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News, Fiction Updates & General MusingsMerry Christmas All! Some 2013 Reflections…
Hi everyone,
Just a quick post today. It’s my birthday after all!
I wanted to say a very big ‘Merry Christmas’ to you all, and thank you for all your support over the year. 2013 has been a truly fantastic year to be a writer, as independent publishing enters its second year of being the ‘new normal’. And all signs suggest that 2014 is only going to continue this positive trend. I repeat, it’s a great time to be a writer.
Now for a bit of self-reflection. I thought it would be cool to have a look back at my goals for 2013 last year and see where I succeeded/fell down. I never once revisited these goals, and can barely remember them, so this should be fun.
My minimum target was to write and publish Killing Freedom, Dying Eyes, and a ‘horror novella trilogy’, which turned out being The Watching. So, yep — all those crossed off, with more to add. Not only did I write and publish these, I also did a 120,000 word serial release called Dead Days as well as a bunch of shorter works. A great year all round.
“I will write, write, and keep on writing…”
Safe to say I achieved this. I set a preliminary target of 350,000 new words for 2013, and I can safely say I’ve written 400,000, so no complaints there. I won’t be setting word count goals for 2014, but I do have a production schedule that really does add up to a crazy number of words. More on that next year.
Oh, and I did have a few breaks here and there. I took two weeks off in June when I visited New York, practically the whole of August off when I was busy with other things, and have had the last week or so off. I do hate taking time off though. Writing is fun. I don’t need a break from fun.
“I will price my work at a respectable point and refrain from tinkering…”
I failed here initially.
I still tinkered with price up until around a month ago. Since then, I really have stuck with a pricing pattern that I believe is right and in line with the way things are these days.
Initially, I was afraid of the $4.99 price point. But I sold just as much there as at $3.99, so my fear was banished.
So I did something crazy and priced my new releases at $5.99.
And strangely, I sell as much there too. I’ve come to realise that price plays a large role in professional appearance. For a front list novel, $5.99 is a good price, at the lower end of the traditional spectrum. And sure — I price my backlist at $4.99, but I think that $5.99 is a very pro range for a new release. And I don’t have any reason to believe this will change significantly in 2014. We’ll see.
“I will not obsess and will chill out more…”
Hahaha. Well, the intentions were there, right? But no, I still think I achieved my goals here. While writing did very much take up the role of my day (and sometimes night) job, I obsessed about the right things. Not about Twitter, or any of that short-term marketing nonsense. I obsessed about getting the new words down. I obsessed about quality rewrites. I obsessed about getting my work out there, and I obsessed about writing the next book.
I didn’t find the time to chill out so much, but we can’t have it all, can we?
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the post and it gave you a few ideas of how looking back can sometimes be a good thing. I rarely look back, but when I’m looking back at smashing my goals and targets? Yeah. That’s fun.
Merry Christmas,
Ryan.
PS: If you fancy escaping the relatives for an hour or two on Christmas Day, I have a new story available called She Remembers. It’s a novelette length work and a sort of paranormal detective mystery. You can read more about the book and purchase it below. I’ll do a full blog on it after Christmas.
Amazon: http://smarturl.it/SheRemembersKindle
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940149006946
Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/she-remembers-a-demon-doctor-story
RyanCaseyBooks.com: A New Direction for 2014
As I sit here and type these words, I can’t quite believe that RyanCaseyBooks.com is entering its third year of existence.
What started up as a blog to keep me sane during the writing process fast turned into a way to share my experiences with others, from marketing tactics to publishing talk. The mantra ‘Blogging for Writers, Writing for Readers’ was pretty much embodied all through 2012, but perhaps more so in 2013, where I feel I really discovered my blogging voice.
But the truth is, there comes a time when everything must change.
First off, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you’re a fan of my fiction, then my word, you should see my schedule for 2014. If you thought 2013 was a prolific year then damn. You haven’t seen anything yet.
Or at least, that’s the intention. 😉
If 2013 was the year I started blogging honestly rather than trying to follow in the footsteps of others, then 2014 is the year I hone that honesty even further. The truth is, I find blogging fun, and I enjoyed reporting on marketing tactics and publishing techniques, but I think that everything there is to say has been said already.
