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mlouisalocke_bks_medWelcome to my Front Parlor, a place where I hope to engage you in some stimulating conversations about my continued journey as an indie author and the joys of writing historical fiction. My Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery and the companion short stories, Dandy Detects and The Misses Moffet Mend a Marriage, have been selling well, as has the sequel to Maids of Misfortune, Uneasy Spirits, where my protagonists, Annie Fuller and Nate Dawson, are in for a more ghostly experience. Thanks to all of you for your support. Do come in, look around, comment, and before you go, please leave a visiting card (url, twitter, fb address, etc) so I can return the courtesy and visit you next time.

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“It’s a Dandelion Thing:” Social Media and Marketing

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At the Digital Minds Conference held before the 2013 London Book Fair, Neil Gaiman  made a speech where he asked the question: “How do we make ourselves heard in a world of too much information?” His answer: We rely on becoming dandelions.“

626px-Dandelion_seed_dispersalGaimen went on to say: “…the model is try everything. Make mistakes. Surprise ourselves. Try anything else. Fail. Fail better. Succeed in ways we would never have imagined a year ago or a week ago. I think it’s time for us to be dandelions willing to launch a thousand seeds and lose 900 of them if a hundred or even a dozen survive and grow and make a new world.”––Neil Gaiman, Transcript of Speech at Digital Minds Conference for London Book Fair 2013

I love this image of the dandelion and its seeds, and it helped me frame what I wanted to say about my particular strategies regarding marketing and social media.

Like most committed indie authors, I have read innumerable blog posts about how to use social media to sell my work. I have read that I must blog, use facebook, pinterest, tumblre, google+, linkedin, stumbleupon, and reddit, among other things, (don’t you just love some of those names?). I have read that if I am going to blog I should do it daily, with short pieces, and lots of pictures, that I should tweet at least 5 times a day, but never actually promote my own books through twitter, that I should get involved on GoodReads groups but never engage in BSP (blatant shameless promotion), that I should take blog tours, that I should… Well you get the picture. I have also read that I shouldn’t do any of the above, but I should just write more books.

My conclusion after several years of reading about social media is that there are countless paths to getting your work visible through social media, and that there are no guarantees that any particular path is going to work, or assurance that the paths that work today will still be effective next month, or next year. Myspace anyone?

I think this is why I resonated so much to Gaimen’s speech and his exhortation to experiment and to do so with the expectation that many, if not most, of our efforts will, like dandelion seeds, fail to take root. This reflects my own experience and my own temperament as an indie author.

For example, when I started my blog, I called it my Front Parlor, thinking this was a clever way to establish a brand for my planned series of Victorian San Francisco Mysteries. I expected this blog to be the main path to finding the audience of potential readers for my historical fiction. Instead, my posts turned out to attract mainly an audience of other authors, who are probably quite mystified by that “Front Parlor” reference.

In addition, contrary to the perceived wisdom that successful blogs need frequent, short posts accompanied by pictures, it is my long, infrequently posted, picture-less blog pieces on topics like choosing the right categories, KDP Select, and marketing that keep being read, linked to, and commented on. For example, my first post on the importance of choosing categories has been read by over 10,000 people.

450px-20090425_Leeuwergem_(0004)Seeds were sown, and took root, just not the ones I had planned on. Sort of like planting tulips and getting tomato vines instead.

But, that doesn’t mean I have given up on tulips. I am trying to include more and more historical posts that will be of interest to readers, not just writers, but only time will tell if those historical posts bear fruit. (I know, I know, tulips don’t bear fruit, but I never met a mixed metaphor I didn’t like.)

Twitter, on the other hand, is not a place where my seeds flourish much at all. 140 characters? I can’t write a blog piece under 2000 words, how am I expected to say anything in 140 characters? I used twitter when I first signed up to find bloggers who seemed to be writing interesting pieces on ebooks and self-publishing, and I still use twitter as a way of letting my own followers know when I write a blog piece, find an interesting article by someone else, or to help cross-promote my own and my friends’ books. But my number of followers is relatively small, the percentage of my followers who retweet my tweets is miniscule, and most of those who do, are fellow authors, not the people reading my books. Again, as with my blog, I haven’t found twitter a fertile place to connect with fans or potential fans of my work. And, as most bloggers seem to agree, for social media to work there has to be a sense of personal connection.

On the other hand, most of my seeds on GoodReads seem to grow on their own. I have my author page, I gladly accept anyone who wants to be a friend, and I find the giveaways useful in letting people know when a new book is out. But in most cases, it is readers themselves who sow my seeds. Without my asking, they put my books on their shelves and review them. For example, Maids of Misfortune has been rated by 755 people and 944 people have it on their too-read list, which feels like a nice lush garden, just not sown by me.

In fact, the dandelion metaphor really works well when considering my activities on sites like GoodReads, Shelfari, or LibraryThing, or the various genre specific sites like Historical Fiction Mysteries, Cozy Mystery.com, or sites that feature indie authors like Awesome Indies, or indieBrag, or the numerous book bloggers. I am willing to sign up, get my books listed, offer an occasional post, give an interview, scatter some of those dandelion seeds. What I don’t do is spend time cultivating them so they must take root on their own if they are to survive.

Time is the big factor here. For example, GoodReads members don’t want authors to pop into group discussions just to promote their books. They want authors to engage in conversations over the books or topics they are discussing. Yet, at this point in my writing career, I can’t find the time to read the books that are being discussed on groups like Historical Fictionistas. So any activity on my part on these groups would be inauthentic. I can scatter seeds in lots of places, but I haven’t the time to really cultivate them in most of the places they land.

For me, that sense of authentic connection has only come recently, and I am as surprised as anyone that it has come on Facebook.

As a good little indie author, even before I set up a website, I signed up for a private Facebook page. I loved that I found old high school friends and acquaintances (who were some of the first to buy Maids of Misfortune when it came out––thank you all!) I still enjoy the fact that I often know what my nieces and their children are up to before my sister-in-law does because I check out Facebook several times a day. But any fans who wander onto this site aren’t going to hear much from me of interest on a day-to-day basis. I am too private (or maybe just too long-winded) to burble on during the day about my daily affairs, I don’t really think that other writers or fans want to see too many pictures of my grandchildren (adorable though they may be.), and it seems inconsiderate to impose too much of my writing business on friends and family. So some seeds do grow there, but again, not with much cultivation on my part.

