Technology, gay rights, the Confederate flag, and other cool ways to date your novel

It’s exhilarating to be living through so much change, especially when it seems to be going in the right direction. But what if your books become dated because of it?

Earlier this month at the Glens Falls Public Library Julia Spencer-Fleming, my favorite living Episcopal mystery romance novelist*, took a question from the audience about coping with changes in technology in her books.

As she pointed out, cell phones have made mystery writers’ lives a lot harder. She also noted that she is fortunate in her setting — a place an awful lot like Argyle, New York — because if necessary her characters can encounter poor or no signal in the local wilderness. (I’m thinking Clare and Russ really need to avoid Verizon, because so far I’ve had no trouble up north.)

Rico Shen [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 tw (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/tw/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Rico Shen, via Wikimedia Commons

Spencer-Fleming also mentioned advice she’d gotten to keep technology as unspecific as possible. In other words, perhaps your characters should just call someone rather than doing something with a “phone.” Specific devices or ways of using them can become obscure in a couple of years.

I had to deal with this as I spruced up (AKA finally coming up with decent endings for) some short stories I used in “Missionary Dating and Other Stories.” Cell phones hadn’t even been thought of when I first drafted one of them. Some beta readers told me I needed to clarify when these stories were set, or update them, because they were no longer realistic.

This week another of my books got dated in the way I had always hoped it would. “The Awful Mess: A Love Story”  has a sub-plot involving gay rights which is centered largely on Winslow the cop’s support of his lesbian sister, and suspense over Winslow’s conservative father’s ability to cope with the discovery that his daughter Laura is not only gay, but she and her partner Carla are having a child.Cover for The Awful Mess: A Love Story

One of the issues is that Laura would have no legal rights to a child born of Carla if something happened to their relationship. But as of this week, the Supreme Court has made marriage equality the law of the land. Laura and Carla wouldn’t need to worry that their marital or parental rights wouldn’t hold up simply because of where they were living.

So if the need for nationwide marriage equality had been my A plot, my book would have just become a bit quaint. Such are the risks of dealing with current events. But that can also add a depth of truth, assuming one can avoid stooping to mere propaganda.

ManfieldPark1999One of the reasons I enjoy the take on “Mansfield Park” in the 1999 movie is that it links the Bertram family to slavery in the West Indies, whereas in Austen’s novel you’d have to be pretty aware of the history to even suspect it. (It also spices up Fanny by crossing her with Jane Austen herself — an unforgivable sin in the eyes of some Austen purists, but personally I think this particular Austen novel needs a bit of tinkering before it will work on screen).

I’m also conscious of history changing as I work on my third novel, “Bardwell’s Folly.” It’s about the daughter of a famous dead Southern novelist who was raised in the North, almost completely ignorant of her family roots. When she gets caught saying something racially insensitive, she is forced to try to better understand her Southern legacy.

And oh boy. We have we seen some fast changes in that regard this week, especially in regard to the Confederate flag. Good changes. Way overdue changes.

Of course, the flag is the least of the issues involved, as opposed to the continuing institutional and social racism endemic in the South and the rest of the country, almost as if the Civil War continues to be fought — and sometimes even won by the wrong side.

Still, having people like Strom Thurmond’s son proclaim that the Civil War was fought over slavery is a good step forward. For someone who grew up in Florida watching people like Thurmond and George Wallace win elections using racist code language (or out-and-out hatefulness), it’s astonishing to see the Confederate battle flag so quickly lose supporters.

Sometimes it’s a minor thing that can mess you up. I’d been toying with the idea of having my heroine and her traveling companion, the daughter of a distinguished African American, meet up with a figure very much like Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. to explore their ancestry, much as is done in the fascinating series Finding Your Roots.

But that show has just been suspended. Gates is in hot water because the show left out Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestors at Affleck’s insistence.