Or, it’s out of date information.
Take my posts on KDP Select, for example. Good posts, apparently, that still get a ton of readers every day, not to mention a comment every once in a while. But the truth is, the information is out of date now. What worked in 2012 doesn’t work anymore. Hell — what worked yesterday might not work anymore. That’s the nature of publishing. And, in all honesty, that’s why my blogging focus has changed of late, and will continue to change. I’m no longer interested or compelled to write about short-term tactics that will be out of date soon after.
I’d rather focus on lasting methods. The kind of methods I truly believe in when forging a career. Methods that have worked for decades and continue to work to this day.
I recently picked up Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, the guys behind the Self Publishing Podcast. It’s a great book. A really great book. And in it, it touches on so many things that I’d love to go into, but I’d rather you just picked it up because a.) they deserve the sale and b.) it will help your career. In essence though, the book talks about the benefits of long-term strategies over short-term tactics. Strategies that have never changed and will never change.
In light of the advice I’ve read, and simply from my gut, in 2014, this blog will primarily focus on two things.
1. My fiction
My fiction is my living. I write thousands of words a day, and therefore it only makes sense for me to share fiction related stuff on my blog.
I’m talking cover reveals, excerpts, and just general updates. As much as I value both my blog readers and my fiction readers, I feel I have more to offer my fiction readers on my blog. So there will be more fiction coverage for you. It just makes sense.
2. Craft, productivity & motivation
I’ve recently reached a stage where I feel I’m qualified to be somewhat motivational. I’ve written over 400,000 new words in 2013, smashing my early targets. It’s been fun at times, it’s been difficult at others, but I got there in the end.
This is the sort of thing I want to share with you. Interchangeable skills that you can use for writing, but also for other aspects of life. I want to hold your hand through the tricky first draft and give you tips to keep you at the writing desk/whatever desk. It’s the sort of article I enjoy writing, and judging by the response to my Pomodoro post, something readers enjoy, too.
So, yes. As well as talk about my own fiction, there will be talk about the craft, as well as ways to stay productive and motivated, too.
Real-life strategies you can implement in order to build a long-term career, not short-term tactics.
Marketing? Yes. But not knee-jerk marketing.
BONUS: New mailing list focus
I have a mailing list. You might not be aware of this because I barely send an email out, which is about to change.
From now on, I’m going to keep in touch with fans weekly. I want to encourage something of a two-way conversation with readers, and that’s exactly what the mailing list is going to allow. I want to keep people in the loop, give them exclusive content, and offer occasional freebies and goodies.
Head on over to the new section of my site at https://ryancaseybooks.com/fanclub if you are interested.
So there you have it. Three areas that will form the basis of RyanCaseyBooks.com in 2014 and beyond. Really, I’ve been headed in this direction for a while with regards to point one and two, but point three is all new and shiny.
Right! That’s all for today. I’ll be back again some time soon with news on my plans for 2014.
It’s a big year ahead. Oh wow, it’s going to be fun.
Ryan.
End of Year New Release Bonanza: Dead Days, The Watching…
Okay, I like using the word bonanza. It’s just crazy.
Sorry. Just had to get that out of the way before I started.
Anyway, the title is correct. I’ve got several new releases for you. Like an eBook Father Christmas, I’ve got new gifts of all shapes and sizes (well, between 18,000 and 120,000 words) ready to send down your virtual chimney and onto your ereader.
First up, if you’ve been following my Twitter/Facebook, you’ll be aware that I’ve just finished a six-part serial called Dead Days. Each episode comes in at around 20,000 words, and, me being me, I agreed to release a new episode every week. Six weeks and 120,000 words later, my challenge is complete, and the entire season is now available.
I’ll talk about the logistics of doing a serial like this some time in the future. But for now, let’s just say it was a.) a lot of hard work, b.) a hell of a lot of fun, and c.) I don’t actually have a c. but a, b, c sounds better than just a and b. So yeah. I’ll definitely be doing a Season Two, and I’ll certainly be dabbling with serial fiction again in the very near future.