However, several months ago, when I started to report my word count on the author Facebook page I had set up, I discovered my seeds were falling on very fertile ground and I didn’t mind cultivating them.

My author Facebook page is where the most vocal fans of my series seemed to show up. It was here that I would get questions about when the next book in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series was going to show up. So, several months ago I decided if I announced how many words I had written (or if I wrote at all) in a day to people who actually cared about the new book being published, I would try harder to put my writing first. And it worked. I spent more days writing and I spent more hours per day, and in two months I wrote 76,000 words and completed the first draft.

In addition, in order to make these updates more interesting, I began talking about the research I was doing and linking to websites about historical places, events, and people that were relevant. I even found a way to use Pinterest when I discovered I could easily link my updates to picture I had pinned (without worrying about copyright-since the picture was linked back to its origins.)

And people, people who were not just other authors, responded. They cheered me on when I had a high word count, and they consoled me when I didn’t. They commented on the links and added their own, and they shared personal stories. That personal connection that I had been missing on twitter, my blog, and GoodReads was suddenly there.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAI have no idea whether the seeds I am sowing on this Facebook page will have any significant effect on future sales. For all I know, everyone who has participated would have gone out and bought the next book anyway. But that doesn’t matter because I just enjoy going out every day and looking at all the pretty splashes of yellow in that particular field.

And when you come down to it, isn’t that what it is all about. Writing the books, telling the stories, and basking in the knowledge that other people have enjoyed sharing with you the worlds you have created.

Now all you authors, do tell me where you have scattered your seeds, and where you have found they have taken root most successfully. And for the readers among those reading this post, where have you found the most satisfying personal connections to the authors you love?

In case you are interested, Maids of Misfortune, the first book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series will be free on Kindle May 25-26, 2013.

Review of Rubies of the Viper

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rubies_of_the_viper185x280Rubies of the Viper is a fast-paced, suspenseful and romantic historical novel by Martha Marks, and a totally satisfying read. Set primarily in Rome at the time of Emperor Nero, Rubies of the Viper tells the story of Theodosia, who is a young single woman without family to guide or protect her when she suddenly inherits her family fortune at the death of her half-brother. The mystery surrounding that brother’s death, the confusion of competing suitors, the secrets surrounding her own background, the machinations of unknown enemies, and her conflicted relationship with her household slaves keep Theodosia off balance and in danger throughout the book. I loved how Marks accurately recreated the past, portraying the complicated social, economic, and political relationships of the Roman Empire through the relationships of the characters, while making me see, and smell, and feel the urban bustle of the metropolis and the cool luxury of a villa. However, my favorite element in the book is how Marks not only fully realized her main protagonist, Theodosia, but her development of the secondary protagonist, Alexander, a Greek slave. I learned to love these two characters, care about their futures, and look forward to seeing them in future novels.

Rubies of the Viper will be Free on Kindle April 12-14.

Review of No Game for a Dame and Tough Cookie: A Gendered Twist on the Classic Detective Genre

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game_dame185x2801As any one who has read my own work might guess, I enjoy historical mysteries with a strong female protagonist who is working. And, therefore, it is no surprise how delighted I was when I found M. Ruth Myer’s mystery series featuring Maggie Sullivan, a sassy female detective.

I initially gave the first book in Myer’s series, No Game for a Dame, a try because I am a fan of the hard-boiled detective mysteries of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett that are set in the 1930s and 1940s. And boy, am I glad I did. What fun it was to see the classic themes of this genre played out with a female private eye, in a book that stayed absolutely faithful to the historical time and place, late 1930′s Dayton, Ohio.

In No Game for a Dame Myers did a lovely job of developing the classic uneasy relationship between a private detective (in this case Maggie Sullivan) and the local police. But she has woven in the added element of paternalism on the part of those older Irish cops in their treatment of the daughter of one of their former colleagues. Myers also carried through this gendered take on the genre by having Maggie use women, who were scrabbling for a way to make a living in the depths of the Great Depression, as her major sources of information in pursuing her investigation into a string of robberies.

The mystery in No Game for a Dame was compelling, the secondary characters fully developed, and the possible romance between Maggie and one of those Irish cops was just enough to make me want more.

Which is why I was delighted when the next book in the series, Tough Cookie came out. In this sequel, Maggie Sullivan starts out with a missing person case that turns quickly to murder, and I was again swept away to the late 1930s mean streets of Dayton, Ohio.

Tough Cookie (which can be read as a stand alone) has all the elements you look for in a hard-boiled mystery: good old-fashioned detective footwork, a wealthy client, a ditzy dame, loyal servants, smooth-talking lotharios, hard liquor bottles in the desk drawer, fast cars, and gun-play. I couldn’t put the book down, and while I guessed “who done it,” I didn’t care, because I was having so much fun, right down to the end that totally surprised me. Needless to say I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

For more about M. Ruth Myers and her other works of fiction, please check at HFeBooks.com. And, as an extra benefit, No Game for a Dame will be free on Kindle April 12-14.

 

Historical Fiction that Influenced Me

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I have decided to start putting up reviews on my blog. These will be primarily of interest to those people who are fans of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and might therefore be interested in what books I like to read. I remember how Dana Stabenow in one of her earliest Kate Shugak mysteries listed the books in Kate’s cabin. I assumed they reflected Stabenow’s own literary tastes, which were very similar to my own, and I remember thinking this was one of the reasons I enjoyed these mysteries set in the Alaskan wilderness so much. So I thought that readers might enjoy getting a glimpse into what literature influenced me, and conversely be influenced to pick up some of these books to read for themselves.

This first post is a repost of an article I did for the HFeBooks.com blog about the books that influenced my decision to write historical fiction. While not strictly a review, I thought it might be a good way to start out these series of reviews. When I wrote this post I was startled to realize the enormous effect the books I read as a child had on both my thirty-year career as a history professor who specialized in social and women’s history and my second career writing my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series (see Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits).

I was a voracious reader as a child, and my mother took me every week to the huge Carnegie Library in the next township so I could check out enough books to get me through to the next week. It was the 1950s and early 60s, and there were no local bookstores in my neighborhood, no Amazon.com, and most of the books in my house were either my mother’s childhood books or the books I got as presents for birthdays and Christmas.