My reaction to this: Affleck is a wuss. Part of what inspired “Bardwell’s Folly” is my own infamous ancestor, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (yeah, that guy who built his fortune trading slaves, massacred black soldiers at Fort Pillow, and served as an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan). My maternal grandfather’s first name was Forrest, after him. And Forrest, along with the Confederate battle flag, is more popular than ever on Confederate bling marketed to that anxious subculture of white Americans who say they “want their country back.”

I find that deeply disturbing, frankly. Especially in a country where, since 9/11, domestic terror is taking twice the toll of the foreign-inspired terrorism we’ve just spent vast fortunes and thousands of American lives trying to defeat.

In other news…

Summer blog post schedule

I’ve been keeping dutifully to a Saturday posting schedule for this blog since I started following a regular schedule in February, but as of this week I’m switching to summer hours. (Part of this is because I was with my lovely grandkids this weekend and vastly over-estimated the energy I’d have left after my return.) So, through August I’ll post every other Sunday. I may also have some interesting guest posts for you soon.

Requisite book flogging

Cover of Missionary Dating and Other Stories“Missionary Dating and Other Stories” goes live Tuesday, which (I just learned) is the absolute worst day to launch a book, because that’s when traditionally-published books release.

It’s always fun to learn these things.

Anyway, it’s currently available for pre-order in e-book format only at all the retailers.


* Dorothy Sayers is my favorite dead Episcopal (technically, Anglican) mystery romance novelist.

 

 

 

Is it the cover? A PickFu polling case study

by Sandra Hutchison

It became clear during my recent Kindle Countdown Deal that my second novel was not catching on as well as my first. Intellectually, I had expected this. It has a literary title, it doesn’t cross over into romance, and I never offered it free.

Emotionally, however, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d crippled it in some way. Was the problem possibly just the cover?

One of the things I’ve noticed over time is that my “also boughts” on the first book all have a certain look that my books don’t have. (They are also all indie titles, which is an indicator that when you’re an indie most of your sales come during promotions to the same lists of willing indie readers.)

Alsoboughts

My covers are a little edgier, which may be appropriate, or may just be scaring people off.

Sandrasbooks

It’s also true that guys are often scared off by books with females on the cover. This may not be terribly relevant since most book buyers are women, but some of my most satisfied reviewers have been men, so I hate to cut off that potential audience if I don’t have to.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my covers. I think Damonza.com has done a great job, hitting a nice compromise between literary and women’s fiction. (They didn’t design the last two shorter, lower-cost titles, since I did them myself, but as you can see I have tried to maintain some branding.)

Something else had happened recently, though. I’d been playing with cover concepts for my third novel and asking for feedback on my Facebook profile. Two of the thumbnails had women on them. The third had an “oilified” plantation house. And most people, including loyal readers, had come down in favor of the house instead of the women.

That got me wondering if I’d gone the wrong way with the first two covers. SHOULD they look more like those books on my “Also boughts”?

That’s when I remembered getting a code for some free PickFu polling from a Tim Grahl post.

PickFu is an internet polling service. It’s incredibly easy to use and very reasonably priced. How well it lines up with my target audience is another question. But I decided it was worth trying out the service to see about two other possibilities for covers for “The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire.”

One was my best shot at a thumbnail using an “oilified” generic street scene that matches the neighborhood in the book, similar to the plantation house cover that my readers had liked for Bardwell’s Folly. So after narrowing in on that with my Facebook friends, I tested it versus the current cover on PickFu. (This would normally cost $20, but I had credits.)

thewinner

The results? The current published cover won handily. But when I dug down into the demographics, my target readers of women who are little older and perhaps a little more educated seemed to prefer the street scene.

demographicsThe comments were also fascinating. One thing became clear: My current cover is considered bleak. The title also puts off and confuses some people, suggesting to them that it’s either about eating disorders, a “trashy romance,” or erotica, none of which is true.

I knew I didn’t have time enough or money enough to act on the title (new titles require new isbns), but I’m definitely storing this away for the next time I’m trying to decide on a title.

