Nora Roberts responds to recent self-publishing issues

[Lorri Moulton]

I've always enjoyed the many books by Nora Roberts, but she is now my hero!

http://fallintothestory.com/not-a-rant-but-a-promise/

[Maggie Ann]

I've always enjoyed the many books by Nora Roberts, but she is now my hero!

http://fallintothestory.com/not-a-rant-but-a-promise/

 

I've always enjoyed Nora Roberts, but now I love her. This is what it's going to take. A writer of her caliber outing these scammers and pressing Amazon to do something about them. Hopefully, other big time writers will get involved.

I think I'll go read Norther Lights again. It's one of my two favorite standalones of hers.

[CoraBuhlert]

Nora Roberts is awesome. 

[catowned]

Awesome that she wants to take down scammers.
And that she has a large enough platform that people may pay attention.
With so many romance writers plagiarized, perhaps RWA will step up as well.

Nora's earlier blog post on this plagiarism is here
http://fallintothestory.com/plagiarism-then-and-now/


In the current blog post, I'm disappointed but not surprised about the 'writer' who kept notes of competitors' phrasing and used that in her own books.
Schools need to teach copyright and intellectual property rights v public domain.
Study other writers to learn how to create effects, how to evoke emotion, how to use rhetorical devices. But write your own stories, with your own phrasing.

[idontknowyet]

It is impressive when one of the best authors of our time takes a stand for an issue that affects the indie community.

[She-la-te-da]

This is righteous, and I commend Nora for speaking out. But some of the comments are ragging on all indie authors, many with only one book, or those with books in KU. It's rather disheartening to see people who've read Nora's post -- which doesn't get that message across at all -- and going full hurt on anyone who isn't Nora.

Oh, well. Reading comprehension is a lost art, I guess.

[okey dokey]

I think of this plagiarism case every time television reruns the famous series.

QUOTE::
From The Times

On December 14, 1978, (Alex) Haley admitted plagiarizing The African, a slave novel by prolific folklorist Harold Courlander, in Roots and paid $650,000 (worth $2,580,000 today) to make the copyright infringement case go away on the eve of the judge's decision. A page one New York Times story reported: 
Alex Haley settled a lawsuit yesterday by acknowledging that his world renowned book “Roots” contained some material from a relatively unknown novel about slavery that was published nine years earlier.

The settlement ended the six week trial of a suit by Harold Courlander, a 70 year old author from Bethesda, Md., who contended there were substantial similarities between “Roots” and his own earlier novel, “The African.” He sued in Federal District Court in Manhattan for more than half the profits of “Roots.”

As the trial was about to reach a climax with summations by the opposing lawyers, they issued the following statement: “The suit has been amicably settled out of court. Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from ‘The African’ by Harold Courlander found their way into his book ‘Roots.’

[Bill Hiatt]

I think of this plagiarism case every time television reruns the famous series.

QUOTE::
From The Times

On December 14, 1978, (Alex) Haley admitted plagiarizing The African, a slave novel by prolific folklorist Harold Courlander, in Roots and paid $650,000 (worth $2,580,000 today) to make the copyright infringement case go away on the eve of the judge's decision. A page one New York Times story reported:
Alex Haley settled a lawsuit yesterday by acknowledging that his world renowned book “Roots” contained some material from a relatively unknown novel about slavery that was published nine years earlier.

The settlement ended the six week trial of a suit by Harold Courlander, a 70 year old author from Bethesda, Md., who contended there were substantial similarities between “Roots” and his own earlier novel, “The African.” He sued in Federal District Court in Manhattan for more than half the profits of “Roots.”

As the trial was about to reach a climax with summations by the opposing lawyers, they issued the following statement: “The suit has been amicably settled out of court. Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from ‘The African’ by Harold Courlander found their way into his book ‘Roots.’

"Found their way in"? You have to be amazed at that kind of verbal gymnastics. But at least he was willing to take some degree of responsibility.

[lyndabelle]

I really was happy to see Nora Roberts taking a stand like this. It did "smart" a little when she talked about selling a book at $0.99 and underselling yourself. I mean, I love how she is taking a stand, but maybe she doesn't understand how prawnie and starting out writers use pricing to help get noticed, though she does mention about giving away 700,000 books and having people buy around the same amount. That's pretty good sales considering when I give away books, I am getting 1-2 sales for like 100 giveaways. It's different out there. People want free and cheap now. It's like it's becoming a standard.