Heidi-222x300I probably read thousands of library books in my youth, but my favorites were the hardbacks my family owned, that my parents read to me, that I learned how to read from, and that I read over and over. In fact, these favorites are sitting up on the shelves of my study still today.

front6-222x300These books are Johanna Spyri’s Heidi (set in the 1870s Alps), Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (set in late 1860s Boston) Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series (set in 1870s Wisconsin, Kansas, and the Dakota Territory) Kate Seredy’s The Good Master and The Singing Tree (set in Hungary in the period right before and during WWI), and Lucy Fitch Perkin’s Spartan Twins (about a girl and a boy living in 5th century Greece).

While most of these books don’t fit the narrow definition of historical fiction (that the work be set in a time period more than fifty years earlier or be written by someone who was not alive during the time period covered in the work), to a young girl growing up in a 1950s American suburb, all of them were stories from the very distant past.

To show the direct connection between my childhood reading and my choices as an historian and writer, let’s look specifically at what all these books have in common. First of all, they all describe in meticulous detail the material culture of the families in each book. For example, in Wilder’s Little House in the Woods, I experienced through little Laura’s eyes the everyday task of churning butter, the steps taken to turn a live pig into sausages, and how to make maple syrup. In the next book in the series, Little House on the Prairie, I learned about how dangerous it was to cross swollen streams in a covered wagon, what it felt like to have been raised in a place of hills and trees and to find yourself in a sea of grass with nothing between you and the sky, and I read about how Laura’s parents constructed a log cabin from scratch.

In Kate Seredy’s The Good Master, which introduced Jansci and Kate, two young Hungarian children, I read about the lives of sheep herders, the importance of horses to Hungarian plainsmen, how to decorate Easter eggs and the daily chores connected to milking cows and raising chickens. Then in Heidi I got to spend a day in the mountains with goats and imagine what the golden goat cheese would taste like. In the Spartan Twins, Dion and Daphne watched their mother spin wool, helped keep the birds from the ripening fields, and Dion, like Kate, stole sausages that certainly sounded tastier than the sausages I ate. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women didn’t portray a rural society, but her Civil War era Boston felt even more foreign to me than the rural scenes of Wilder or Seredy as I read about young girls who fixed baskets for the poor, wore complicated and uncomfortable clothing and hairstyles, and, even though they were “poor,” had a servant named Old Hannah who seemed to do most of the work.

All these childhood books, while they described the lives of children who lived in different centuries in different parts of the world, helped me feel a connection to the people of the past. I recognized in these books that whether it was by candlelight or oil lamps, parents in every age got frustrated with their children, children from every part of the world got into trouble, and families of every culture passed on their wisdom and beliefs through stories, and poetry, and song.

Besides their focus on the details of every day life, these favorite childhood books also featured young women as the main protagonists, the second element my early childhood reading had in common. These stories were a revelation to a young girl in 1950′s America. As an adult, I can see that these books, most of them written in the late 19th century, reinforced the ideas of gender roles of their period. Women and girls did domestic chores in the home or around it, and men and boys worked with livestock, hunted, and worked the fields. A major theme of The Good Master was how Kate first became a tomboy and then learned how to put on her multiple skirts and be a real woman. Jo March and her sisters devoted themselves to the home and steering their neighbor and friend Laurie away from moral temptation. As a child growing up amidst the 1950s Feminine Mystique, I saw these gender roles as perfectly normal and therefore not particularly noteworthy.

However, it was the differences I noticed. I was growing up in a world where fathers disappeared every day to go “down town” to do some mysterious job they never talked about and mothers fussed with what seemed trivial chores like dusting, setting the timer on the oven for a roast, and going “shopping.” Boys knew they could be almost anything when they grew up: doctors, lawyers, dentists, professional athletes, newscasters, mechanics, bankers, engineers, plumbers, construction workers, or university professors. As a girl, however, my future was supposed to be marriage, with maybe a brief stint in the limited occupations of teaching, nursing, or being a secretary. And the history books I read were about men, doing male things, like politics and war.

1933-LittleHouseOnThePrairie-241x300Yet, in my childhood books, women and men worked together, sometimes helping each other, as when Ma and Pa Ingalls built the log house, sometimes doing different jobs side-by-side, as Kate’s aunt spun wool next to her husband who was building chairs, and sometimes running the family by themselves, as Jo’s mother did while her husband was away at war in Little Women. Even the girls in the family contributed. Whether it was Kate doing multiple farm chores, or Laura Ingalls teaching in a rural school to add to the family savings, or Jo March’s “scribblings,” in each of these stories it was abundantly obvious to me as a child that women’s activities were as crucial to the economic well-being of the household as were men’s. This was an alien concept in my middle-class suburbia, and I was intrigued by this vision of a different kind of society with different roles for women.

So, how did these childhood books affect my subsequent career? First of all, the attention to the detail of ordinary people’s daily life became the kind of history I was interested in as an historian. When I pursued my doctorate in history in the late 1970s, I chose to become what was called a social historian, which meant that I concentrated on studying “history from the bottom up.” I was not the kind of historian that was particularly interested in the “Great Men” of the past. I didn’t focus on political parties, presidential campaigns, kings, parliaments or on wars and military campaigns. Instead, I read and wrote about groups that had seldom appeared in standard history texts: working class men and women, immigrants, the urban and rural poor, African-Americans, and women. I looked at what their lives were like day-to-day (where they lived, what jobs they had, who they spent time with) and analyzed how family and community, and racism, nativism, and sexism impacted their opportunities (or lack thereof). These themes dominated my dissertation, ran through my lectures on U.S. and women’s history, and are woven into my historical mysteries. Anyone who has read my first historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, should recognize the connection between the sections in that book describing the daily chores done by 19th century domestic servants and the kind of childhood historical fiction I read.

Secondly, when you consider that all of my favorite childhood books were written by women about women, it is not surprising that my dissertation was on women who worked in the west at the end of the 19th century, or that I taught women’s history, or that the books in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series have a female protagonist, look at gender issues, and feature different women’s occupations. As I work on the third book of my series, Bloody Lessons, I even found that Wilder’s excellent descriptions in her Little House on the Prairie series of different schoolrooms were one of the best sources for details on 19th century teaching.

