Guest SFWA Blog Post on Website Usability and Design

Hop on over to the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America website to read my latest guest post entitled, Authors! 8 Tips For Your Website’s Usability and Design.

Here’s a quote from the article:

In today’s article, I’d like to share with you some tips to consider when you’re reviewing your current website or when you’re thinking about creating one. Let’s take a look at these tips for your website’s design and usability.

1. Structure Your Theme Around Your Update Frequency – First and foremost, I believe that you have to make a decision, up front, about how often you plan on updating your website. If you’re not going to blog or update very often, you can simply choose a different website theme that’s a little more static than a blog, but still attractive and professional. — SOURCE: Authors! 8 Tips For Your Website’s Usability and Design

Enjoy!

March 3, 2010
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Calculating the Cost of an E-Book

CalculatorI’ve had a lot of positive feedback from my previous post entitled Weighing in on E-Books, so I wanted to talk about ways to calculate the cost of an e-book.

First, let’s pull some arbitrary numbers. (And by arbitrary, I mean that these are not precise figures.) Let’s say that we paid our author $3,000 for their novel that was 100,000 words in length, which is the equivalent of about 3 cents per word. Then, let’s say we paid an editor a flat rate of $1,250 to edit the novel and an artist $500 for cover art. Add in production costs of $250 to create an e-book, and that gives us a grand total of $5,000 as the sum of the costs for our imaginary publisher.

In order to make up the costs of producing the e-book, we would need to sell a certain amount of copies at a specific price. Say that we priced the e-book at $10.00. If we kept one hundred percent of the revenue, we would need to sell 500 copies of that e-book to make up our costs before we made any money off of the book.

We decided that a retailer, like Amazon, is the best way to offer our e-book for sale. Currently, Amazon takes 65 percent of the cost of the book for all Kindle editions. Recently, they announced that they will lower that rate to thirty percent, but the new rate won’t kick in until June 30, 2010. (Read Amazon ups author royalty for Kindle, matching Apple per CNet.)

Let’s calculate our cost based on the 65% rate, because I think it’s important for you to see how that affects a publisher’s bottom line.

Now, we’d only make $3.50 for every book sold at a price of $10.00. At that rate, we need to sell approximately 1,429 or almost three times the amount of e-books if we took 100% of the revenue to make up our costs. Some retailers take less than 65 percent, but they still take a percentage to offer the book through their store. If you sign up with a One BookShelf site like DriveThruHorror e-books for example, they’ll only take 30 percent. Our profit would now be $7.00 for every e-book sold. So, we need to sell approximately 715 e-books to make up our costs at the $10.00 price rather than 1,429.

Even though we’ve estimated a price based on our costs, we need to think about something else — demand. Is this title only available as an electronic book? Or do we have a hardcover or paperback edition? Will pricing the e-book on sale at $5.99 sell enough copies to warrant the discounted price? How popular is this particular author? The volume of e-books that we need to sell might be different, depending upon any number of additional factors. One issue might come down to the original agreement that a publisher has signed with the author. Unfortunately, there are contracts that pre-date the release of electronic formats so it’s not uncommon to see authors providing a publisher with print rights but not digital or audio rights.

For me, I’m factoring in demand based on the reader’s awareness of my work as an author. Chances are, my soon-to-be-released small press product is not going to sell 1,000 copies at a price of $9.99 within a reasonable amount of time. Because I’m projecting lower sales, I’m lowering the costs of developing my digital product. Instead of paying an editor a thousand dollars, the publisher is offering a direct royalty payment that pays per product sold. We also are reviewing ways to make the product more valuable and attractive to readers by researching different types of graphics and layouts. Still, I needed to come up with two pricing structures; a retail price and a sale price. For me, my e-book price is lower than $9.99 because my costs and the demand for my work are both lower than a mainstream author. Those two things combined also mean that it may take me longer to recoup my costs.

Personally, I have a lot of trouble with people offering e-books at heavily discounted prices or for free, because this devalues the books considerably. What would you think of a print book that’s “on sale” for only ninety-nine cents? It’s original price is only $1.99? To me, this pricing structure seems pretty arbitrary. If your costs were $1,000 and you offered the book through OneBookShelf, you’d still need to sell approximately 720 books to make up that cost. (If your costs were $5,000, you’d need to sell 3,598 copies!!!)

Regardless of whether you self-publish or not, I feel that it’s a smart idea to calculate price based on your costs and your projected sales. By doing that, it can help you set reasonable expectations for your e-book pricing structure and prevent you from losing money over the long haul. Keep in mind, that the biggest mistake I see publishers making, is offering their e-book through a digital retailer like Amazon.com or OneBookShelf, and then “forgetting” about that book. If you want to make up your costs, be sure to include marketing your books — wherever they are being sold — into your plan. Sometimes, you need to make readers aware that you now offer your books in a different format, in order for them to buy those products.

