One of the coolest things that happened to me when I sold my first novel was that Bruce Jensen was contracted to do the cover art. I was thrilled with the result, and even happier when he went on to do all four Bantam covers.

Earlier this year I ran into Bruce again online and asked about the possibility of re-using the original art. He was all for it.

The original covers had “neon” framing and titles added by Bantam. This time around Bruce did the titles himself, so the 2011 covers are just as the artist intended.

The new covers should show up in the Kindle and Nook editions in the next couple days. Print editions will soon follow–honest!–I’ve been putting them off until the new covers were ready.

The indie publishing process has been tremendous fun right up to this point, but the fun has suddenly stopped and doubts have come crashing in.

Here’s what’s going on: On February 28 I posted about finishing the initial draft of a new fantasy novel. I put it through a quick and dirty re-write and got some nice feedback from three writers–strangers to me, who generously offered their time. After a re-write, my writers group looked at the first thirty pages and gave it a thumbs up, along with a few suggestions and line edits.

Since then I’ve been on my own. I haven’t exactly discussed the title with anyone. I’ve gotten some input on the back cover copy, but not from people who, well, sell books. Only the artist and I have been involved in the cover concept and the artist hasn’t read the book. She’s doing a great job, exactly what I asked her to do…but is my concept any good? Who is my prospective audience anyway? Will the cover and title appeal to them? Will the story? Will my pen name? Did I mention this book is totally unlike anything else I’ve done?

Also, no woman (except me of course) has read the entire novel yet, and for some reason this really bothers me.

And I’m hoping to publish next week.

So yeah. Lots of room for doubt at this stage, and doubt is not fun.

This would never happen in traditional publishing. At minimum, writer and editor would agree the book was good and the title was effective, and realistically a lot more people would be involved, especially in cover art and cover copy. I think that’s part of the “validation” authors talk about when they speak fondly of traditional publishers. The team might not get it all right, but confidence goes up in committee.

Personally, I do far better work at a much faster pace when I’m feeling confident.

The lesson here, I think, for anyone out there working on their own book, is to ASSEMBLE YOUR INDIE TEAM EARLY. Develop a reliable, go-to group of interested people who have the time, the knowledge, and the experience to offer prompt feedback on work in your genre, and who will let you bounce ideas off them. And BE that person for other writers. We’re all tremendously busy, but personally I could spend less time reading the Interwebs (or writing blog posts), and devote that time to a TEAM.

When the cover art is ready, I’ll post it here.

I have this note near my keyboard that says “make map.” My gaze falls on it once or twice a day and I think “Oh, I should make the map.”

Then I go do something else.

Which is odd, because I had so much fun making the map for The Wild.

Not sure why I’m avoiding this one.

Really, I should make the map.

In my Interwebs reading this morning I somehow wound up here at Mulholland Books reading a post on book titles in the crime and suspense genre–which is just a little odd since I pretty much never read in this genre.

It’s a good post though, with a good point. Titles matter! A lot. Book covers and book titles are two hugely challenging aspects of successful fiction that I figure I’ll always be struggling to get right.

One of the greatest titles in the science fiction genre has to be Neuromancer. When I’m trying to title a book, I’ll usually go through a phase of “What can I do that’s sort of awesome like Neuromancer…?” Then I’ll give it up and move on to something inferior.

Dune is also a great one-word title of course, and I’ll confess a soft spot for my own Vast.

I’ve also got a soft spot for long, poetic titles. One of my favorites is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil–and I’ve never even read the book! Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center books are another great example, with In the Ocean of Night, Across the Sea of Suns, and one of my favorite sf books of all time, Great Sky River. Because of Greg I usually go through a phase in the titling process where I’ll comb through quotes from classical plays and poetry, before giving up and moving on to something inferior.

My own titles I see as generally serviceable, except for The Bohr Maker, which I think is terrible. (The original publisher came up with this. It wasn’t me! Although my working title was worse.)

If I remember correctly, Deception Well, Skye Object 3270a, Limit of Vision (of course), The Wild, and possibly Memory were named early in the writing process.

Everything else came late and some, like Vast, involved lots of debate.

What are some of your favorite titles–in any genre?

I’ve really been looking forward to this one. Memory is the last of my traditionally published novels to make its way into ebook format. It’s also one of my personal favorites among the books I’ve written.

Memory is a science fiction novel but it’s been described as having a “fantasy feel”–the story is less concerned with how things work and very much interested in how people work. It’s very accessible even to readers who haven’t read a lot of science fiction.

There are two other unique aspects to Memory: it’s my longest book, and it’s the only one written in first person. I love the first person voice, and one of these days I hope to find another story where it’s appropriate.

If you’ve never read Memory, please give it a try. Sample chapters are free at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you’ve read Memory and you enjoyed it, please consider writing a review at either bookseller, blogging about it, or giving it a shout-out on twitter, facebook, or any other platform that you might use.

Memory didn’t receive a lot of support from its first publisher. I know there’s a huge potential audience out there who could enjoy this book, and with your help I might be able to connect with them.

Find the ebook here:
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble

And here’s the first one: Skye Object 3270a.

This one is a young-adult original, in print for the very first time. Read the first chapter here. Despite what Amazon says, there is a Kindle edition, so you can sample that way too.

Most bookstores should be able to order it, but here are some online links:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s Books

The list price is currently a low $7.99 for a lovely trade paperback, just to see if I can get some copies sold. Do be aware that Powell’s is charging more than the list price. Honestly, that’s the only way they can make any money on it, but I thought I should point it out.

Update: click here to see a review Skye Object at Hawaii Book Blog.