Now, I’ve actually dealt with horrifically expensive, possibly flawed market research in my past life in publishing, so I knew (as PickFu will readily point out) that this poll of fifty people was not a scientifically valid sample size. I also had no idea how self-selected the audience might be. Given all that uncertainty, the time and money it would take to create a new cover based on this less than resounding finding seemed unwarranted.

That’s when I wondered how much damonza.com might charge me if I tested one of the original cover design options I had turned down (not without some trepidation). To my delight, they said they would provide it at no cost. And so I ran another test of that versus the neighborhood cover I was considering instead.

This time the results were clearer. You can see the whole case study here: a second A/B test at PickFu.

cutoffsversusoilified
So I switched my cover.

And nothing much happened. At that point, Amazon was still giving the book some play, but I saw maybe one day’s uptick in the trends, which could have been completely random.

So I’m back to the original cover now, because it’s a lot of work to go through everything I’ve done so far and switch the art out, and if it’s not going to make a significant difference  I’d just as soon put that effort towards my next books, “Missionary Dating and Other Stories,” which is available for pre-order now, and “Bardwell’s Folly,” which is still months out.

That’s not to say that someday I might not decide to put in the effort to switch over, because I do truly like the other cover. It’s definitely less bleak. But I’m still wondering if some women’s fiction-y neighborhood cover might not do better with my target audience than either of them.

So you’d better believe I’ll be testing different approaches with “Bardwell’s Folly” before I publish. Depending on how that goes, I might then work backwards on the other covers.

What do you want to know about your books before you publish?

If you’d like to give PickFu a spin, the folks there were kind enough to offer a discount for the first 50 readers here — just use the coupon code HUTCHISON and you’ll get 20% off your first poll. (I get no affiliate income from this. At least, I don’t think I do.)

If you find it useful, let me know! I know that back in the days when I was a marketing manager and an acquisitions editor, I would have really loved having access to a fast and easy tool like this.

Now if PickFu could just find a way to poll avid readers of our genre, we indie authors would truly be in data heaven…

 

Having trouble getting images to show in a revised Kindle book?

The only reason this is here — midweek, off the regular schedule — is so I can find it again someday. But who knows, maybe you’ll have the same problem I did. I’m quoting these instructions from “John_Ha” at an Open Office forum because it literally took me hours to figure out why the revised Word file I was uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing wouldn’t show the images once it was converted. He finally gave me the answer.

When you’re updating an existing file that has images, you have to organize the upload zip file a certain way. I’m sure this will be mere common sense to people with an intuitive understanding of html. I am not one of those people. So I needed this:

Books with images:
Creating a zipped file of your book contents

If your book includes images, you’ll need to create a compressed file of your book for it to work on Kindle. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Go to the folder where you saved your book (by default, Word will save your files in ‘Documents’ so if you aren’t sure where it is, this is a good place to look).

2. You’ll find two files with the name you used: a folder containing your images and an HTML file containing your book.

Right click on the HTML file, scroll over “Send to” and on the menu that appears, click ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’

4. A new folder with the same name will appear with a zipper on it.

5. Drag the folder with your images in it onto the new zipped folder.

This zipped folder will be necessary when it comes time to upload your book to KDP.

Cover of The Short, Spectacular Indie-Publishing Career of Matilda WalterBless you, Jon (or John) Ha. I didn’t want to have to pay for formatting, since I hope this updated version of The Short, Spectacular Indie-Publishing Career of Matilda Walter will soon be perma-free once again. (It already is free at Smashwords.) It has a new chick lit cover (mine, but done with a lot more care than the first cover) and updated back matter.

It also has an intelligent Table of Contents … or it will after I fix the one on Amazon. Smashwords is already fixed, since they wouldn’t take it the wrong way. (Doing a proper linked table of contents is another how-to, but you can find that one pretty easily by googling for it. If you’re anything like me with technical instructions, I recommend going for a YouTube version.)

 

 

 

The importance of reviews and feedback … even in a climate of fear

As if it wasn’t already hard enough for indie authors to get reviews, things appear to getting scary out there. Amazon is allegedly coming down hard on authors and friends and apparent friends who review each other’s books.