If you’re curious about Amazon’s rates, be sure to visit Amazon.com’s Terms and Conditions or the Terms and Conditions for DriveThruRPG through OneBookShelf. (The Terms and Conditions for the DriveThruRPG site are very similar to the fiction and the comic book sites.)

January 25, 2010
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“Brand” Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make

One of the things that I find really interesting, is how many authors and publishers treat their public relations and marketing channels. (This can include reviews, interviews, appearances, etc.)

The “old think” was that PR was something you needed to pay for. You’d incorporate your PR with your marketing, and you’d work with other “paid” professionals like reviewers or reports to see what fit into their schedule. The “new think” is that you, as an author or publisher, can leverage a lot of free methods to generate buzz and PR for your career.

Regardless of what side of the fence you fall on, there are a number of mistakes I see people making when it comes to dealing with their “brand.” Whether you work for a company or not, brand management is a lofty phrase that deals with how others perceive you or your works. Here are some of my biggest frustrations:

    1. Being “Brand” Arrogant – Do you believe that everyone knows your name or product? Guess again. Just like not everyone on the planet has seen Star Wars, not everyone has read your books or even knows you exist. Sure, everyone wants to feel proud of where they are in their career, but I’ve seen how brand arrogance hurts not only an author and/or publisher but the reader. The minute you publicly tell someone that “they’re wrong” and forget to keep your customer service voice on, the greater you’re at risk for that customer talking shit about you. No, not every customer is “right,” but you have to remember that the conversations you have with a single reader online are read by countless readers that are not commenting on the review or your conversation. You shouldn’t have to “defend” your products or your brand in a hostile manner — I don’t care how crappy the comment was. A mistake is one thing (and there are ways to handle that) but trying to “sell” yourself or your brand to someone who doesn’t want to have anything to do with you is entirely another.
    2. Not Understanding “Who” is Talking about You – There are two types of reviewers: those who work for places like the Chicago Times or the New Yorker and those who don’t. The cold, hard truth is that the bulk majority of reviewers on the web are not getting paid to write your review. They are, simply, readers who love to read books or play games and watch movies. (The jury is still out on which reviews “sell” more books. After all, are you influenced more by your friends’ opinions or a professional reviewer?)
    In many reviewers’ minds, the unpaid reviewers are doing their fellow reader a favor by providing their honest review of what they’ve experienced. This is part of what’s called “grass roots” marketing. In many ways, these reviews are more like testimonials, because these opinions are coming from “a customer.” Yes, reviewers appreciate it when they get a review copy, but often publishers see this as an expectation to get a positive review done ASAP. With “grass roots” marketing, many reviewers don’t feel an obligation to write a review in a timely manner, especially if they didn’t like the book. With “grass roots” marketing, often reviewers will get to it when they can, not because they don’t want to.
    Unfortunately, I’ve seen one too many authors and publishers alike bashing reviewers. Here’s what that gets you — negative press. Publicly bashing a reviewer is a big “no-no” for many reasons, but partially because a reviewer is not expecting flak for providing an honest opinion about what they’ve experienced. Just like you, as a customer, don’t like every brand of coffee — reviewers are not going to enjoy every book, game, movie, etc. they come into contact with.
    3. Trying to Control the Message – Once people start talking about you or your brand, don’t even think about trying to “control” what people are saying. Most people do not engage with places like Facebook, Goodreads, MySpace and Twitter to be deluged by people shilling something. Why? Because social media is all about people interacting with other people. It is not there to “serve” you personally in the way that you expect, nor does it happen on your schedule. In fact, some of the most popular content are the things that don’t cost “money” (e.g. not including time as a resource here) to make. Yes, comment moderation is necessary and you can post your policies for that. That, however, is different from “controlling” what people say about you. Only posting positive, corporate-sque comments about your brand is a dead give-a-way and a big turn-off for people who follow you religiously. In my experiences, people respond better to humans, not robots. Ignoring or divulging everything that people are saying are two, other tactics, both of which can blow up rather poorly in your face.

Instead of trying to control the message, I try to be a natural part of the message regardless of what I’m doing. This comes pretty easy for me, because I believe in being genuine and passionate about whatever I’m writing.

I recommend not only defining what your brand is, but also what message you want to portray and how you want to engage with other people. Once you do, you’ll be able to remind yourself what you want to accomplish in your marketing efforts. (e.g. Maybe you’ll think twice before posting a nasty comment on a bad review.) For more about how to request a review for your book or product, read Matt Staggs’ latest post entitled: “Critics on Rookie Mistakes and How to Avoid Them when Submitting Your Book for Review.”

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment below.

January 2, 2010
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Puking Content, Plagiarism and Too Much Free

I’m sure many of you have thought something along the lines of, “My gosh, there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet.” And you would be right.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like it’s too easy to get sucked into providing editorial on bad information to set the record straight. Of course, I’m speaking in generic terms here, but this is one of the reasons why a lot of people “puke content.” The more content that gets written about a particular subject, the more saturated the topic gets, the harder it is to discover the truth. Ultimately, this results in “louder” or “more forceful” content and angry emotions.

