9 Bloody 99 (Or - Aiming at Amazon)

So far in Chasing Innocence. Potter thinks up an idea. He writes a book. He edits the book. He lobbies literary agents and discovers a harsh reality. He wants people to read his book so he makes his own publishing company. Now he has total control and the aim is high quality entertainment. He worked with a copy editor, proof editor, model, make-up artist, photographer, graphic artist and bought a book about publishing by Aaron Shephard. And then two other books by the same man. Potter signed a deal with Ingram's to print his book. He worked with a typesetter to create the printed book and when the first proof was printed in greyscale, he found out why and fixed it. Ingram's accepted his book for printing and euphoric, John made a big mistake. He had no set publish date so he revised his ISBN data at Nielsens to 'published'. The pre-orders already purchased for the target price of £5.50, started getting printed and delivered. With pictures of the book popping up across Facebook the book started getting noticed, just about the same time its availability glitched. The lead time on Amazon dropped from next day to 6-9 days, the price shot up from £5:50 to the full RRP of £9:99. The glitch fixed itself and Amazon were now stocking the book, actually ordering copies from Ingram's to keep in stock - hoorah. But we were still looking at the despairing sales killer of £9.99 for the paperback.

So what had gone wrong?

When Ingram's accepted my book for printing, they took control of the books 'distribution data', previously held by Lightningsource. This contains among many other things, the full RRP and wholesale discount of 45%. This is what Amazon had been using to sell the pre-orders at a reasonable price. When Ingram's take that data it then takes three weeks for it to properly appear on their systems. Which of course I didn't know. During this time Amazon and other stores cannot apply these discounts to their pricing because they can't see the data, so they sell it at the full RRP. That is never going to make your book competitive. The RRP is only there to contrast against a more realistic discounted price. If I hadn't set the book's status to published this would all have gone on in the background while it was still in pre-order. We live and learn.

The good news is I have just one week left of the three weeks. Anyone who knows something about Amazon and selling through them, might be asking why I am not subscribed to Amazon's Advantage program? That would be a very good question.

The standard process for indie publishers selling books on Amazon, is to create an Amazon Advantage account and YOU pay for and ship the books to Amazon and you give up a 55% discount. Amazon as the worlds biggest book seller then have a monopoly on your book's pricing. It can mean your book being priced quite high (yes I realise the irony). The reality is, Amazon are a hugely efficient seller. They work very hard to make sure you (the customer) come to them for EVERYTHING.  They pull in data from all kinds of places on absolutely everything that can be purchased. Their database is not a record of what they sell, it is a record of everything that can be sold. They want you going to Amazon as a habit, which they have been very successful in achieving. They know you want what you buy from them NOW. So if they suck in details of a book called Chasing Innocence, that is not part of their advantage program and people start buying it, they will very probably buy in stock, just so they can be competitive and ship it to their Prime customers for next day delivery.  Just as they are likely, as they were during pre-order, to aggressively discount the price for a book their automated systems think is cheaper elsewhere, because it's not part of Advantage.

As an independent publisher of my own fiction novels I am focused on people enjoying the experience so much they recommend someone else do the same thing. Not going Advantage is not about making more money, I get the same if Amazon sell at 9:99 or 5:00. It is about shifting books and getting them into the hands of readers. Word of mouth is key, as are high standards. A competitive price is vital. With Amazon selling my book at 9:99 I am going to struggle to sell beyond family and friends. So I will be very grateful in a week or so, when these pesky databases start catching up with each other.

Who do you think you are?

When failure is a modern cliché it is easy to step back from even trying. Getting published via traditional paths is beyond difficult if you are not notorious. It leaves you with a hard choice - you give in or you publish yourself. The harsh truth is that over 80% of self published books sell less than 100 copies.

Which screams: Give in now Potter. Although it is encouraging that over half the fiction books sold anywhere, are thriller/crime. That is all I want, to write stories that are enthralling, violent and touching. I want to entertain modern minds, both of women and men. The question is: With one book written and two others in development, how do I get lots of people to read what I write?

You need a good product. I have that, I'm pretty sure. Then you get it out there, which is a story for another day. And then you need to get it noticed. For established authors getting noticed is easy, you type their name into Amazon. The cover art for these authors is usually iconic, images that confirm what you love about the  experience. Admittedly I do have half a very established name, but anyone expecting magic here will be disappointed. At least in the realm of casting spells. Occasionally I manage magical, I like to believe.

So how does no name Potter attract readers? Word of mouth for a start. But even before that I need cover art that isn't just iconic, it must stop the casual browser in their tracks. It seems obvious this imagery for a thriller crime novel about lost innocence, should contain a beguiling woman. That seems as obvious as it was to make the books main character a woman. You have to be careful though. Real stories of lost innocence abound, they are a small niche. My imagery, immediately below the title Chasing Innocence, needs to make it very clear fiction is on offer - fast, violent, enthralling and touching. The image must tell a story and create questions in the casual browsers mind. Questions that need answering. It must make the casual browser click the books thumbnail, so that when they are presented with the cover -  a beguiling woman, haunted, resilient, a warrior. They are consumed by a need to know the woman's story.

For this kind of imagery stock photos are not going to do it, I know, I tried. You need a great photographer and above all, you need a special kind of female model. That model took a long time to find. She has now been booked, along with the photographer and the studio. In two weeks I will be sat in that studio watching the imagery being created. Of course I will doubt myself, who do I think I am, playing at publisher? But I could never not do this. It's about failure not being the default option. What would be the point having poured my creative soul into the book's content, if I did not invest the same into bringing it to everyone's attention?

Definitely not the beginning

The dream was not to write a fiction book and see it published, the journey was to write fiction that would be read and enjoyed by a lot of people. The realisation has been that good fiction is not made with an idea, or by finishing the writing of a great story. These are simply parts of the journey, the first third as it happens. You get the great book on the second leg of the journey - the edit, the repetitive spit and polish that smooths and one day we hope, will keep your audience breathless for each page turn. The final leg is getting people to read it.

Traditional paths to publishing will be closed to all but the famous and notorious. Unless you the author are marketable, then you probably won't be touched by any agent or publisher. The truth is, even if you were picked up and signed to a contract, much of the marketing and taking your book to readers, will have to be done by you. So why sign your rights away if you're going to be responsible for selling your book anyway?

This last leg of the journey, the part that will take your product to the millions staring wide-eyed at Amazon, will almost certainly be the hardest. This is the stage I'm at now. I have a product - a fiction/crime novel that has been edited and beta read to death. It's about to go through the copy, proof, typesetting and cover design mill. I will be my own publisher - Creative Crow has wriggled to existence. I hope you will join me on this part of the journey as we buff and tidy and hurl Chasing Innocence at the digital world. Along the way I also hope to cover some of what went into writing the book and continue detailing the processes for creating the next two books.