The thing is, authors often, as part of normal, professional networking, befriend people who review us or write in our genres or share our challenges. Or we may discover that some of the people we already count as friends turn out to be great readers and reviewers.

And I know that I have gone back to some of those readers who most seem to “get” what I’m doing for beta reading.

But now that means the people who wrote our favorite reviews the first time around and then give us initial reads on new books can’t safely leave a review when the new book is published. Amazon says they helped with the book, so they’re disqualified. These people can be quoted in a blurb —  a blurb that means absolutely nothing if the reader is not an author or some other public figure. A blurb that is also, by definition, hardly going to be a full, meaty review.

Frankly, these rules are really tough on indies. We often gain our first readers solely by virtue of knowing them. It’s not as if people are going to find our books in a bookstore or the New York Times Book Review, nor do we generally get the advertising support or the favored positioning that some traditional books do (and all of Amazon’s own imprints do).

I do believe it’s more ethical to mention how I know a person when I review a book, at least when a person is being him or herself. The only time I’ve held back is when it feels tantamount to ‘outing’ them — generally, when they seem to be trying to fly under the radar with a nom de plume. Which Amazon would seem to be encouraging, actually, with this crackdown, unless they also have some secret algorithm for figuring out who’s pulling that off. Which is possible.

And of course there are plenty of reviews I don’t leave because that would be kinder than giving my honest opinion, or because I’m not sure my honest opinion would be welcome — God knows I’ve occasionally discovered that it isn’t — though the great bulk of the reviews I haven’t left can be blamed on me not having read the book yet.

But now… do I dare review anyone ever again, even with a disclosure? Anywhere but on Amazon, apparently. Which is the only place where reviews really matter, or have, up to now.

It’s all another argument for not depending too much on one monolithic retailer.

And please remember … even if you are a friend, or colleague, even if you fear crossing into dangerous territory by reviewing, most authors desperately want to hear from you. Did you read it? Did you finish it? Did you like it? So please … at least send an email, or put up a Facebook post, or tweet, or send a letter via snail mail, or resort to Goodreads, or try to post on Amazon’s competitors, or say something in the grocery store.

This brings me to the great compliment an old fanfic pal of mine paid me, recently, by sending me thoughtful answers to ALL the questions I’d put in the discussion guide for The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire.

I loved this so much I’ve put it on my web site. If you’re interested in it — and it does contain major spoilers, so keep that in mind — you can find it here. I’m sure she and I would both be fascinated to hear further discussion of any of these points.

 

Update: Brenda Perlin has an interesting post on this issue in Indies Unlimited this week, and includes a link to a petition to Amazon, should you be so inclined.

 

What a failed Kindle Countdown Deal looks like

failedcountdowndeal
What you see here is what is known in babies as failure to thrive. In a book, it’s called not having legs. Or stinking up the joint.

When I ran a Kindle Countdown Deal for The Awful Mess, that spike went up hundreds of units further and stayed up, slowly settling even after my paid promotions ended. Because the book had done well enough that it went a bit viral, it rose in Amazon’s algorithms, and actually made more money for me after the promotion than during it.

That’s not going to happen this time. No wonder BookBub turned this one down. They know the market better than I do.

So, something didn’t work here. I can’t blame my paid promotions, either — I got noticeable bumps each day from E-Reader News Today (also known as “ENT,” and the biggest one), Fussy Librarian, Choosy Bookworm, One Hundred Free Books, and a few others. Just not enough to get them or me excited. I’m sure I also could have done more legwork to prep this and keep it going, but that’s true of everything in marketing. (I even tried boosting a Facebook post for the first time ever, with dismal results.)

Truth: Any given promotion will absorb whatever time and money you are willing to give it.

So now I need to do a postmortem, though it’s arguably a few days early. (The book is still discounted, though not as much, through Sunday.) But I doubt the questions will change much.

What went wrong?