Overall though, it was nice to see someone with clout coming out and just giving the black hats a piece of her mind. I left KU last year because of all the problems with it. So, kind of glad that a popular, traditional published author was really standing up and saying her mind about what a lot of us have been saying has been going on for a few years now. Let's hope Amazon notices now. If RWA starts getting involved with it more, they just might too.

Though the whole ghostwriter thing, kind of sad with Serruya's book being called plagiarism, she really might have bought it from a ghost writer on Fiverr. And they took a section of Top Bestselling authors and just changed bits, sending it back to her. If she'd never read those authors, than she wouldn't have known. But doesn't mean it's right either.

Just proves that if you write it yourself, far less trouble. ;-)

[sliderule]

What disappoints me is how the message is getting lost in the chum.

Nora makes some really good and valid points.

The commentors? Not so much. They're all over the place in what they think is a scammer and scamming behavior (which now according to the various comments includes not having a website and some degree that is not too little or too much social interactions,  free or $0.99 books, a bookbub? (I didn't get that one, either but it's there), using a pen name, writing in a fictional city/town/world (yeah, someone mentions that), writing too fast, publishing rapidly, using too many avenues of marketing, associating with people 'suspected' of scammy behavior (guilt by association), the list is getting longer by the moment) that anyone who self publishes will have the harsh light shined on them to make sure they're not engaging in scamming behavior.

If you're lucky enough to have a book that finds traction and elevates up the ranks, expect to have people crawling all over you in every aspect of your online life for 'evidence of scamming'.

It's a new fact of life for a writer.

[quinning]

What disappoints me is how the message is getting lost in the chum.

Nora makes some really good and valid points.

The commentors? Not so much. They're all over the place in what they think is a scammer and scamming behavior (which now according to the various comments includes not having a website and some degree that is not too little or too much social interactions,  free or $0.99 books, a bookbub? (I didn't get that one, either but it's there), using a pen name, writing in a fictional city/town/world (yeah, someone mentions that), writing too fast, publishing rapidly, using too many avenues of marketing, associating with people 'suspected' of scammy behavior (guilt by association), the list is getting longer by the moment) that anyone who self publishes will have the harsh light shined on them to make sure they're not engaging in scamming behavior.

If you're lucky enough to have a book that finds traction and elevates up the ranks, expect to have people crawling all over you in every aspect of your online life for 'evidence of scamming'.

It's a new fact of life for a writer.

I saw this too, and it was unsettling.

I was planning on pubbing romance under a new pen name without much (if any) social media or website support. I had made this decision because I don’t particularly enjoy either of those things, but now? Guess I’ll be doing both. Or at the very least making my new pen name a variation that’s easily connected to me, so I can support both through one portal. But, good grief. I am hoping once the fervor dies down we can fight the scammers without catching innocent authors. But ugh.

[Tom Wood]

The discussion on Twitter is also nuts. There are people who claim that KU is just a scam anyway, so they advise everyone to cancel their KU accounts. I tried to push back and got crickets. Which, I suppose, is better than a pile-on.

[munboy]

The discussion on Twitter is also nuts. There are people who claim that KU is just a scam anyway, so they advise everyone to cancel their KU accounts. I tried to push back and got crickets. Which, I suppose, is better than a pile-on.

Brave man. 

[dgcasey]

I was planning on pubbing romance under a new pen name without much (if any) social media or website support. I had made this decision because I don’t particularly enjoy either of those things, but now? Guess I’ll be doing both. Or at the very least making my new pen name a variation that’s easily connected to me, so I can support both through one portal. But, good grief. I am hoping once the fervor dies down we can fight the scammers without catching innocent authors. But ugh.

Go ahead and use a pen name. All you read was one person's opinion on the matter and Nora would be the first to disagree with them. I mean, you know that Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are the same writer, right? She's even written under the pseudonyms Jill March and Sarah Hardesty.

[sliderule]

I was planning on pubbing romance under a new pen name without much (if any) social media or website support. I had made this decision because I don’t particularly enjoy either of those things, but now? Guess I’ll be doing both. Or at the very least making my new pen name a variation that’s easily connected to me, so I can support both through one portal. But, good grief. I am hoping once the fervor dies down we can fight the scammers without catching innocent authors. But ugh.