These childhood books had an extraordinarily important influence on the rest of my life. So, this question is for all of the rest of you: what childhood books were important to you and your subsequent love of historical fiction?

Don’t Panic: KDP Select still works, you just might have to work it a little differently

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I haven’t posted for awhile on any topic, including on indie publishing, but that is because I have been working steadily on writing Bloody Lessons, the third book of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series (if you want an update on my progress go check out my facbook page.) I also felt I had pretty much exhausted what I had to say on the ins and outs and pros and cons of using KDP Select.

However, with the change in Amazon’s rules for Associates, a whole discussion has erupted about what this means for indie authors. See this balanced review of some aspects of the discussion. See, in addition, this good overview of the issues around free as a selling strategy and Amazon. One result of this change and subsequent posts about it is I have had a number of requests to comment on whether or not this means that free promotions and KDP Select won’t work as well any more.

The short answer is, how in heaven’s name do I know? But that isn’t very helpful so what I am going to do is remind people what I have written on this subject already, do a brief recap of how my last free promotion went, and try to predict some of the ways in which the most recent changes might require tweaking of my own (and other’s) strategies for using KDP Select. I also decided it was time to publish a list of Promotional Links, which I will try to keep up-to-date.

Posts I have already done: 

If you want to know everything I have written on this subject––put “KDP Select” in the search bar at the top of my website. Otherwise, go ahead and click on these posts I have done on selling on Amazon, the importance of Categories, and an update on this post, how to have a successful KDP Select promotion, and factors you should consider when deciding whether or not to enroll in KDP Select.

Update on my most recent KDP Select Promotion:

I put the first book in my series, Maids of Misfortune up for free through KDP Select for three days, February 23-25. This was two months since the last promotion, which was December 29-30 (where I put both of my books up for free). This time I didn’t put Uneasy Spirits up for free, although I did pay for a Digital Book Today 7-day promotion for this book for the week after the Maids of Misfortune promotion was over.

I signed up with eleven sites that promote free books (only two cost anything, Book Goodies and BookBub.) I have been trying to rotate through the free promotion sites with each promotion so as not to saturate their specific markets. Maids hit the magic top 100 Free List by noon the first day at #73. By the end of the first day I had reached #26 in the Free List and had over 8,000 downloads. On the second day, by 3:15 pm, when the BookBub email went out, the book was at #11 In the Free List and already had 22,000 downloads. By the end of day two it was #3 and had 28,000 free downloads. It stayed at #4 throughout the third day, and the total number of free downloads for the promotion was 37,086.

As you can see by the data below––the promotion was successful––in boosting my sales and   borrows, even of the book that wasn’t promoted.

Maids of Misfortune                                          Before             After

Average sales per day (over two weeks)          7.9                77.4

Overall Rank                                                   20,000s           2,000s (18 days after)

Uneasy Spirits

Average sales per day (over two weeks)          6.1                 22.3

Over all Rank                                                   26,000s           6,000s (18 days after)

Average Borrows per day (over two weeks)

Both Books combined                                       16                 59.9

The Future of KDP Select:

While I am not clairvoyant, I often pretend I am (something I share with my protagonist in my Victorian San Francisco mysteries), and I will say with some authority that KDP Select will not go away anytime soon, and Amazon will continue to work with and encourage self-published authors. While Amazon may have turned to indie authors (first with KDP, then with KDP Select) because they realized that depending on public domain books and traditional publishers wasn’t working, it was the indie authors themselves who proved to Amazon that they were both an outstanding source of the product Amazon needed and nimble innovators in the rapidly changing world of publishing.

Indie authors not only began to produce books at an amazing rate (as backlists were republished, manuscripts like my own were taken out of drawers, and genre writers began to pump out 2-4 books a year), but we also proved leaders in the changes that were going on in publishing, proving the viability of new short forms of fiction (novellas, short stories, serialized novels) and experimenting with new marketing techniques (using discounts, free promotions, blog tours, giveaways, twitter, facebook author pages, etc). Our books and our innovation helped fuel the heady growth of ebooks in a short period of time.

For example, from the beginning, Amazon’s royalty structure, which gave the 70% royalty rate only to books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, was challenged by indie authors like Amanda Hocking, who proved that the volume of sales you could make at 99 cents could make up for the lower 35% royalty rate. Amazon made money (and kept a bigger chunk of the money), and Hocking got her traditional contract (and paved the way for the idea that traditional publishers––including the new Amazon imprints––might find their next bestselling authors from among the ranks of the self-published.)

Then came KDP Select. If you will all remember, when Amazon introduced its first Kindle Fire, one of the selling points was that if you were a member of Amazon Prime you could download one free book a month. Initially Amazon had targeted traditional publishers (who––as with the whole ebook thing––ran away, screaming bloody murder), so once again they had to turn to indie authors to provide the product they needed to make the Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL) effective. However, while this is pure speculation on my part, by the end of 2011 (when KDP Select was set up) they were beginning to be concerned by the way that other booksellers (Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc) were tapping into the ebook market so they came up with the exclusivity clause. If a book is in KDP Select it can not be sold anywhere else.

They needed a way to induce indie authors to go exclusive, and, besides creating the pool of money to be shared by KDP Select authors whose books were borrowed, they threw in the 5 free promotion days, having learned from indies that free promotions could sell books. In fact, a growing number of authors who had now published their back lists (or were very prolific in self-publishing lots of books a year) had discovered that if they made their books free on Smashwords, Amazon would price match. They had also proven that a free book that was the first in a series, or a free short story, could drive up sales for their other books. No doubt, seeing this trend, Amazon thought that the chance to put up your book for free, for a limited time for promotional reasons, would be a good inducement to get indies to sign up. Which we did, to great success in the first months of KDP Select’s existence.

But there was an unintended consequence. New kindle owners loved free and were gobbling these free books up at an amazing rate. And, since initially a free downloaded copy counted as a sale, the books that had been free dominated the best-seller categories, pushing the traditionally published books into invisibility. I am sure the traditional  publishers complained, and I suspect that since indie books are by-in-large cheaper than traditionally published books this was not seen as a good thing in terms of profits for Amazon. The truth of the matter is that KDP Select and free promotions pushed the ebook environment from a level playing field for indies to giving them an unfair advantage within the Kindle store. Hence the changes to the algorithm counting downloads as sales and other tweaks to the formula that determined where a book is ranked on the popularity lists.

