Finding an Author's Books

It can be confusing to authors to keep track of the many places that sell their books. In a way it's like an abundance of riches, except instead of a question like "what to eat first?" we ask "what should I promote first?" or most often, or whatever.

If it's confusing for authors, imagine what it can be like for a reader. There is the basic decision assistance tool--the library. But they may not have a copy (paper or ebook) when you want it or it may be a book you want to buy. If you buy books to keep forever, hardbacks or paperbacks are often the choice. As one who moves a lot, I lean toward ebooks when I buy. When I want to hold paper, I go to the library, which is often.

I have a Kindle Fire and a Nook HD, so there is an additional choice of the format for ebooks I buy. The Kindle is smaller, but the Nook HD (for all its larger size) is much lighter and the on-screen keyboard is larger. That's important when I travel and want to access the Internet on my ereader.  However, I sell way more books on Kindle than Nook, so I usually buy more for the Kindle.

Back to author marketing. The online sites I push are Amazon, Barnes and Noble (BN), Kobo, and Smashwords. Kobo is big in the Canadian market, and Smashwords translates a book into all ebook formats. That's a big plus for authors. You can download for any device, including in a pdf or text file if you read on the computer. (This is me being crafty. Each link in this paragraph is for a different book.)

Readers seem less aware of Smashwords than authors are. Smashwords loads books to all sites except Amazon. However, they format books in a mobi file (for Kindle), so you can buy books for Kindle there. Smashwords is a way to put my books on itunes (iPad, iPod) and smaller sales sites, such as Kobo or Sony. I load them to Amazon and Barnes and Noble myself. An author earns more and is paid faster by selling directly through a site. Still, I bow to Smashwords. What a concept.

I have recently learned that Amazon's Kindle Boards creates a page for each of your books, and that page has a link to all of the Amazon sites. That means a reader can go to one spot to link to a book in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, Mexico, and on and on. This has become an important marketing tool for me.

Appraisal for Murder http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B005PJM8WO

Rekindling Motives http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B0063MTJME

When the Carny Comes to Town  http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B0079SJC78

Any Port in a Storm http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B0098CF7RC

Trouble on the Doorstep  http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00BXQE5OW

Behind the Walls  http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00GWDZ7DE

Jolie & Scoobie HS Misadventures  http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00F6JACWQ

Ocean Alley Adventures http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00DLLCR60

Secrets of the Gap  http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=1468033581

Searching for Secrets http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00332EWMY

Biding Time http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B004HB23XK

Orr, Campbell, Shirley [and more] history http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=1490986030 

You can see a pattern in the web addresses. The only variation is the book's unique Amazon number (the ASIN number).  It's worth becoming a KB Boards member just to be able to do this. There are also a number of options for interacting with other writers and readers, and a couple of boards for promoting books.

There is an element of choice is the KB Boards' profile for your book.  The profile can also list other places to buy the book besides Amazon. Those links you have to list yourself. There are decent instructions in the help menus, or you can post a question on one of the boards.

I do maintain my own comprehensive list of where to buy my books, and that's on this blog, on the tab entitled Links to All My Books. It helps me keep track as much as it helps readers.

The most passive way I market to all sites that sell the books is via Twitter. A tweet can contain one link, and it can be to any site. You target the tweet with a hashtag such as #nook, #kindlebooks, #kobo, #smashwords.  Or any of thousand other choices. The link in the tweet simply has to coordinate with the hashtag.

It would be tempting to do only online marketing. I ask to do guest posts at others' blogs, pay small amounts to "boost" posts on Facebook, promote this blog, and do dozens of other things. Even if most books solds are on the Internet, it's still really important to do more personal (and time consuming) face-to-face marketing.  I do talks at libraries, visit book stores, and join local author groups. When you visit, it's important to leave something (yes, a piece of paper) behind. The photo here is an early postcard I did to promote the Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series.

In February I'll do my first radio interview with a station in Osage Beach, Missouri. Why? Although I don't live in that state I have Missouri family links and belong to an author's group in Lawrence County. That may help a new group of readers find my books.

It's an author's job to make it easy for readers to find their books. It's also important to keep writing new books, and marketing takes away from that. Gee, a balancing act. That's what makes all aspects of life manageable.
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Milestones Matter

Today would have been my mother's (Rita Rooney Orr's) 92nd birthday. She died in late 1998, and given that many doctors thought she would die in the 1960s, just being around that long was quite an accomplishment. Living that long with a strong sense of purpose and good sense of humor was an even greater feat.

Her survival (after a 1965 stroke and rapidly progressing multiple sclerosis) was such an achievement that on January 31, 1985 we had an anniversary party, complete with a cake that read, "To Rita--Celebrating Life for 20 years."