Go ahead and use a pen name. All you read was one person's opinion on the matter and Nora would be the first to disagree with them. I mean, you know that Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are the same writer, right? She's even written under the pseudonyms Jill March and Sarah Hardesty.

The issue isn't that one person disagrees. The issue is the amount of hysteria that was in the comments and how the entire thing was so confused that people didn't even know why they were pissed, what they were pissed at or who they were pissed at. Everything from pen names, to ghostwriting, to using newsletters, to running ads, to how they formatted books, to $0.99 pricing or permafreebies, to having covers similar to other covers in the same genre, to writing about a fictional town, to writing speed, to having one book out and zero 'social presence' as being 'evidence' they were a scammer.

The issue is that other bigger name authors are calling out what they perceive (yet have no proof) are bad actors based on the conflicting set of rules everyone seems to think they're entitled to in order to control self-publishing and that if that happens enough times, a person can find themselves on the receiving end of reports and attacks and accusations of being a scammer when all they did was end up the unfortunate victim of a good AMS ad working.

The issue is that people are cavalierly waving the word scammer at anyone who doesn't look like them or sign on to their current crusade. If you're not for them, you're against them. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Well, tell that to the author who had her book held up as an example of scamming when there was no damn proof. I'm sure it's a real comfort to her now that her name was dragged through the mud before the tweets got pulled.

[dgcasey]

The issue is that people are cavalierly waving the word scammer at anyone who doesn't look like them or sign on to their current crusade. If you're not for them, you're against them. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Welcome to the current political landscape. Maybe you haven't noticed, but this is happening in just about every aspect of our lives and not just in the indie publishing world. Say that you don't appreciate Brie Larson's comments about 40-year-old white dudes and you won't go see her movie and you branded a misogynist and a sexist. Disagree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and you are called a Nazi and a racist. This is the world we live in until sanity regains a footing in the public discourse, because right now, the loonies are running the asylum.

[sliderule]

The issue is that people are cavalierly waving the word scammer at anyone who doesn't look like them or sign on to their current crusade. If you're not for them, you're against them. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Welcome to the current political landscape. Maybe you haven't noticed, but this is happening in just about every aspect of our lives and not just in the indie publishing world. Say that you don't appreciate Brie Larson's comments about 40-year-old white dudes and you won't go see her movie and you branded a misogynist and a sexist. Disagree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and you are called a Nazi and a racist. This is the world we live in until sanity regains a footing in the public discourse, because right now, the loonies are running the asylum.

Sad, but true.

So it seems to me the answer for writers in this instance is to focus on our own page and tend to our own business. If Phoenix and David G are good at sussing out bad actors in self publishing, then let them do that and stop leading the charge ourselves.

The battle cry when anyone stepped up, held up their hand and said "hold on a minute" was immediately shouted down with accusations of being scammers because they were supporting scammers, when all they wanted was for people to stop for a minute, take a breath and think about what they were saying and how it was easily starting to spin out of control in vitriol, rhetoric and hysteria.

They were told 'if this doesn't apply to you, don't worry about it, if you are worried about it, well then [wink nudge]'. I'm sure the author that was crucified in the court of public opinion only to have the accuser back off after the fact feels much better now.

I'm not angry with you dgcasey. I promise. What you say is true and was sort of my tirade launching point.  I'm angry at how this situation spun so crazily out of control, again, and how no one was thinking straight when they started with their hysterical shrieking with their hair on fire about all the scamming behavior when it was obvious they had no idea what they were saying. They were just parroting back what they were told as they were whipped into a frenzy by someone who should have known better.

I watched it happen in real time. It was horrifying. And all I could think about was all the times people were shouted down when they tried to defend, not scammers, but the legitimate author business models that were getting creamed and labeled as scamming, told that innocent people getting accused never happens. Or it rarely happens.

And to watch someone, someone in law, say, 'well, innocent people might end up getting hurt in these discussions' is outrageous. An innocent person was hurt. That's a disgrace.

Who knows when it will be one of them.

It's done now. The torchfires are simmering. I'm back to having a really good think on whether I even want to do this now. I love writing. I have stories to tell. I'd love to share them. I'm not a monster if I'd actually like to make back the investment of time, energy and money output to publish them and plan to use the accepted business practices to do so. Once I can figure out what those are. Judging from Nora's comments on her five posts, that really isn't clear any more.

