Amazon

Have you ever wondered what it's like to publish a book on Amazon? Amazon is huge, there is the potential for your book to be seen by millions of people - got to be a good thing, right? It is of course, in a way. But in another way it's not so good.

It's very easy to publish an eBook on Amazon, once you figure out the conversion process from Word document to kindle format. That's actually easy too, just tedious if you don't set it up before you start to write. But there are millions and millions of books published on Amazon, some great, some good, some not so good and some terrible.

If you're an indie author publishing on Amazon you are competing with all these millions of books and if you're unknown you have your work cut out for you to get noticed. People want value for their money, and people also don't generally sift through pages and pages of books to find something new to read. They may go through the first 10 pages of a genre but usually not any further. They are also suspicious of new authors and use book reviews when considering someone different.

How many of you leave a book review after reading a book, even if you really love it? I know I hardly ever do, and I think that's pretty normal. But if I'm considering a new author I look at the book reviews. It's contradictory of me I know but I think we are all much the same.

The reason why I put up all my new books for free for five days is to try to get a higher rating on Amazon, to get noticed. There are thousands of good authors languishing on the bottom of Amazon's lists, not because they are not good but because they don't have an audience. If you look up my name on Amazon you will get a hit, but otherwise you won't see my books unless you specifically type in the title.

To get an audience as a new author you need a huge dose of luck, and good book reviews, the more the better. Some authors buy them, in fact I believe a lot of them do and I can't really blame them, simply because unless you have an audience of millions, you just don't get reviews.

The advice given to new authors on Amazon is to build up a public profile with facebook, twitter, a blog page etc, and to put your book up for free to get higher on Amazon's lists, and to publish a lot of books. All good advice but you still need luck and reviews. So guys, if you downloaded any of my books (and you liked them) please go back and give me a good review!

I wrote the cat books, even though they are a different genre to Zora's Dawn for a couple of reasons. One, because I'm following instructions to write more books and two because they have links to the Bluemoon Shelter book I'm working on. I really don't know if I'll release it on Amazon, I'm getting a little disheartened with Amazon in truth. I think I'm better off getting a print publisher and going the traditional route with that book. But I figure a print publisher will release on Amazon as well and if I have a presence, however tenuous, it has to help get noticed. There is one final reason I wrote these books - I love cats and I love research and I had fun with the whimsy of two and the research of the other.

I'm giving the cat books the three months they are locked to Amazon, and then I'll shop around print publishers because I do believe in these books and I know they would have an audience that will like them. They do now, just not a big enough audience to keep them up on the lists so others can see them.

So how is Amazon really, from an authors point of view? If you've been lucky it's awesome, you get a higher percentage of royalty payments with Amazon than through a traditional publisher. You can use Createspace to turn your books into paperback on demand, a lower royalty but useful for people who prefer to have a real book in their hands and on their coffee table. You can publish in a few hours, without having to go through the process of writing a summary for a print publisher and sending off query letters.

But, and it's a big but, if you don't have a big enough audience your book will sink like a stone through the ranks of the millions of books. Because Amazon only requires proper kindle formatting the quality of the books published can be questionable. There is no team of editors to help polish your book to take it from good to great. You the author have to be writer, editor, proof reader, marketing manager and publisher. You have to find a way to get past the scepticism most people feel at seeing a new author on Amazon and get them to give you a go, and when they do hope that they a) like what you did and b) leave a positive review to help convince others that you have a good product.

Amazon is a lottery. I don't think many people succeed instantly, unless they have a great marketing strategy in place. I know I need reviews on my books but I'm not sure how to get them without asking you guys :)  So I'm just plugging away, and hoping that Zora's Dawn will be more successful. From my observation readers of the paranormal genre seem more willing to give a new author a go, and my sister is going to be my editor. She does things in computer programming so she's brilliant at details, and she's a very creative person herself even though she will say not.

So where do I stand? I know people have read and liked all three of the cat books. I know Zora's Dawn is good, and with my sister's perspective the editing process will be better than just me doing it (it's awfully hard for an author to cut any part of a book, I take out unnecessary words and change some wording and cut a sentence here and there, but I don't remove entire sections and I'm sure she will be far more ruthless). I know that with a bigger audience my cat books would do better, and I haven't given up that they will pick up on Amazon. And I can always try print publishers if they don't.

So I'm still poor, but I've had the experience of people reading and liking my writing and that's great to know and gives me a real belief that I'm going to make it - maybe not in a huge way but certainly in a way that will provide a modest living. And I love what I'm doing, I'm fulfilled and I'm getting rid of some of the words in my head so my brain is less chaotic. Sadly this has not yet translated to better sleep but I bet that when there is more money in the bank sleep will not be so elusive :)

In other news - it's really hard to find self raising flour here. I don't bake because the gas oven in this rented apartment has a slightly disturbing tendency to make fireballs instead of just heating up the oven. To entertain itself it only does this at random times and not every time I light it, and also at different time intervals. I find it too nerve racking so I've given up on the oven. But I do make pancakes most days, and it's easier to do with self raising flour.

There are all kinds of flour here - some with only arabic writing so I've no idea what it is, cake flour, pancake flour, biscuit flour, bastry flour (that's the writing on the packet - there is no 'p' in arabic so 'b' and 'p' is often confused), and all purpose flour. Now for me, an Australian, I know plain flour and self raising flour. I'm bewildered by all this choice. But I've found that bastry, biscuit and all purpose are all plain flour and cake and pancake is self raising flour. However at this time for whatever reason there is only a wide range of plain flour in different names and the mysterious arabic flour. So I use salt and baking powder to turn it into self raising flour. This works most days, and some days I actually make awesome pancakes with it - for Australian readers, I'm actually making pikelets.

Yesterday my pancakes/pikelets were amazing. Today while measuring the baking powder I spilt it into the flour. So I guessed it was about the correct amount - most of my cooking is based on guesswork. Turned out it was waaaaaaaay too much. My pancake/pikelets bubbled and fizzed in the frypan like little school volcano projects. Actually they burned and bubbled and fizzed. What they did not do was rise, or cook, or look remotely like pancake/pikelets! I tasted one, and it tasted pretty much like what I would expect to taste if I were to eat a school volcano project. So gamer son got toast and vegemite for breakfast today...


Publishing on Amazon...

Pretty much what I made today, sigh

These are not mine, but I promise this is what they looked like yesterday!