This was not the first time that some indie authors rent their garments and claimed that Amazon had turned its back on indies, and it certainly discouraged some authors from using KDP Select. However, while it became more difficult to translate your free promotions into high enough visibility to sustain sales afterwards, indies and those who supported indies again innovated, and a whole bunch of facebook pages, book bloggers, and websites popped up to advertise free promotions. The data above, from my last promotion, shows that KDP Select promotions remained a viable way of improving visibility and sales.

Again, however, unintended consequences caused Amazon to make the changes to their Amazon Associates because they were shelling out substantial amounts of money to websites that were primarily promoting free books. Again, the goal wasn’t to discourage indie authors, or even free books, but to direct the Associates program back to its original goal, encouraging people to go to Amazon to buy things.

So what does this mean for the future? First of all, a few of these promotion sites will go away, a larger percentage will start to charge for promotions––like BookBub.com does (to make up the revenue loss if they stop using Associates links), and others will begin to promote primarily cheap and discounted books rather than free.

If you look at the Promotional Links I have listed, you will see that there are still a significant number available, even after the Amazon change. And, one of my friends just put her book, A Provencal Mystery, up for free  in KDP Select (breaking through into the top 100 by noon the first day and getting over 24,000 free downloads in two days) so I think we can safely say these promotional sites are still doing their job.

However, I do think that as indie authors we need to continue to innovate. Here is what I plan to do––I would love to hear from the rest of you what your strategies are.

Have free promotions less frequently. I had already noticed a growing tension between my reliance on free promotions to keep my books visible (agonizing when 30 days from the last promotion had passed and my books began to drop in the rankings and then lose sales) and the law of diminishing returns (if I offered the book free too frequently, the promotions were less successful.)

Then the success of BookBub.com (as the promotion site that has been delivering the highest number of downloads) forced me to make a change since they won’t feature a book more than every 90 days or an author more than every 30 days. Because of these limitations, my most recent promotion of Maids of Misfortune came two months after my last promotion (and three months after my last BookBub promotion.) I don’t think it is a coincidence I had more downloads than ever, with the strongest post sale bump since last March (and the infamous Amazon algorithm change.)

Longer promotions are safer. I used to suggest that authors not put their books up for free for longer than two days at a time (based on the idea of doing several promotions in the three-month contractual period under KDP Select.) But now that you need to get more downloads to achieve a post sales bump (see the amusing post by Elle Lothlorien), you need to consider how long it is going to take your particular book, in its specific genre, to reach enough downloads. I would do at least a two-day promotion if you have been able to get accepted by BookBub, three days if you don’t but have your book in categories that do well in free promotions and have a strong number of reviews, and maybe the full five days if your book is new, doesn’t have a lot of reviews, or is in a tiny niche market.

Schedule promotions near the end of a month. I started to notice that my borrows are always the strongest the first few days of every month so it is helpful to have my books as high as possible in bestseller lists at the beginning of the month. March 1-3 (three days after my last promotion ended) 394 of my books were borrowed. This helps maintain visibility as well since the borrows appear to be counted as sales.

Do more 99 cent promotions. For awhile, 99 cents was considered ‘dead’ as free books began to dominate as the main method of promotion, but just last week, for the first time, a self-published book hit #1 on NYT Bestseller list (with a 99 cent book). What I plan to do is experiment more with combining a 99 cent sale with a free promotion, or doing a 99 cent promotion to help maintain visibility during those longer times between free promotions.

Experiment more with promotions that are not tied to free or discounting my books. I don’t know for certain whether or not having a week-long promotion of Uneasy Spirits on the heels of the Maids free promotion has helped keep its sales up, but as more of the sites on the list I have compiled switch to non-free promotions, there will be certainly some of them that will turn out to be successful. BookBub can charge high rates they have demonstrated that they consistently deliver enough post promotion sales to more than make up for their cost. I expect that new marketing strategies will emerge in the next few months that are not dependent on free promotions.

Write more books and short stories. I know, I know, this is not a new strategy. But I know that the time I was taking to do free promotions every month was taking away from my writing time. The launch of a new book or short story (like a free promotion), if done correctly, can bump up sales and visibility of your other books, and it can take the sting away from those months between free promotions when your sales drop.

In short, I predict that as long as free promotional days in KDP Select deliver increased post promotion sales and borrows, Amazon has no reason to get rid of them, particularly if this is the main way to get authors to sign an exclusivity contract. And, as long as indie authors continue to produce books and stories that sell and provide new innovative ways to promote those books, the partnership between KDP Select and indie authors will continue.

What do you think?

“The Dude Abides:” Changing Definitions of Words and Historical Fiction

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Yesterday, as I was searching for descriptions of San Francisco Theaters in 1880 (I am hoping to have a scene in a theater in my next historical mystery, Bloody Lessons), I ran across the following paragraph and laughed out loud.

“Last evening, as I was hurriedly walking along Dupont street, near Post, in the gloaming, I saw before me a young dude, who, instead of minding his business of walking decently, was projecting his face and hat into the visage of his girl companion to the left, while with his dexter paw he twirled a light cane, which extended half way across the curbstone, and which I tried to escape, but which, notwithstanding, hit me square upon my nose, which is a long one.”  Etiquette on the Street, by Silver Pen in San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser Jan 9, 1886

You see, I am a fan of the movie the Big Lebowski, whose main character called himself “The Dude” and spoke of himself in the third person, and, as a result, the use of the word dude in this 19th century context cracked me up.

The next thing that occurred to me is that if I tried to use the word dude in my 19th century fiction, I would probably bring the reader right out of the moment because it would sound so modern. As I investigated the word and its meanings, I discovered that the term has undergone a profound transformation from its 19th century origins to its modern-day uses.

In 1883, when the above paragraph was written, the term dude was very new. A history of the word in Wikipedia says that the word first appeared in print in the 1870s in Putnam’s Magazine, making fun of how a woman dressed. However, a variety of sources, including the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, agree that by the 1880s it had become American slang for “a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner,” often suggesting that they were aping the style of the English upper classes.