The cost to do so rose exponentially these past few days with the implied threat that at any time I can fall under someone's gaze and I'll get thrown to the wolves with nothing as much as a 'wow, sorry about that, I was wrong' when I'm proven innocent.

[quinning]

I think the real problem here is that people are finally starting to pay attention and not everyone is up to speed. Not everyone realizes that Phoenix and David have been doing this work for the past few years.

So, a large portion of the people new to the discussion think there will be (must be) and want a quick fix. But a quick fix isn’t coming! There is no quick fix.

And the readers that I’ve seen on Twitter really do want to help. They’re frustrated and just done with KU being a pit of garbage that sometimes contains a good book. They’re tired of the resold/rebranded/reauthored/recycled books and all of the other stuff we’re tired of. They want it fixed.

And so discussions are happening. Why does this author have a stock photo for her author image? Why is there no social media presence? Why no website? And yeah, these can be hallmarks of a scammer. It can also be a legitimate author who just doesn’t want their real identity out there.

Amazon has repeatedly shown that they are not interested in policing their own store. So, now they customers are policing it. And it’s just as bed.

As for me, I don’t know what I am going to do. I don’t want to use my own photo. I need to keep my identity to myself for my own reasons. I don’t want to give a big giant picture of who I am in real life. I really don’t want to spend the time or the money to maintain two websites for two different names. So, I’ll probably just do the best I can and hope to the publishing gods that the eye of Sauron doesn’t turn to me.

[Bill Hiatt]

I think the real problem here is that people are finally starting to pay attention and not everyone is up to speed. Not everyone realizes that Phoenix and David have been doing this work for the past few years.

So, a large portion of the people new to the discussion think there will be (must be) and want a quick fix. But a quick fix isn’t coming! There is no quick fix.

And the readers that I’ve seen on Twitter really do want to help. They’re frustrated and just done with KU being a pit of garbage that sometimes contains a good book. They’re tired of the resold/rebranded/reauthored/recycled books and all of the other stuff we’re tired of. They want it fixed.

And so discussions are happening. Why does this author have a stock photo for her author image? Why is there no social media presence? Why no website? And yeah, these can be hallmarks of a scammer. It can also be a legitimate author who just doesn’t want their real identity out there.

Amazon has repeatedly shown that they are not interested in policing their own store. So, now they customers are policing it. And it’s just as bed.

As for me, I don’t know what I am going to do. I don’t want to use my own photo. I need to keep my identity to myself for my own reasons. I don’t want to give a big giant picture of who I am in real life. I really don’t want to spend the time or the money to maintain two websites for two different names. So, I’ll probably just do the best I can and hope to the publishing gods that the eye of Sauron doesn’t turn to me.

This is a very perceptive post, but the future may not be quite as bleak as that.

Actually, Amazon has sometimes stepped up. It doesn't do it as consistently as we might like, but it does try. Some of the threads on here bear witness to that. The problem is identifying scamming isn't as easy as we'd like it to be. I think botting activity is pretty easy to detect, but with bots also targeting books of authors who haven't used a botting service in order to camouflage the bot's activity, even bot detection isn't a sure thing.

If anything, sometimes Amazon overdoes efforts to weed out some kinds of behavior, using the chainsaw rather than the scalpel.

All of that said, Amazon hasn't solved the problem, for whatever reason. Having the customers rise up and demand change might actually be a good thing. The trick is to filter the crazy out.

We all agree that pen names in and of themselves aren't evil. If you want to be a writer and a private person, there's no reason you shouldn't have a pen name. There are also a wide variety of more specific reasons someone might like to use a pen name. Pen names only become a problem when banned authors use them to get back onto Amazon or in some other way use them as cover for scamming.

Not having social media presence isn't evil, either. Nor is not having a website, though I think both can be useful tools.

If Amazon and other distributors respond to customers without giving into hysteria, there's a possibility things could get better.

[bookworm]

I was planning on pubbing romance under a new pen name without much (if any) social media or website support. I had made this decision because I don’t particularly enjoy either of those things, but now? Guess I’ll be doing both. Or at the very least making my new pen name a variation that’s easily connected to me, so I can support both through one portal. But, good grief. I am hoping once the fervor dies down we can fight the scammers without catching innocent authors. But ugh.