Could it be the lovely, evocative, award-winning, but kind of bleak cover? Would the midriff cover (at left) have worked better than the one I chose? (In theory, I could test this.)Ribs2-1 The Ribs and Thigh Bones of Desire -- showing a (dressed) teenage girl on a bed, looking rather pensive.

Is it the overly-long, overly-literary title? (I could test that one, too. Not that I want to. I can be pretty stubborn, and I love that title.)

Is it simply that it IS a literary novel instead of an HEA (Happy Ever After) romance? (Not much to be done about that, and it’s true — genre fiction usually does better, at least until a book becomes that one book everyone is supposed to read — and that doesn’t happen very often.)

Was it my product description? (I just revised it, but it’s too late to make much difference. And for all I know I’ve made it worse.)

Is it not as well written? I don’t believe that. Feedback has generally been that it is better written, if not as much of a crowd-pleaser. I did choose to begin with an airplane crash and a wake. I have to keep reminding myself that I knew that was asking a lot of my readers going in.

This is a moment when I’m glad to be an indie author, able to tweak to my heart’s content.

But first, this is also a moment when I must acknowledge that a seasoned editor or publisher might have said, “I’m sorry, but this book simply isn’t going to work.” At least one fellow author warned me off on many counts, including cover, title, and less-than-idealized hero. I thanked her and went ahead anyway.

This happens to traditionally-published authors all the time, of course, whether the book is published and does poorly or never makes it out of the gate. As an indie it won’t impact my future career in any irrevocable way (at least since I wasn’t expecting to make a living doing this anytime soon).

In the meantime, I’m still proud of this book and glad it’s been published, because I’d like it to be read, and it has been — just not by as many folks as I’d hoped. I’ve enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten. (I’ll have more about that next week). I also think it could save a girl or two from experiencing what Molly does.

And then there’s the reality that I could get hit by a truck tomorrow. At least this child of mine is out in the world. But is this really a case of unfortunate indie impatience? Could be. I’m at that point in life, though, when I vastly prefer asking forgiveness to asking permission.

Unfortunately, any changes I make now would be a bit hard to measure. Selling books is like sailing in that you have to be making some headway in the first place in order to execute a good tack. Otherwise, you could just stall and drift, sails flapping uselessly.

It’s not all bad news, of course. The book has done well in most reviews and has been well-received by most — but not all — of my readers. And the next novel, thankfully, does have a happy-ever-after romance in it.

In the meantime, since I was already searching for some more wind for those sails, I have put together a collection of short stories called Missionary Dating and Other Stories that is now available for pre-order on Amazon, releasing June 30. It’s 99 cents now, but that will go up once it has enough reviews. (God willing.)

The people on my mailing list will get the first two stories in Missionary Dating free later this week. I’m also going to be republishing my perma-free comic story soon, with a better cover, if only because I can now say that yes, despite the lack of reviews, it did keep a steady dribble of sales on my other books coming in, especially on the other retailers.

A BIG HUG AND THANK YOU to all who helped me get the word out! I really appreciate your efforts. (And I’ll happily accept any advice right about now, even if I may not follow it.)

If you’re a writer who’s feeling less than illustrious yourself at the moment, you might enjoy this article in the Guardian in which seven writers reflect on their failures. Of course, they are all successful now or they wouldn’t have been asked to contribute, so it may not be quite what you’re looking for. Still, I think most writers can relate to Anne Enright on this:

Failure is easy. I do it every day, I have been doing it for years. I have thrown out more sentences than I ever kept, I have dumped months of work, I have wasted whole years writing the wrong things for the wrong people. Even when I am pointed the right way and productive and finally published, I am not satisfied by the results. This is not an affectation, failure is what writers do. It is built in. Your immeasurable ambition is eked out through the many thousand individual words of your novel, each one of them written and rewritten several times, and this requires you to hold your nerve for a very long period of time – or forget about holding your nerve, forget about the wide world and all that anxiety and just do it, one word after the other.

And I can’t really think of a better note to end on than that.