Oscar_Wilde_Aesthetic_CigarsIn other words, dude meant a dandy. While most sources agreed that the first printed use of the term with this meaning was 1883, obviously three years later the humorist complaining about modern mores felt comfortable that his readers would understand his use of dude when describing the rude young man who was strolling down a San Francisco street, twirling his cane. I am inserting a picture of Oscar Wilde, who was considered the personification of a dandy, from his 1882 tour.

At the exact same time, the word was taking on another, albeit related, meaning, as the term dude began to be used (for the first time in 1883 in the Home and Farm Manual) to describe men from the city (Easterners) who demonstrated their lack of knowledge about rural life (the West) by behaving and dressing inappropriately.

These two uses of the term were clearly related since to a working rancher or farmer there would be nothing more ridiculous than some dude (whether from an eastern or a european city), who came to the American West, dressed in fancy duds and pretending to be a cowboy.

By the early 20th century the term began to be applied to ranches that catered to these eastern “city slickers.” In fact, in the mid 1960s, my very suburban family spent a week on a “Dude Ranch” in upstate New York, where we rode horses, went on hay-rides and did square dances in a barn. If you had asked me the meaning of the word then, I would have clearly understood it to mean “city slicker.”

Yet, by the late sixties the term had also become a general form of slang used by men when addressing other men, and it seemed to have emerged within urban Black culture. As a young adult in the late sixties (who spent the summer of 1968 taking classes and living in a dorm at the traditionally all black college, Howard University, and then spent a good deal of time the next two years hanging out with my future husband who lived in the primarily African-American male dormitory at Oberlin College) I had become used to African-American men referring to each other as dude. Unlike its original meanings, this was a positive form of address, and it had nothing to do with city slickers.

Pretty quickly, whites who wanted to sound cool, expropriated the term (it shows up in the movie, Easy Rider) and by the mid-to-late 1970s, just about the time I arrived in Southern California, the term became associated with that region, specifically attributed to “stoners, surfers, and skateboarders.” See the Urban Slang Dictionary.

Robert Lane who has written a piece on the word, points out that int 1982 Sean Penn’s character, Jeff Spicoli, in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, personified the kind of young man who was called, and called others, dude.

While this new use of dude, as an informal form of address among young people, began to predominate, the older meanings didn’t fade away completely. My young daughter, for example, loved the TV show Hey Dude (1989-1991) that was about a dude ranch, not stoner skateboarders. Nevertheless, in my own mind, this earlier meaning of the word was wiped out completely after I watched Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski in 1998.

This movie about a grown up man, Jeff Lebowski, whose days are filled with bowling, smoking weed, and sliding through life, has become a cult favorite, and it has created an indelible image of what could happen to the Spicolis of the world if they never grew up.

Interestingly, when I thought more about it, I realized that the writers of the movie (the Coen Brothers) were clearly aware of the changes the term had undergone from its earlier origins. For example, the movie is narrated by a character (called The Stranger and played by Sam Elliott), who is a quintessential cowboy. A cowboy who wryly references the change in the meaning of the word dude from city slicker to stoner slacker in this opening monologue:

“Way out west there was this fella… fella I wanna tell ya about. Fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least that was the handle his loving parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. Mr. Lebowski, he called himself “The Dude”. Now, “Dude” – that’s a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then there was a lot about the Dude that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.” The Stranger, The Big Lebowski

What does this all mean for me as a writer of historical fiction set in the 1880s? First of all, I can’t prove that any of my characters would use the word dude, in either of the earlier meanings–of dandy or city slicker–in 1880, when my next book is set, since I can’t prove they would have heard of it that early. However, the fact that the writer of the 1886 quote used the word without feeling the need of any explanation does suggest that I would not be committing any major historical inaccuracy if I did have someone use the word in either of its original meanings.

Yet, when I read the word yesterday, all I could think of was Jeff Lebowski, in his ancient knitted cardigan, sloppy t-shirt, and baggy bermuda shorts, ambling down the street with his bowling bag in hand, and I was no longer in the 19th century, and I was certainly not thinking about a young man who was “extremely fastidious in dress and manner.” Here the modern meaning and use of the term was just too far from its origins to be an effective word to use in a work of historical fiction set in 1880. Consequently, it was with reluctance I gave up trying to figure out in what context one of my characters could call another Dude.

But I did have fun exploring the origins of the word, and I hope you had fun reading about it. Furthermore, I recommend that you click on this link and read the rest of Silver Pen’s 1886 diatribe on Etiquette on the Street because I think it will make you laugh, even if you aren’t a Big Lebowski fan.

And for the Lebowski fans among you, let me conclude by quoting from the end of the film:

The Dude: Yeah, well. The Dude abides.

The Stranger: The Dude abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.

M. Louisa Locke, January 18, 2013

7 Things joining KDP Select Can and Can’t do for you

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I have no problem with authors deciding not to put (or keep) their books in KDP Select because there are a number of good reasons not to sell an ebook exclusively through Amazon. What does bother me is when people put a book into KDP Select with unrealistic expectations, or don’t do their homework about how KDP Select works, or blame Amazon when their books don’t sell, and then announce that KDP Select is not a good strategy to follow for independent authors.

It is my hope that this post will help educate authors about what KDP Select can and can’t do, thereby creating more realistic expectations and better decisions about whether or not KDP Select is right for their books.

However, before reading the rest of this post, I do recommend that every author read the KDP SELECT FAQ page first so that they have a basic understanding of how the program works.

Four Things KDP Select CAN NOT DO for you:

1. If there is some reason why people are not buying your book when they run across it (too few reviews, negative reviews, badly designed cover, ineffective product description, badly written or formatted free excerpt, wrong price–too low or too high), then simply being in KDP Select will not change this, and people will not start to buy or borrow your book just because it has the Amazon Prime designation.

2. If people can’t find your book when browsing in the Amazon Kindle Store because the book isn’t in the right categories, or doesn’t have the right key words or tags associated with it, simply being in KDP Select will not make it easier for people to find the book, and they will not start to buy or borrow this book. (There is no special promotion by Amazon of all KDP Select books).