Go ahead and use a pen name. All you read was one person's opinion on the matter and Nora would be the first to disagree with them. I mean, you know that Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are the same writer, right? She's even written under the pseudonyms Jill March and Sarah Hardesty.

The issue isn't that one person disagrees. The issue is the amount of hysteria that was in the comments and how the entire thing was so confused that people didn't even know why they were pissed, what they were pissed at or who they were pissed at. Everything from pen names, to ghostwriting, to using newsletters, to running ads, to how they formatted books, to $0.99 pricing or permafreebies, to having covers similar to other covers in the same genre, to writing about a fictional town, to writing speed, to having one book out and zero 'social presence' as being 'evidence' they were a scammer.

The issue is that other bigger name authors are calling out what they perceive (yet have no proof) are bad actors based on the conflicting set of rules everyone seems to think they're entitled to in order to control self-publishing and that if that happens enough times, a person can find themselves on the receiving end of reports and attacks and accusations of being a scammer when all they did was end up the unfortunate victim of a good AMS ad working.

The issue is that people are cavalierly waving the word scammer at anyone who doesn't look like them or sign on to their current crusade. If you're not for them, you're against them. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Well, tell that to the author who had her book held up as an example of scamming when there was no damn proof. I'm sure it's a real comfort to her now that her name was dragged through the mud before the tweets got pulled.

Are you referring to that fake review site? That was a while ago. I think this new ruckus will blow over soon enough. It usually does.

[Lorri Moulton]

I decided to raise all the prices on my books. If I lose sales, I can reduce the prices this spring.   

ETA:  I just finished a FREE and 99c sale last weekend.  I'm hoping higher prices will make the sales (when I do have them) more appealing.  Also, I think it would be wonderful if we were paid more for our books...waiting to see what happens next.

[David VanDyke]

I decided to raise all the prices on my books. If I lose sales, I can reduce the prices this spring.   

ETA:  I just finished a FREE and 99c sale last weekend.  I'm hoping higher prices will make the sales (when I do have them) more appealing.  Also, I think it would be wonderful if we were paid more for our books...waiting to see what happens next.

To what, pray tell?

According to the latest Smashwords info, 3.99 and 4.99 are running neck and neck on profitability. My sales haven't been hurt by raising most of my books to 4.99, so I've actually profited more.

[Lorri Moulton]

I decided to raise all the prices on my books. If I lose sales, I can reduce the prices this spring.   

ETA:  I just finished a FREE and 99c sale last weekend.  I'm hoping higher prices will make the sales (when I do have them) more appealing.  Also, I think it would be wonderful if we were paid more for our books...waiting to see what happens next.

To what, pray tell?

According to the latest Smashwords info, 3.99 and 4.99 are running neck and neck on profitability. My sales haven't been hurt by raising most of my books to 4.99, so I've actually profited more.

From 99c, $2.99, $3.99 and $4.99  to $2.99, $3.99, $4.99 and $5.99.  We'll see what happens.

The last price is short non-fiction.

[David VanDyke]

Personally, I've found permafree, and straight to 3.99 or 4.99 makes me the most money. Like, "your first taste of the book-crack is free, but after that you gotta pay."

99c and 2.99 seem to be black holes for me, but I'm in adventure sci-fi and (separately) mystery-thrillers.

[She-la-te-da]

she really might have bought it from a ghost writer on Fiverr

Except, she didn't get scammed by someone on Fiverr, she handed legit ghostwriters a mass of random stuff (which turns out to have been taken pretty much wholemeal from respected authors) and told them to fix it. So, she's lying.

My feeling is the woman isn't even real. I suspect whoever is not from or living in Brazil, either. Amazon will know, and if it gets to the level of subpoenas, the truth will come out.

Those of us with social reach and the chops to stand the whirlwind should educate readers about how it works to be indie, why we sell cheap or give away books, why pen names are used, and whatever else Ms. Roberts has gotten them worked up over in her ignorance. I appreciate that she's upset, but she's talking about stuff she's barely learned about herself, and she has so much influence over readers. I wrote a response over on her site the other day, but I imagine I got cut down pretty quick, even though I was respectful about it. I don't feel like slogging through the replies to check, but the way those readers are foaming at the mouth, it wouldn't surprise me.

