • N.K. Jemisin
  • Saladin Ahmed
  • Michael J. Sullivan
  • Cherie Priest

 

In which awesome things are awesome

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing6 Comments

The most excellent D. Emery Bunn took an ereader along with him on a plane ride and this happened.  An excerpt:

I was too busy chuckling to myself and thinking “I hope he keeps this up, I need more Douglas Adams style humor in the books I read.” And then it was over. Scumbag short story collection, cutting off and making me want to read the next thing. You hear that, Luther? Write and publish the next one already, before I force you to read it to me personally.

Want a way to guarantee it’s gonna be a good day?  Get compared to Douglas fucking Adams.  Wheee!  Reviews with threats in them are the best kind!

Give in to inevitability, join the kool kidz, and download The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 from the retailer of your choice.  99 cents!:

THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES now available basically everywhere

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

bacover3dSmashwords has finally pushed the manuscript through to all the big online markets, so you can now download The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 to basically any device you want!  The price is currently 99 cents everywhere.

Hooray for choices!

 

Go look yourself, I guess

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

The good news: THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES, VOL. 1 is now available on the iBookstore, for those of you who use your iThings to read books!  99 of your human moneypennies!

The bad news: I, uh, have no idea how to link to something on the iBookstore, since it lives in an app and as far as I know has no live Web presence?  So I need to figure that out, because I know it’s possible.  But it’s there!  Go look, I promise!

EDIT:  Aha!:

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A few additional BA details

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment
  • It’s now available on Smashwords, here, for 99 cents.  There are a variety of file formats available.
  • Apple bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Oyster, and several other stores are coming and will be linked to at that time, but you can download it in whatever format you like from Smashwords.
  • There’s gonna be a 15% preview available on the Goodreads page in a few hours once they’ve processed the file I sent them.  Check… tomorrow, I guess?

I didn’t get any actual writing done today– at least, not yet, and it’s 9:15 so that’s probably it for the day– but I feel like I got enough authorstuff done to call it a decent day.

THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES now only $0.99!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

The announcement’s right there in the title, but let’s put it here too– now that I’ve pulled The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 from Amazon’s KDP Select program, I’ve dropped the price to only ninety-nine cents, which is so cheap it’s practically free.  Just not actually free.

In addition, very soon the book will be available everywhere— I have some reformatting stuff I have to do tonight to comply with Smashwords, but I think that by the end of the weekend you will be able to download it through virtually any ebook service anywhere.  The Smashwords version is available now, but I’m not going to link to it yet because of the aforementioned formatting errors.  If you want some other version, hold off until I let you know everything’s working okay.

But:  99 cents!  Let’s sell some books, eh?

Author nerd post!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

bacover3dSo this has happened– Amazon has introduced a new program called “Kindle Unlimited,” where for a flat fee of $9.99 a month you can download and read as many books as you want on your Kindle and keep them for as long as you’d like, so long as you keep paying the $9.99 a month.

I’m not sure what kind of deal they worked out with the actual publishing companies, but apparently us lowly independent folk get paid the same way we did for the Kindle Lending Library– if you’re enrolled in Kindle Select, you’re in, and you get a portion of the money they set aside for KS people every month each time your book gets borrowed.  Which, I should point out, isn’t a bad deal at all, or at least it doesn’t sound like one on paper.

Except:

The Benevolence Archives has moved nearly 500 copies– significantly more as a free book than paid, but that’s still not nothing– and has never once been downloaded by someone on the lending library.  So this is not really a thing that appeals to me as an author, although as a reader I’m thinking about checking it out.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: since they’ve altered the terms of the Kindle Select deal by creating this program, they’re allowing anyone currently involved in Kindle Select to remove their book from the program even if they’re not through with their 90 days yet.  Mine don’t run out for a few more weeks, but I’d already decided that I didn’t see the advantage of the program, so I’m gonna pull it early.  Which means that 1) I can make it available at the various other online services (Barnes and Noble! Smashwords! Apple!) and 2) I have a bit more flexibility about price.

I’ll let y’all know what ends up happening with that as soon as it’s happened.