3. If your book has demonstrated its salability, is in the right categories, has the right keywords and tags, but the book has not sold enough in the last 30 days to put it in the top 100 of the popularity lists for its categories (or in the last 24 hours to put it in the bestseller list of those categories), then simply being in KDP Select won’t change its discoverability, and people will be unlikely to find the book, and they will not start to buy or borrow this book.

4. If you do a free promotion of your book using the KDP Select free days, this will not automatically ensure that it gets a lot of downloads, and, even if it gets a lot of downloads, this will not always result in an increase in sales or borrows of the book.

For example, if your book fits in category one above (there are problems with the book itself in terms of why people don’t buy it), doing a free promotion won’t necessarily cause a lot of people to download it. I routinely look at the free lists of the categories I am interested in, and I routinely take a pass on free books that don’t appeal to me for a variety of reasons. In this case a book that already has problems probably won’t get enough downloads to cause a rise in visibility afterwards. And, even if a number of people decide to take a chance on a book, just because it is free, when the book goes off free it will face the same problems it had in selling that it had before the promotion.

Or, if the book is only listed in one category, and that is one of the larger categories (say it is only listed in contemporary fiction-where there are 109,000 books and where not every free book makes it to the top 100 free books in that category), then the free promotion may not gain enough attention for the book to make it visible after the promotion is over. Again, this means the promotion will not result in increased sales or downloads.

Or, if you do nothing to publicize your book’s free promotion, even if it is in the right categories and has demonstrated its ability to sell well when people find it, there is no assurance that enough people will download it (under the new algorithms) to result in increased visibility when the sales are over. This again means the promotion will not result more sales and borrows.

In fact, a failed promotion (one that generates few downloads) may hurt your book’s sales since the book will not be selling at all for the days of the promotion, lowering your average sales for those days. In this case your book will be worse off in visibility than before the promotion.

Three Things KDP Select CAN DO for you:

1. If your book is already selling well enough so that it is visible on one of the browsing category popularity lists or bestseller lists, then people who are looking for books to borrow through Amazon Prime can now borrow it. Since borrows translate as sales, KDP Select can help you maintain your visibility and add to your earnings for the book. A number of authors have mentioned that they can’t imagine that readers would bother borrowing a book unless it was a highly priced book, but this does not seem to be the case.

At $3.99, my two historical mysteries, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, have been borrowed 4108 times through Amazon Prime in the last year and made me $8,161 (just short of $2 per book). These borrows have also helped keep my books visible between promotions.

2.  If you do a promotion where you get enough downloads to put you on the top 100 of a popularity category list, being in KDP Select will result in at least some increase in sales and borrows after the promotion.

However, to ensure you get enough downloads, you need to make sure your book is ready (cover, description, categories, etc) and that you have done adequate marketing of the promotion. (see my Simple Steps to a Successful KDP Select Free Promotion.)

This has become particularly important because of the increase in the number of free books that are available in any given day, and the change in the algorithm for translating downloads to sales that has limited the impact of all promotions. Presently, if you don’t break through into the top 100 Kindle free book list with your free promotion, your promotion will be unlikely to bump your book up high enough afterwards to effect subsequent sales (unless your book was already doing well, and the promotion is designed to maintain that visibility.) Using sites like the Author Marketing Club, having your book picked up by a site like Pixel of Ink, or doing a paid promotion, for example through BookBub, is increasingly necessary to achieve that level of success. Here is a recent post at BookBuzzr on 7 Resources to Help with  KDP Free Days Promotions.

If your promotion is successful (you break into the 100 Free Kindle books list), and the book is saleable, and you have your book in categories where you have a fighting chance of being visible after the promotion is over, KDP Select will increase your sales and borrows.

For example, the two weeks before my recent December 28-30 KDP Select promotion, Maids of Misfortune sold an average of 25 books a day, and Uneasy Spirits sold an average of 9.8 books a day. The first 10 days of January, after the promotion, Maids of Misfortune sold an average of 43 books a day, and Uneasy Spirits sold an average of 40 books a day. In addition, in those first 10 days of January 907 people borrowed one of these books.

3.  If your book has already had positive reviews and you have a successful KDP Select promotion, you will increase your total number of reviews, which will improve the chances that people will buy the book when they see it.

Although you may garner a number of negative reviews (people who wouldn’t normally buy your type of book may give it a try if free, find it is not to their taste, and a number of them seem to enjoy telling everyone why they didn’t like it.), the increased number of positive reviews ultimately improves the overall credibility of the book.

For example, before doing my first KDP Select promotion last December, when the book had been selling for 2 years, I had 38 reviews for Maids of Misfortune, with an average 4.3 stars. A year later, after numerous free promotions, I have 191 reviews with an average of 4.2 stars. The slight slippage in stars is more than out-weighed by the positive impression of having those many positive reviews gives of the book. Probably even more importantly, Uneasy Spirits, my sequel, which had only been out 3 months before the first promotion (and only had about 8 reviews), now has 88 reviews with an average of 4.3 stars. I would never have gotten this number of reviews in just over a year without the KDP Select promotions I have done.

In summary, if your book is not selling well on Amazon (it is not at least visible on one of the one browsing categories) don’t sign that book up for KDP Select if you are not planning on putting in the work to do a successful free promotion. You will be disappointed, and you will be going exclusive to Amazon in exchange for no discernible benefits.

On the other hand, if your book has the potential to sell, it is in marketable categories, and you work hard on putting together an effective promotion, KDP Select can earn you more money in sales and borrows after the promotion, maintain a level of discoverability that will permit your book to continue to make money, and help your book accumulate a healthy number of reviews. How many sales and borrows you make a month (in comparison to what your sales are out side of Amazon), and how willing you are to continue to do promotions when those sales begin to dwindle (as they will almost inevitably), will then determine whether or not you want to keep your book in Amazon’s KDP Select.

I hope this helped clarify a little what to expect from KDP Select and what not to expect so that any decision you make as an indie author will improve the likelihood that readers will find and buy your books.