[sliderule]

I was planning on pubbing romance under a new pen name without much (if any) social media or website support. I had made this decision because I don’t particularly enjoy either of those things, but now? Guess I’ll be doing both. Or at the very least making my new pen name a variation that’s easily connected to me, so I can support both through one portal. But, good grief. I am hoping once the fervor dies down we can fight the scammers without catching innocent authors. But ugh.

Go ahead and use a pen name. All you read was one person's opinion on the matter and Nora would be the first to disagree with them. I mean, you know that Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are the same writer, right? She's even written under the pseudonyms Jill March and Sarah Hardesty.

The issue isn't that one person disagrees. The issue is the amount of hysteria that was in the comments and how the entire thing was so confused that people didn't even know why they were pissed, what they were pissed at or who they were pissed at. Everything from pen names, to ghostwriting, to using newsletters, to running ads, to how they formatted books, to $0.99 pricing or permafreebies, to having covers similar to other covers in the same genre, to writing about a fictional town, to writing speed, to having one book out and zero 'social presence' as being 'evidence' they were a scammer.

The issue is that other bigger name authors are calling out what they perceive (yet have no proof) are bad actors based on the conflicting set of rules everyone seems to think they're entitled to in order to control self-publishing and that if that happens enough times, a person can find themselves on the receiving end of reports and attacks and accusations of being a scammer when all they did was end up the unfortunate victim of a good AMS ad working.

The issue is that people are cavalierly waving the word scammer at anyone who doesn't look like them or sign on to their current crusade. If you're not for them, you're against them. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Well, tell that to the author who had her book held up as an example of scamming when there was no damn proof. I'm sure it's a real comfort to her now that her name was dragged through the mud before the tweets got pulled.

Are you referring to that fake review site? That was a while ago. I think this new ruckus will blow over soon enough. It usually does.

I was referring to Courtney Milan's ill-advised targeting of a book she "suspected might" be a scammer, listed out all the things she felt like made it a scamming incident and dragged the author out for everyone to pile on.

She later retracted with a half apology but the damage had been done. The author's name was out there and people were piling on.

[Ash]

I was planning on pubbing romance under a new pen name without much (if any) social media or website support. I had made this decision because I don’t particularly enjoy either of those things, but now? Guess I’ll be doing both. Or at the very least making my new pen name a variation that’s easily connected to me, so I can support both through one portal. But, good grief. I am hoping once the fervor dies down we can fight the scammers without catching innocent authors. But ugh.

Go ahead and use a pen name. All you read was one person's opinion on the matter and Nora would be the first to disagree with them. I mean, you know that Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are the same writer, right? She's even written under the pseudonyms Jill March and Sarah Hardesty.

The issue isn't that one person disagrees. The issue is the amount of hysteria that was in the comments and how the entire thing was so confused that people didn't even know why they were pissed, what they were pissed at or who they were pissed at. Everything from pen names, to ghostwriting, to using newsletters, to running ads, to how they formatted books, to $0.99 pricing or permafreebies, to having covers similar to other covers in the same genre, to writing about a fictional town, to writing speed, to having one book out and zero 'social presence' as being 'evidence' they were a scammer.

The issue is that other bigger name authors are calling out what they perceive (yet have no proof) are bad actors based on the conflicting set of rules everyone seems to think they're entitled to in order to control self-publishing and that if that happens enough times, a person can find themselves on the receiving end of reports and attacks and accusations of being a scammer when all they did was end up the unfortunate victim of a good AMS ad working.

The issue is that people are cavalierly waving the word scammer at anyone who doesn't look like them or sign on to their current crusade. If you're not for them, you're against them. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

Well, tell that to the author who had her book held up as an example of scamming when there was no damn proof. I'm sure it's a real comfort to her now that her name was dragged through the mud before the tweets got pulled.

Are you referring to that fake review site? That was a while ago. I think this new ruckus will blow over soon enough. It usually does.

I was referring to Courtney Milan's ill-advised targeting of a book she "suspected might" be a scammer, listed out all the things she felt like made it a scamming incident and dragged the author out for everyone to pile on.

She later retracted with a half apology but the damage had been done. The author's name was out there and people were piling on.

The Courtney Milan issue shows why these discussions can get so crazy, practically McCarthyist. It's bananas to say that having a stock photo, not having social media or a website are hallmarks of scammers. A website costs nothing (practically) to put up, same for a social media profile. If people think it'll help them disguise their scam, they'll do it.

