The Kindle Experience, and after.

Burn, Baby, Burn will have been in the Kindle All Books Top 100 for 100 days tomorrow. Today my second book, Blood, entered the Top 100 for the first time. I shall now retire.

Alexander the Great ‘wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’

That sounds about right.

No more checking sales or chart positions – let the books sink or swim – I won’t know either way. I’m off ‘on the road’ for a while.

No routine. No itinerary. No idea where I’m going.

Perfect!

The Kindle experience has been wonderful. Complete strangers read my books; plucking them from the vast range on offer. That was nice.  Agents and publishers got in touch; chasing a writer rather than the other way around. That was interesting.

The best aspect of publishing to Kindle was how easy it all was. Instant availability to a world of readers. It’s free too.

I’m constantly asked about my ‘secret.’ My marketing strategy. My publicity methods.

?????

Really, I’m an ignoramus in this world of publishing. If I’d have given any serious thought to the process, I’d have retained the title and author name with which I’d had success on the writers’ site, Authonomy. Kept the goodwill and potential readership from there. Nope, didn’t do that.

Marketing? That’s Mad Men, right? Snappy dressers, quick-witted young people firing off ideas? Not me at all. I never concerned myself with marketing my books. Apart from Facebook I have no access to social networking sites and I use that mainly for ‘chatting’ with people who have similar interests. Twitter? Yes I have a Twitter account. Do I use it for anything useful? No. I find it banal, if I’m honest, but I never got into text messaging either so probably the fault lies with me.

I have a blog – you’re reading it. I started this at the beginning of 2011 when I published my books to Kindle. I use my blog to ‘try out’ snippets from potential writing projects, interspersed with a diverse range of miscellaneous nonsense.

My nature doesn’t lend itself to self-publicity. I can’t bring myself to tweet ‘read my book’ for instance. I post links to my blog as the reader will find something there they may, or may not, enjoy, it only takes up a little of their time and won’t cost them anything. That’s fair enough, but suggesting to strangers, or even friends, that they should go out and buy my book – that’s never going to happen.

As to the ‘secret’ – very easy. I wrote books that I thought would have commercial impact. I looked at what readers were looking for and came up with crime thrillers. So, that’s what I wrote.

A good cover, even allowing for the constraints of a virtual bookshop with a postage stamp sized cover on view, is essential, but the real ‘secret’ lies elsewhere.

The pitch is all the potential reader has before them when browsing the vast expanses of Amazon’s bookstore. In that blurb, just a few lines, lies the success or failure of your offering. Get the pitch right; make it enticing enough to compel the casual browser to click on your book, that’s the real secret.

Secondly, there’s price. The price structure is almost infinitely variable. An author can change their price point in an instant. Nothing is set in stone. I looked at the books that were selling in vast quantities when I published my own books. Many were household names, authors with a loyal following whose readers clamour for the next book, but there was the odd ‘Indie’ writer without any track record as a published writer there too.

A few of the established names set a premium price point. Fair enough. They have a devoted readership and any amount of overheads, required to pay a percentage to an agent, a publisher, possibly a designer, etc.

What I found most interesting were the established authors at the top of the charts who offered their work at the lowest possible price point. If that worked for them, why not for me?

Offering a book at the lowest price point brings casual readers, impulse buyers, into the equation. It will always be a balancing act – more sales at a lower return against fewer sales at a higher return.

I decided on the lowest point for a specific reason – chart positions. Readers are undoubtedly swayed by charts. If we see a book that’s successful it sparks our interest.

Getting into the All Books Top 100 was never even on my mind in those early days. There are an almost infinite number of sub-charts, all of which have an effect on the buying public. A reader can search for his/her area of interest, find books that reflect that interest, with a couple of mouse clicks. Whether it be Thrillers, Short Stories, Japanese Poetry or Gay Vampires there’s a chart for it.

That’s it for me now. I have other interests, other demands on my time. I’ve loved my Kindle experience, but need to go and do something else.

I don’t make plans. Never have, never will. I’ll keep on writing. There’s a Historical novel set in North Africa writhing around in my brain.

One day I’ll finish it.

I’ll be adding to my blog from time to time. Popping back to Facebook when I can find an Internet connection. Keeping in touch with people whose friendship I treasure, but as for Kindle, this is the end of the line. The books will stay on the site, may even find more new readers, but I’ll have moved on.

This isn’t ‘goodbye’ – not at all. In the next few days I intend meeting a couple of friends who I met on Authonomy, long ago. I’m excited about that. Far more than either Jane or Lorraine will be about meeting me, but I’m an excitable chap.

I’m excited about this new venture too. Whatever it may be. I really have no idea.

Therein lies the excitement.

Update. I’ve collated much of what appears in this blog, together with a few additions, into a book and published it, both as a paperback and as an E-book, at the behest of those impatient wretches who refuse to accept the obvious fact that sloth is very much part of my nature and were despairing of seeing a new novel. Ramblings of a Deluded Soul is free on Kindle, both in the UK and in the US. as I never wanted to charge money for a project where much of the content has already been seen in my blog.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ramblings-Deluded-Soul-ebook/dp/B005FYF1UA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320297741&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Ramblings-Deluded-Soul-ebook/dp/B005FYF1UA/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318673385&sr=1-1-catcorr