If you’re interested in Dead Days, you can pick up the first episode completely free of charge. Forever. Yours to keep. Like a fussy zombie, have a bite, see what you think, and decide whether you want to continue or not. I’ll give you a whole episode to make that decision. Here you go: Kindle, Nook, iBooks or Kobo. Bear in mind Nook and Amazon take a little longer to update, but it should be free within a couple of days of writing.
But I happen to be so confident in this series that I’m convinced you’ll want to continue.
For everyone else, you can pick up individual episodes and some brilliant bundles, saving 60% on the RRP in the process, simply by clicking here. Or, if you simply want to pick up the entire season and can’t be bothered reading another page, click here. I’d recommend checking that other page out, though. There’s some good stuff about pricing structures on there.
But that’s not all.
What sort of a new release bonanza would it be if I didn’t have a few releases, huh? A rubbish one at that.
As well as the concluding episodes of Dead Days, I’ve also released the third and final part in psychological horror The Watching series. It’s called The Reckoning, and I happen to think it’s really quite good. You can read a blurb about the book here, or you can simply pick it up here: Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iBooks.
But wait right there!
You haven’t read the first two books in The Watching series?! Well, sucks to be you. You’re just going to have to shell out $9 on the entire series.
Or so I’d say if I was evil.
Nope, you can pick up a box set containing all three books and over 100,000 words of fiction, saving 33% versus buying the individual books. That’s basically one of the books free! Or $3 off! However you want to read it, you can grab that over at Kindle, Nook & Kobo. iBooks taking a little longer there too.
Enjoy the stories! I’ll be back next week with my final post of the year, where I’ll be discussing a few changes over at this blog as it enters its third (!!!!) year.
Happy reading. Now stop procrastinating and get that Christmas shopping finished.
Ryan.
One Year On…
It’s good job I checked my calendar today.
In the world of a writer, the days blend together sometimes. Right now, I still can’t believe we’re done with September, let alone October and almost November. But that’s a good thing — for the months to fly so much, it shows I’m enjoying what I’m doing.
However, November 27th is a pretty special date to me because it marks the first anniversary of the publication of my debut novel, What We Saw.
My initial thoughts are something along the lines of, ‘holy crap, that went quickly!’ And then I started to do a little bit of reminiscing and looking back, which I don’t do very often. But really, I look back at 2013 and realise what a great year it has been, and it all started with the publication of What We Saw at the tail end of 2012.
I believe in the idea that, as a writer’s career progresses, novel and story releases become less of an event and more just a nice perk of the process. But that first novel? Yeah, that’s an event. I can’t describe how fantastic it was to hold a copy of that first novel in my hands, a manifestation of months and months of hard work and perseverance. There were times along that journey where I wanted to throw the towel in. Where I wanted to give up because I thought it wasn’t good enough. But I stuck with it, and now, nothing’s stopping me.
I’m a writer. I write. That’s just what I do now.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who has supported me over the last twelve months. Your support has been a massive part of my journey so far, and really, when I look back, it’s just overwhelming. I truly never thought I’d be at the stage I am at right now by this age. Three novels under my belt, a few short releases, a few serials. Topping the charts in the biggest bookstore on the planet. Crazy.
My life’s ambition was to write a novel. Not to have it professionally edited, not to have a cover designed, not to put it on the market, not to sell a bunch of copies. My dream was just to finish a book. Which means that everything else I do is a bonus. So now, I’m just having fun with my writing. And it just keeps on getting more and more fun.
I also have to thank the likes of Amazon, Smashwords, Draft2Digital, Kobo Writing Life, Barnes & Noble PubIt, Apple iBooks, etc etc etc for giving independent authors an opportunity to put their work on the market. There’s so much bullshit out there about how independent publishing isn’t a ‘legitimate’ route, and that it is somehow inferior to the traditional route of having one person decide whether your work is mainstream enough to ‘sell’, whatever that means. All that matters to me is that I am allowed to write the weird shit I want to write, and that my readers enjoy that. Which at the moment, seems to be the case, so I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing. I don’t need somebody to tell me my work might not be ‘fit for a certain market’ or whatever. I have readers as it is. I add new readers every day, as it is. I’m cool as it is.