Ebook pricing and sales have been hot topics lately. For those not following the issue, here’s a quick summary:

The top end: mostly books by traditional publishers; usually $9.99. Sometimes more for big new releases; sometimes less for older titles.

The middle: lots of midlist writers who are republishing their backlist, plus confident newer writers: $2.99 – $5.99

The discounters: novels priced at 99-cents. Yes, you read that right.

Disclosure: as I write this, my books are priced between $2.99 and $5.95. I’ve shifted the pricing around and haven’t noticed any change whatsoever in rate of sales, which continue at a slow trickle. This makes sense to me, personally, because of who I am as a reader, and here’s why:

I’ve paid $9.99 for several books and been happy to do it because I’ve gotten good books out of it, and a book will keep me entertained much longer than a movie. I haven’t yet been persuaded to pay more than $9.99, but at this price point, the limiting factor is not so much the cost, but my time. Offer me a 99-cent ebook and my first suspicion is that you’re asking me to use my very limited reading time to read crap.

(I’m not saying that a 99-cent ebook IS crap. I’m saying that it’s natural to suspect that it is.)

Well, I don’t want to read crap, even if it’s free. I’d rather pay to get something that isn’t going to annoy, irritate, or bore me. So it wouldn’t matter to me particularly if I paid $4.99 or $9.99 for an ebook, if the sample chapters showed it to be good.

But one thing I’ve learned in life is that I am not very representative of “most people” (whatever that means). Lots of 99-cent ebooks have sold well enough to bring in a lively income to their publishers, sometimes an eye-popping income.

And once a book starts selling on Amazon, the Amazon algorithms kick in, promoting the book and generating more sales.

So a lot of indie authors drop their price to 99-cents to try to generate sales that will kick their book into the reach of the promotional algorithms. Fair enough.

Today I encountered a new strategy: pricing your book at 99-cents and then giving it away to people who are willing to accept it. Assuming that Amazon’s algorithms do not discriminate against multiple purchases of the same book from one account (and I have no idea whether this is the case or not) this is a very cheap and efficient way of buying your way onto a bestseller list. Imagine it: $500 will buy you 500 sales, and you’ll eventually get back 35% of that as a royalty. And 500 sales over a short period of time will get you onto a lot of lists. And once you’re on the list, people who have never heard of you will be buying your book. And if they like what they read they might go back and buy your more expensive books, and if they don’t, so what? You haven’t lost anything, because they would never have bought your books anyway.

Given the competition in ebooks, by tomorrow tens of thousands of authors will probably be giving their books away. I’m very, very tempted to try this myself.

Why am I hesitating? Pride, I guess, but really, it’s no different than giving away copies of print books to generate buzz.

So what do you think? Is this a good idea? And in the long term, is there really a future in this ebook business?

I’m here to nag. I’m good at it. I had twenty-plus years of practice as a mom. So sit up straight, stop playing so many video games, and make sure your ebooks aren’t loaded with errors!

And I’m not just talking to you, Indie Published Author, who prepared your Kindle edition yourself. I’m also looking at you, Traditional Publisher. You’re older, you should know better. The younger kids are watching you, you know.

Here’s some of what I’ve seen since venturing into ebook reading last fall:

A traditionally-published historical novel, newly released, with loads of copyediting errors and missing most blank lines between scenes.

A traditionally-published fantasy novel that has been a huge publishing success, but certain sections of it (not the whole thing) are full of copyediting errors.

A traditionally-published fantasy novel, very recent release, with a table of contents that shows the first line of a preface, then a dedication, then the stuff at the end of the book, then the “sections” of the book—which is incredibly confusing if you happen to be a reader like me who looks at TOC’s. This book also had a few random sections with multiple blank lines, but the copyediting was good.

A self-published, currently 99 cents ebook that has been getting a lot of publicity in the last couple of weeks, and which starts off with “Chapter 1” centered and set off in big type, and then immediately under it “Chapter 1” left aligned and in standard type, as it must have appeared in the original manuscript. This one also has lots of funky characters sprinkled throughout. I like to think of them as WordPerfect errors-in-translation because I had the same thing in my older manuscripts but I hunted them down and killed them.

Yes, I’m being a scold, but my point is that ebooks should not be looked at as the poor cousin of print books. Editing and formatting matters in ebooks too. Shoddy goods eventually fail in the marketplace. And besides, it’s a point of pride to do stuff right. Right?

That said, if you discover copyediting or formatting problems in my ebooks, please let me know.

One of my twitter friends who lives in Europe and buys ebooks from Amazon US has noted some curious pricing. In his experience a title priced at $9.99 in the US sells for $13.79 (in US dollars) when purchased from the Netherlands or Portugal.

On inquiry, Amazon explained that:
[1] Price can vary due to publishers granting different rights to different countries.
[2] “…a number of factors, including the initial publisher price.”
And “Using Kindle If You Live Outside the United States”

(I feel compelled to note that my novels are NOT used in the pricing example above. They are currently priced between $4.99 and $5.95, but they still experience a price differential.)

Googling turned up this two year old article on pricing differences which seems to point the finger at cost of doing business and cost of data transfer: guardian.co.uk

But there’s one more interesting fact in all this. Amazon pays the author or publisher a 70% royalty on ebooks sold in the USA, the UK, and recently, in Canada. But for those books sold to other countries the author gets only 35%–and that’s of the list price, not the higher price.

This seems like an area where competition is going to inspire change very soon.

Just a note for those who have Nook eReaders. My novel Limit of Vision is now up and available at BarnesandNoble.com.

I’ll have more to say on this book later, as the Amazon listing pulls itself together.