M. Louisa Locke, January 14, 2013

A Victorian San Francisco Christmas

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While I am off visiting daughter and family, watching two little tykes experience the fun of opening up presents, I wanted to leave you with a little piece of Christmas Past. Below is the description of San Francisco in December 25, 1879, written in the San Francisco Chronicle. M. Louisa Locke

A MERRY CHRISTMAS 

HOW THE DAY WAS CELEBRATED THROUGHOUT THE CITY 

The Ways in Which Three Hundred Thousand People Sought and Found Holiday Amusements 

Amid a chime of bells that rang cheerily all over the city, and an echo of tin horns operated by adolescent enthusiasts fearless of cold weather, Christmas Day of 1879 was ushered in. As on all holidays the city was early astir, and despite hard times and collapsed stock market, young and old, rich and poor and high and low of San Francisco apparently determined to lay aside the consideration of the ills that the flesh in this section of county has been rather generously heir to of late, and have a good time. The signs of the time were everywhere visible in evergreen ornamentation over doorways, Christmas trees in various stages of bearing, visible through parlor windows, and brown paper bundles careering along the streets in charge of their new owners by right of purchase.  The ice on the streets did not appear to chill the general enthusiasm, but on the contrary lent an added enjoyment to the firesides and made the day  more than usually reminiscent of the Christmas tide in the East. The small boy was out numerously in all parts of the city, dividing his industry between the eager velocipede and the

SYMPATHETIC TOOT-HORN.

The latter from its more aggressive and impressive characteristics, “had the call” in the adolescent pools, and if there was one block in the city not favored by some red-cheeked soloist with a tin nuisance it was an oversight as fortunate for the block as it was remarkable to record. Adult humanity likewise took kindly to the horn as a Christmas celebrant and the saloons of the city were marvelously well patronized by a throng whose egg-nog tasted none the less sweet because it was disseminated at the rate of nothing per drink with especial inducements to clubs if the candidate came twice to the same bowl. The churches claimed a large number during the hours of service. In the Roman Catholic edifices low mass was celebrated in the darkness of the early morning hours, the chill of the dawn not deterring hundreds of devotees from leaving warm couches to participate in the holy rites. Between 10 and 11 o’clock high mass was sung to thronged churches, the slow, solemn grandeur of the service being rendered by increasing choirs and orchestral aids under whose efforts the “Kyre Eleison” echoed grander, sweeter and more solemn than ever. So with the Episcopal congregations, the choral service received especial attention and Christmas sermons, recalling the

 SACRED STORY

That the day commemorates were the universal rule. the ungodly––if the term can be fittingly applied to those who choose the droppings of the foaming ladle to the droppings of the sanctuary, and sought the theatrical spectacle rather than the churchly array––were likewise abroad in large numbers. The matinees were crowded, and the Prince of Goldland and his brethren of the tinsel circles went through scenic splendors to the edification and delight of thousands out for a holiday in the theater. The Park and the Cliff road were the scene of an unwanted pageant, comprising all those male and female appreciators of the delights of a fast trot through the frosty air and a spin over the red macadam at a rate that stirred the vigilant policeman to extra watchfulness. The neighboring city resorts caught a large proportion of the amusement seekers, the boats and trains going out heavily laden in the morning with an expectant multitude and coming back a night with the same throng, all the better for a breath of country air, a change of scene and a day of relaxation and rest. The ambitious duck-slayer pervaded numerously

THE FAVORED MARCHES

And the crack of Greeners and Scotis was through all the day, music to not a few ears, tough the resultant bags were so meager in most cases as to cast a sarcastic reflection on the marksmanship of the bearer, or pay mute tribute to the wariness of scarcity of the sought-for canvasback. At the various charitable institutions the little neglected inmates found that their adopted mothers had not forgotten them, and there was high revel held about many a charity Christmas tree, burdened with gifts for lonesome little wanderers cast up by the low tide of the social sea on the shores of public charity. As the hours of the day wore on and the shadows of the early falling night crept athwart the streets, the crowds thinned out and the average citizen went home and pushed his chair up to the table, when the turkey, immolated on the domestic altar as a sacrifice to the patron saint of the day, offered up savory incense that agitated pleasantly the membranes of hungry nostrils. There was feasting and merriment for all save the tramps, who slouched along all the more recklessly in the shadows of the street sides.

NOB HILL AND THE BARBARY COAST

Were bent on the same errand of celebration, though the different results were shown by the different terminations––the upper ten thousand going quietly to bed, while the lower continued it choruses far into the night in the circumscribed boundaries of the drunk’s cell to an auditory of sleepy trusties and cursing fellow-unfortunates. In the evening the candles on hundreds of domestic Christmas trees lit up tinsel ornaments and bright toys, the theaters opened their doors and engulfed new throngs, the refreshment depots received new detachments of thirsty recruits more merry than ever, and it was far into the morning before the last gay notes were over and the city went again to sleep to dream over again its “Merry Christmas.”  ––San Francisco Chronicle, December 26, 2012

Kindle Holiday Giveaway

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Sleigh_with_Gifts_1I am participating in a HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY being hosted by The Kindle Book Review and Digital Book Today. Participants can win a Kindle Fire and 2 $100 Amazon gift cards. Registration is Dec 20-Jan 5.

In addition, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits will be free on Kindle Dec 20-30.

Happy Holidays! M. Louisa Locke

Two-Day Sale of Victorian Mystery Books on Kindle

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I don’t usually just post when I am doing a promotion, but I am experimenting this time with a pre-Holiday promotion of my two Victorian San Francisco Mystery novels so I thought I would let you all in on the experiment.

Uneasy_Spirits_600x900_72dpiUneasy Spirits, the sequel in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series is FREE on KINDLE for two days, Tuesday-Wednesday, December 11-12, 2012.  Here is the link for the U.S. Kindle Store, and the U.K. Store.

A second part of the experiment is to offer the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, for 99 cents for the same two days that the sequel is on sale. While I know there are lots of people out there who already have Maids of Misfortune and are going to be glad to pick up the sequel for free, I wondered if those who are new to my work would be inclined to get the first book in the series at the same time if it was discounted. Here is the link for discounted Maids of Misfortune in the U.S. Kindle Store, and the U.K. Store.MAIDS_800x1200x72dpi

If you don’t own a Kindle, try the Kindle ap.

Meanwhile, if you love historical fiction, here is a list of the books that are free or discounted from the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative to which I belong. Check them out, and the other fine historical fiction ebooks by the Cooperative members.

Cheers!

M. Louisa Locke