Not that I’m discounting the legitimacy of the traditional publishing route, mind. Just I want to encourage new writers to dip their toes into the world of independent publishing. Ignore the crap about there being ‘so many bad books’ on the market now — the good stuff rises, the shit sinks. That’s how it always has been, and always will be.
Anyway, I’m rambling. I ramble lots. That’s what I do. But to summarise, thank you. Thanks to the readers. Thanks to the editors, Brenda, Cynthia, Carol, Jenn, Martin. Thanks to the designers, Lloyd, Adrijus, Yoly. Thanks to my wonderfully patient friends and supportive family.
Advice to everyone: keep on following your own dreams and ambitions, no matter how unattainable they may seem. Don’t let anybody stand in your way. Be kind to any doubters — they’re usually just jealous that they haven’t followed their own ambitions. And yeah. Just be yourself.
Unless you’re a psychopath, or whatever.
Ryan.
Oh, I’ve put a video out if you’re struggling with motivation, by the way. Video is a new form I’m enjoying a lot at the moment. If you want some advice on how to write lots of words and how to boost productivity, then here you go:
I take the time out of my fiction writing to do this blog. I do it because I enjoy it. However, if you’d like to ‘donate’ a couple of pennies towards the running costs of the blog, please consider picking up one of my works of fiction. You can find my works here or in the sidebar on the right. Available at all top eBook retailers and a few in paperback. Cheers.
Ebook Pricing Reconsidered: How I’m Pricing My Ebooks in 2014
I’ve not talked about ebook pricing for a while and yet it continues to be something that both baffles and intrigues me on pretty much a weekly basis. There’s always one day in a week (at least) where I wonder if I’m pricing right. I tweak from time to time, examine the market and check out what seems to be working. But now, I think I’m settled on my ebook pricing structure going into 2014 and hopefully beyond.
I’ve written about eBook pricing in the past. Although many principles remain, I’ve changed as a writer over the past year. We all do that. When we put more material out there, we subconsciously, without even realising sometimes, start thinking more about long-term strategies than short-term boosts. That’s why I pulled out of KDP Select a few months back despite earning a few thousand pounds through the programme. I was thinking at the back of my mind about broadening my horizons on the other stores rather than looking for ‘get-rich-quick’ tactics, and I was comfortable with that.
Anyway, to the point of this post. I wanted to talk you through my new ebook pricing scheme. As a rule of thumb, I used to release my novels at anywhere from $2.99 to $4.99, messing around with the price for the first few weeks on sale. Novellas I priced at $2.99, but in series I deducted the first to 99c as a loss-leader. Short stories I priced at 99c. Just a mishmash of arbitrary prices, really. But that’s going to change in the next couple of weeks. I’m basing this on an adapted version of Dean Wesley Smith’s model. Here’s how.
I’m going to talk about pricing novels, novellas, and curious things like episodic serials, which I’ve had a headache pricing. Anyway, without further ado…
My Ebook Pricing Structure for 2014
Novels:
– New front list novels over 50,000 words: $4.99
– Shorter front list novels, within the 30,000-50,000 range: $3.99
– Backlist novels, a couple of years old (or so, & not as a rule): $3.99
Short Books:
– Stories from 8,000 to 30,000 words: $2.99
Short Stories:
– Bundle of Two Stories from 4,000 to 8,000 words each: $2.99
Serial Fiction (episodic):
– Individual episodes: $1.49 during season, $2.99 after
– Half-season boxset (three episodes): $3.99
– Full season boxset (six episodes): $7.99
Collections:
– Novel trilogy boxsets: $9.99
*Edit: A word on paperbacks. I tend to go $14.95 for front list novels, then as low as I can for back list (usually around the $12 range). For shorter books I try to price around $4.99-$7.99. Whatever CreateSpace allows. I let Amazon/B&N do the rest with regards to discounts, etc.
Okay. There you go, my ebook pricing model. Now I understand I have a bit of explaining to do. This should be fun.
First, front list and back list novels. I’m a fan of higher prices around the $4.99 region. I think shying away from the 99c point is good, and shying away from the $2.99 mark is also good. $4.99 represents the lower end of front list traditional pricing. And yet we get higher royalties as independent authors, so we can afford not to price at $5.99 or $6.99. Win win situation.