Catherine Ellett, Emily Carlin, Rita Orr

Doctors and nurses helped her get to the point that she could leave the hospital, but Rita was around for those twenty years because of the support of family and friends, and we invited several to the party. I don't remember where my aunt and uncle (Marguerite and Clarence Harlowe) were the day of the party, but the two women shown are Catherine Ellett and Emily Carlin.  I can still see my aunt helping my mother get into the car to get her weekly blood test (she was on blood thinners), and still taste the bologna and mustard sandwiches Mrs. Ellett placed in our freezer so I didn't have to pack school lunches for younger siblings. Until that time I did not eat mustard.

Miles Orr serves ice cream at the party.

Mrs. Carlin, our across-the-street neighbor and nurse, was in our house every day for maybe months. Her encouragement and care helped Rita get over many hurdles. And of course Miles Orr, our dad. He had always done more household chores than most husbands of that era, and improvised as needed. You have not lived until you taste spaghetti sauce with kidney beans.

It was day-to-day humor that pulled our family together as a team that focused on progress rather than despair. My sister had a three-foot tall doll that was supposed to be able to walk next to a child. The doll had a ribbon that said, "I walk when you hold my left hand." Dad had that on the wall above mom's head almost as soon as she was home from the hospital. And she did walk again unaided for a couple of years.

We take note of milestones such as graduations, birthdays, and fiftieth wedding anniversaries. Sometimes our greatest accomplishments have to do with handling really tough challenges with grace and courage. Not everything needs a party, but it's worth celebrating meaningful events, even if that celebration is a wink in the mirror. Take heart and keep plugging away.
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The Library Lifeline

There is a wonderful article on libraries on the Crime Writers Blog. Annamaria Alfieri focuses on The Library of Congress in Washington, The British Library in London, and the New York Public Library, where she goes four five times a week.  Her broad point is that libraries are an important part of the fabric of any culture, and those of us who live in countries with public (free) libraries are fortunate.

Alfieri publishes this article at the end of every year, to encourage support of local libraries.

My mother took us to the library in Garrett Park, Maryland constantly. It was a tiny library by any standard of measurement. Eventually it merged with the library in Kensington, Maryland. Although I'm sorry the library in the town of 1,000 is gone, the Kensington Park Library is able to be something the old library could not--a modern facility with a large collection and constantly evolving technology.

Many times I heard the story of Seneca, Kansas, my mother's town. In the 1920s, there was no public library, so my grandmother was one of the women who raised funds to build one. My mother and her younger sister checked out the first books. Her love affair with books started early. Thankfully, she passed on the affection for reading.
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The Modern Murder on a Train

Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express has always been one of my favorite mysteries. You know that a man was murdered when the train was stopped in its tracks (wow, a literal use of the term) by a snowstorm in Yugoslavia. Figuring out who did it when no one saw the killer is something else again. Some readers think it was Hercule Poirot's finest case.

With modern communication tools and multiple travel options it gets harder to isolate characters for more than a brief time. Nevada Barr does it well with the Anna Pigeon mystery, Firestorm. Park ranger Anna is with a group fighting a forest fire when the fire and a then murder leave two dead. A snowstorm keeps rescuers and law enforcement away for more than a day. It's not a closed-room murder, but it's definitely a whodunit with limited suspects and no way for them to leave the scene.

Robert B. Parker's Spencer generally roams the streets of Boston, but in Rough Weather he's hired to protect the mother of the bride at the daughter's wedding -- which is on an island,  complete with a raging storm. Although someone could argue an unknown person snuck onto the island at some point, weather makes it unlikely and there are enough motives among the wedding guests.

Both of these books are limited by time as much as environment-- the murder has to be solved before a storm lifts.

Perhaps no one has done the 'closed environment' better than Edgar Allen Poe in The Rue Morgue, which adds the locked-room element and a twist that even the best reader-detective is not likely to see coming. Not a modern mystery, but perhaps a good challenge for mystery writers. I can't think of a better locked-room type story in a modern novel. Maybe time for someone to write one...
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Environment for Murder

There are so many wonderful books in which weather is almost an additional character. Think of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. (Yes, it was a book before a movie.) If there were no snowstorm, The Shining (Stephen King) would have simply been attempted murder with a fairly easy escape.

For years I have carried the memory of one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books. Winter is one storm after another, and they sit numbly by the fire. Near the end a train is able to make it to town and it has a barrel of Christmas presents from relatives back east. They can even eat the turkey, because it stayed frozen.

Then there are the books that would not have been written except for a weather event. The best example may be The Perfect Storm (Sebastian Junger). It's a fictionalized account of a massive Nor'easter that swallows a Gloucester fishing vessel. I didn't see the movie because my mind still sees the men trying to lash down whatever they can on the deck of the boat.