And that’s how internet trolls are born.

Sometimes I feel that professionals are “too” scared to set the record straight partially because they know the trap exists, but also because internet content is “stored.” Not every piece of internet content has a date stamp, so even if you provide content that corrects an error, there’s no way to keep track of “when” something was said. (Also, a lot of internet rumors start based on outdated content. So just because something has a date — even in the URL — it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone reads that content.) Unfortunately, silence isn’t always golden.

If you look at the trend of “too much content,” the reason why that’s a problem is not because of what you, yourself, are doing. It’s an aggregate trend that occurs because many professionals or amateurs like yourself are all doing the same thing at the same time.

There are a two other “trends” that concern me right now, too. I feel these are getting lost in the shuffle.

1. Too Much “Free” – My blog is a free, watered-down sample of some of my knowledge. I often cover extremely generic topics that are related to what I do, but I save the more “crunchy” bits for paid work or my day job. Why? Because this knowledge is what I get paid for. The free sample entices people to see what I’m about, without ramming self-promotion down someone’s throat.

I made the mistake of believing that my experiences were a good conversation starter to talk about my own fiction writing. Oh sure, I’d having interesting discussions with people about what I do – but in every case, no one offered to pay me or talk about my fiction writing. When they did, it was an “afterthought.” No one cared about my work, they cared about getting my knowledge for free.

Think about it this way: If everyone has a contest for a free book give-a-way, then that contest becomes the norm. It becomes “expected” for an author to provide that contest for a free book. If piracy and free content is left unchecked, then the reader (or consumer) expects things that normally have value to be “free.” Same goes for accessibility, which in a way, is “free” access; if you’re always online, people “expect” you to be there and answer your email immediately. For me, it was something along the lines of, “Well, Monica is always there to answer my questions. So I can ask her more questions, can’t I?”

Too much free devalues what a work or experience is worth; not enough free doesn’t allow readers (or consumers) to try before they buy. I believe that not enough people are concerned with giving things away for free (or taking them) as a whole. Just like the trend of puking content is a problem, so is “too much free.”

2. Plagiarizing “Free” Content – I have heard of several cases where writers are taking both non-fiction content (from Wikipedia and related sources) or fiction published online and offering it as paid work. One “author” took online published stories, published them as their own, and offered recommendations for themselves using fake sock puppet or alias accounts. Another, all-too-common practice is to copy/paste reference material from Wikipedia or other sources online and use it in articles, non-fiction or other published works. Recently, I heard of a fan offering free material under Creative Commons and a publisher picked it up, re-tooled it and offered it as a paid product.

While I believe that this is heinous for several reasons, this type of behavior originates from “too much free.” After all, if content is posted online, who really owns it? The person that created the content in the first place? The website that it’s located on?

The word “entitlement” comes into play here for two reasons: one, people expect content to be free for them and two, once they receive that content, they can simply do whatever they want with it and not expect some sort of recourse. They don’t seem to see the “aggregate” of thousands of other people believing the same way they do; they see it as “Well, it’s just me…what’s the harm?”

Note that popularity has more to do with the expectations of what should be free than the quality. YouTube! is a great example of this, because it continues to lose millions of dollars. (1) The moral to this story is that conventional wisdom still holds: There is no such thing as a free lunch.

One person plagiarizes and it effects the original author, publisher and the writer. A million people plagiarize and all of a sudden multiple businesses start going under because they can’t afford the lawsuits, damage to their reputation, etc. not to mention the loss of sales.

Same thing with piracy. One person “takes” an image from an artist that’s normally offered on commission, and that artist is out the amount they charge. Add several people to that equation and now the artist is out more than just money lost from those taken images; he’s unable to “sell” artwork to new, more viable customers because people just simply take from him.

These questions are currently being explored more in depth through changes in copyright and internet law. I believe that these changes won’t be received well because it’s a little like putting a genie back into the bottle, which is why education about the negative effects is really important. Just like piracy and plagiarism is “achieved” on a one-on-one basis, people need to remove their blinders about the negative effects this type of behavior causes. After all, you wouldn’t expect a doctor to provide care for you for free — why would you demand an artist or writer do the same?

Regardless, these trends are affecting not only what I read and write online, but how I pursue my career objectives and what I recommend other people to write as well.

November 29, 2009
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Do You Need Your Own Website? Read My New SFWA Article

If you’re an author or a professional freelancer who is weighing the pros and cons of having your own web presence, you might be interested in reading my new article over at the website of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.

Here’s a brief excerpt of the article:

    The Pros and Cons of Having Your Own Website

    Whenever I’m at a convention, one of the more common questions I am asked is: “Do I need to have my own website?” I always counter with, “Well, what do you want to use the website for?” Several have answered me either with the proud declaration “To get published, of course!” or “To sell my books!”

    Having an online presence may or may not translate to your desired action, in part because your presence really is about “you” as a person rather than “you” the author.

Be sure to visit the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America to read The Pros and Cons of Having your own Website.

August 24, 2009
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