Also, I’ve decided to price backlist novels at $3.99 for now because I think that $3.99 is a pretty good price point and represents a decent discount a year or two after launch. I’ll have to toy with this and it will probably be on a case by case basis, but as a rule of thumb I think $3.99 for 50,000+ words is a steal, even in this new age of publishing. And yet, it’s not so cheap that it stinks of inferior quality. It’s a good deal for the writer and the reader.
Yes, this does mean that readers who pick up the book in the first year pay a dollar more. But isn’t that how it’s always been? Aside from an early launch discount (which I’ll talk about later), books have always launched nearer to RRP. And I don’t think dollar is such a dip. Just something to keep the book attractive while new front list titles launch.
Okay, on to ‘short books’ now. I think that $2.99 is exceptional value for what I’d class a ‘novella’ length work and I’ve always priced my novellas in this region. $2.99 is being commonly used in the traditional world as a price of author’s shorter releases, and I think independent publishing can succeed here too. Again, it’s cheap without being too cheap and a decent return for 100 pages or so of fiction. Not much else to say here.
As for short stories, yeah. I realise this is the controversial one. I’ve always priced my shorter works at $0.99. Ideally, I’d keep them there, but Amazon only offer 35% royalties for 99c books. If they offered 70% for 99c, I’d keep them there I think. But they don’t, and therefore it doesn’t make sense in business terms. It just doesn’t.
$2.99 may seem steep for a short story of around 8,000 words. But say I throw in a bonus story of around 8,000 words too, we’re already at 16,000 words. That’s 40-50 print pages. Short book region.
Ideally, like I said, I’d release my short stories individually at 99c and keep them there. But that’s not feasible or sustainable. The only way I can think of countering this is by bundling a couple for $2.99. Not ideal, but it will do for now.
Moving swiftly on to episodic serial fiction. I’ve recently taken to serials. In fact, I’ve completely fallen in love with them as both a reader and a writer. However, they are a nightmare to price. Price at 99c per episode and I think devaluation comes in to play for an 18-22k work. Price at $2.99 per episode and readers are being forced to shell out $18 to read a whole season. With a $7.99 boxset launching at the end, I don’t think that’s very fair.
I’ve come up with something of a solution for this. Using an adapted model of Collective Inkwell’s Yesterday’s Gone pricing, I’m launching individual episodes of my serial fiction at $1.49 during the season. Once the season is finished, and only when the season is finished, I will rise the individual episode prices to $2.99 each and tap into that 70% royalty mark. But I’ll also launch a mid-season boxset (three episodes each) for $3.99 and a full season boxset for $7.99. That way, nobody has to pay $18. Nobody has to pay more than $9 for the entire thing. I think that’s fair.
Right, I think we’re done here. I just wanted to outline a few of my ebook pricing principles. Next time, I’ll talk about what I like to call ‘launch pricing’, and how to maximise that buzzword ‘visibility’ in the early weeks in order to get the most out of your books without doing any time-consuming promotional ventures. If you want my credentials (which you should. Always question the credentials of any internet blogger giving information before following advice), I launched a new book called Dying Eyes two weeks ago and it has been in the top #10,000 on Amazon.com and a permanent fixture in the crime bestseller lists since release. It’s taken a while for me to find my formula, but yeah. I’ve found it. For now. 😉
Cheers, as always,
Ryan.
I take the time out of my fiction writing to do this blog. I do it because I enjoy it. However, if you’d like to ‘donate’ a couple of pennies towards the running costs of the blog, please consider picking up one of my works of fiction. You can find my works here or in the sidebar on the right. Available at all top eBook retailers and a few in paperback. Cheers.
Free Your Writing from the Bondage of Marketing
Controversial, against the general opinion posts are really in with me at the moment, right?
After last week’s post talking about NaNoWriMo and how best to utilise it (as a motivational springboard to write more rather than a once a year excuse to write), I was kind of worried about how it would go down. Actually, that’s a lie — I wasn’t worried. I was excited to see what people thought. It’s easy to write a post that everybody agrees with. I did a load of these when I was finding my voice in my early writing/blogging career. It’s tricky to write one that seems to go against general opinion. But if you believe in something, go for it, right? Fortunately, the post went down pretty well. People got that I wasn’t being snarky, and that’s cool. Cheers for that.