Why am I thinking of this today? Because we finally had substantial snow in my part of Illinois, and I'm thinking about how to create a murder that takes place in a snow storm. A devious mind is always at work.
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To Bundle or Not to Bundle

Several writer friends are banding together to sell bundles of books for the holiday season.  The most innovative is from my friend Aurora Lightbourne, with whom I sell books  at festivals. She and dozens of other authors present their books at http://authorbookbundles.blogspot.com

What makes this different is that the books are shown now (complete with a Santa welcoming you to the site), but you don't purchase them until December 24th, to give as ebook gifts--or for yourself

Between now and then, you have various ways to win one of the bundles, which are grouped by paranormal, sci-fi, new adult, contemporary/historical, and children. For example, if you go to their twitter site and retweet one of the tweets you are automatically entered for one of the bundles.

As you read through the site you'll see the opportunities to win bundles. At first I could not figure out why some of the contest headings did not link to the contest, then I figured out that the link did not become active until the contest started. No doubt others would figure that out faster than I did!

The artwork for the bundles is really pretty, making me wish I had some of those skills. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with the writing skills...
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Bookselling Then and Now

There have been hundreds of news articles and TV spots about changes in the book industry. The three things that have made the biggest difference are the large bookstore chains, online book selling, and ebook publishing.

If you're older than twenty-five, you are scratching your head over the first one.  Haven't there always been big-box bookstores, such as Barnes and Noble?  Nope. Even B&N started small.

Online book sales? Internet sales of paper books were not possible until about fifteen to

eighteen years ago, and not widespread until the Internet rose to ubiquity in the last ten to fifteen years. For those who scoff at these timeframes, remember that not everyone had easy access until more recent years, and there are still parts of the U.S. and Canada that only get Internet through phone lines or satellite communication.

Ebook sales are the new kid on  the block for most readers. The dust has settled into just a couple of predominant formats, and ereaders are relatively simple devices that are fairly easy to learn to use and pretty hard to break. And nothing in paper can beat the prices of many of the ebooks. Of course, I still visit the library almost weekly, but I have taken out my first ebook from a library.

The upshot is that many independent bookstores were driven out of business by the larger stores, online book selling, and ebook publishing. And I helped put them there. I love to wander in the larger stores and I self-publish ebooks--and paperbacks, but those sell only a few hundred copies per year. All but a few of the paperback copies are sold online.

That's not to say that I don't like smaller stores. I almost cried when Danner's went out of business in Muncie, Indiana, and I was a regular patron of the store in my former Iowa town until the owners of the last one could not sell it before they moved. (A fitness business/coffee shop bought the Iowa one, but with far fewer books mixed in with the other businesses, it's far from the same. And they won't carry my books, so I doubly don't count them!) Now I live in Springfield, Illinois, and there is no independent book store. There is a Barnes and Noble, and I'm thankful for that--even  though they won't carry my paperback books either.

Don't think this is a 'gripe blog.' Businesses exist to make a profit. If they don't think an author will contribute to that on the limited shelf space they have, then they won't carry a book. I use the same principle for selling my ebooks. It is worth my time to load the books myself to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and I would try iTunes if they'd have me (they won't). Luckily for authors, there are book aggregators like Smashwords who accept ebooks into their system and then distribute them to other sellers. They take a cut, of course, but it gets the book to the iTunes, plus the smaller outlets whose systems I'm not willing to take the time to learn.

All of these thoughts ran  through my brain cells yesterday when I read a New York Times blog on Helpful Definitions for Modern Authors. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, which makes it a sometimes humorous read. Here's a short segment.

Your Agent: Acts as Book’s Editor.
Your Editor: Acts as Book’s Publisher, handling how it will be packaged and marketed.
Your Publisher: Creates Book’s mold ahead of time, insofar as it curates the existing market into which book must fit. (Additional duty: being dumbfounded by that market.)

When it comes to writing (and reading) we live in a very different world from our parents or even ourselves of twenty years ago. It is a more democratic one. I have sold tens of thousands of books because I decided to do it. There was no three to six-month wait for rejections before moving on to the next potential agent or publisher. There was also no publisher's editor, and if you get a good one they do improve a book.

However, look again at the definition of a Book Publisher. I have a couple of very successful author friends who self-publish more now because a twenty-something book publishing company editor wanted to dumb down their books for "today's readers," and then wondered at lower sales than prior books.

What is constant is authors' support of one another and independent book stores. That's why book stores were in so many stories about this year's Small Business Saturday, a day in which shoppers are encouraged to use their shopping dollars to support local small businesses. USA Today has a great article on readers' love of independent book stores and their role in Small Business Saturday.

Now that I live in a town with no independent book store, I've had to get creative. Another author and I do a table at a nearby arts festival, and we have a booth in a Springfield gift shop. As I get more familiar with Illinois, I'll find book stores in other towns. There will always be people who love to read, it's just a question of finding them in the new age of book publishing.
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