Okay. I hope you’re braced for something else a little controversial. I’m in one of those moods lately. Must be the freezing British weather and that’s making me feel a little grumpy. 😉 But today, I had an idea and I figured I’d capture the lightning bolt of inspiration and blog about it right now instead of waiting until later in the week. It’s kind of writing craft based, which is something I don’t usually go too in-depth on (with reason. But that’s for another post…). But it’s also marketing based too. And it’s the sort of advice I’d have loved to have read when I started out my writing and publishing career all those months ago.
Here’s the thing: you should keep writing and marketing separate. Completely.
I realise this advice is against the run of general opinion. In fact, I’ve read loads of articles from generally stellar sources that state a writer should define themselves in terms of marketing and genre rather than writing. But I respectfully disagree with this stance. Totally.
A writer should not define themselves by their marketing efforts. As I said on Twitter, a writer should write the story they’d want to read and hope that there’s a bunch of other weirdos out there who like the same crazy stuff as them.
“But a writer has to be aware of what’s selling, right?!”
Sure. Be aware of what’s selling. But don’t let it define your writing. As Dean Wesley Smith states, that’s a sure-fire way to kill your unique voice. It encourages you to copy the works of others, drowning out your own creative impulses with white noise of other writers who you see are selling. It makes your work samey. Nobody likes samey.
I want to throw a personal anecdote in here. A month or so back, I wrote a post about setting up new pen names. I originally planned to launch my third full-length novel, Dying Eyes, under a new pen-name dedicated to crime/detective mysteries. The post had some good advice.
However, much more successfully than a certain political party recently managed to delete their failed party promises, I’ve deleted that post. If you have a copy of that post in your cache, get it on eBay. 😉
Here’s why: I realised I was defining what I wrote by marketing. Instead of sitting at the desk and asking myself, ‘what do my creative impulses want me to write today?’, I was asking myself, ‘Should I write a dark thriller for the Ryan Casey name today? Or a crime/mystery piece for one of my pen names? Or a zombie apocalypse serial for my other pen name? What else can I write under that pen name?’ Etc. Etc.
The truth was, I let marketing in to my writing room and it almost cannibalised my creativity. Now please do not get me wrong — this is in no way denouncing anybody who uses pen names. If you have established a niche, then that is fantastic and you should totally stick with that. But I’m guessing you don’t let your marketing define your pen names. You write the work first, then decide how you’re going to market it.
Which seamlessly links to the core of my post. When you go into your writing office, write the story you would want to read and don’t let marketing slip into your consciousness. Not for a moment. Just don’t let it enter the writing zone. Do your writing in one room and your marketing stuff in another if you have to. Just not at the writing chair.
Again, as a personal anecdote, I write dark thrillers because I like exploring deep, complex (read: weirdo) characters. I write zombie stuff too, but not because the zombie genre is hot right now. That’s a nice coincidence, but no. I write it because I’ve been obsessed with zombies since the age of twelve and only recently had the guts to branch out of the ‘dark thriller’ boundaries I’d fenced around myself due to — yep, you got it — letting marketing define my fiction and not the other way around.
So yeah. I don’t let marketing enter my writing room anymore. It’s tough, but these things take time to train one’s self. But when I do finish work? That’s when I let marketing come in. I’m not denouncing marketing in this post. You can market as much as you want to and I can do the same. Just keep the two things apart during the act of writing or your fiction will be driven by commercial impulses, not creative ones.
Let me repeat the mantra of this post. In fact, the whole post could be summarised in this one line. Hope it helps you find your way in your writing career.
Write the book you’d want to read and trust that there are other weirdos out there that enjoy the same crazy sh*t as you.
Ryan.
*
I take the time out of my fiction writing to do this blog. I do it because I enjoy it. However, if you’d like to ‘donate’ a couple of pennies towards the running costs of the blog, please consider picking up one of my works of fiction. They come as cheap as 99c short stories and as high as $4.99 novels. You can find my works here or in the sidebar on the right. Available at all top eBook retailers and a few in paperback. Cheers.
(Image from aub.ac.uk)