Plus, if the 'scammer' is making so much money from Amazon, then the costs will be minimal anyway.

But the thing is, for many KU authors, social media and websites are kind of unnecessary. Success is driven by AMS, the Kindle recommendation engine, or both. JN Chaney, for example, dominated SF with his book Renegade something or other for about a year, and he has like 2000 email subs. Is he a scammer? No. He just wrote a high-converting, successful book that happened to get lucky.

Courtney ascribed nefarious intent to something she couldn't explain - the heavy use of AMS ads. It's not far off burning scientists to death for being witches.

And jesus, historical romance isn't exactly contemporary romance, i.e. it's not catering to a social media savvy crowd.

[TimothyEllis]

Courtney ascribed nefarious intent to something she couldn't explain - the heavy use of AMS ads.

This has to be quantified.

From what I've heard, the scammers were/are pouring $10,000 plus a month into AMS. I call that heavy, and I call it suspicious.

But I do know some authors who do regularly spend several thousand on AMS every month. And they are not suspicious. I have no actual idea how they do this, since I have a lot of trouble getting AMS to spend $5 a day at the moment, and I'm not sure why it works for them, but apparently it does.

So yes, any claim about AMS has to be quantified.

[AmHere]

From what I've heard, the scammers were/are pouring $10,000 plus a month into AMS. I call that heavy, and I call it suspicious.

But I do know some authors who do regularly spend several thousand on AMS every month. And they are not suspicious.

Why is spending less than $10,000 not suspicious but spending $10,000 plus is suspicious? We have no idea what their AMS strategy is. If we now say that spending a lot of money on AMS is suspicious, then we are going down a very slippery slope.

(Have already read folks saying that not having a website and a social media presence is suspicious. Wow!)

[TimothyEllis]

From what I've heard, the scammers were/are pouring $10,000 plus a month into AMS. I call that heavy, and I call it suspicious.

But I do know some authors who do regularly spend several thousand on AMS every month. And they are not suspicious.

Why is spending less than $10,000 not suspicious but spending $10,000 plus is suspicious? We have no idea what their AMS strategy is. If we now say that spending a lot of money on AMS is suspicious, then we are going down a very slippery slope.

(Have already read folks saying that not having a website and a social media presence is suspicious. Wow!)

It's a matter of scale I think. 2000 is a very active author doing a lot of advertising. 10,000 is an excessive amount. But it is subjective. One reason for the 10k is what's been said of how much actual scammers have been spending.

Websites are often a total waste of time. And a lot of people hate social media. Nothing at all suspicious about people avoiding both. IMO. Not all authors like to chat with their readers after all.

[Anarchist]

Courtney ascribed nefarious intent to something she couldn't explain - the heavy use of AMS ads.

This has to be quantified.

From what I've heard, the scammers were/are pouring $10,000 plus a month into AMS. I call that heavy, and I call it suspicious.

But I do know some authors who do regularly spend several thousand on AMS every month. And they are not suspicious. I have no actual idea how they do this, since I have a lot of trouble getting AMS to spend $5 a day at the moment, and I'm not sure why it works for them, but apparently it does.

So yes, any claim about AMS has to be quantified.

My AMS monthly spend is well into five figures.

It's not because I'm doing anything suspicious (admittedly, there's no reason to believe me as I'm anon on the interwebz). Nor am I promoting 50+ books.

I've always focused on scale.

[TimothyEllis]

My AMS monthly spend is well into five figures.

I've only tried to do this once. And I stopped it after 1 day, when I'd spent more than $700 with zero effect on the days income. I got more effect reducing it down to a $30 a day ad, where AMS didn't even spend that much.

I guess you know what you're doing, and I don't.

[Anarchist]

My AMS monthly spend is well into five figures.

I've only tried to do this once. And I stopped it after 1 day, when I'd spent more than $700 with zero effect on the days income. I got more effect reducing it down to a $30 a day ad, where AMS didn't even spend that much.

I guess you know what you're doing, and I don't.

There are lots of ways to do Amazon PPC.

Some authors set up a single campaign for each book with a $10 daily cap and move on. If that works for them, great. Most of my books have 100+ campaigns. One has 800+ campaigns.

Everyone should do whatever makes them comfortable. I've always been a "scale" guy. If something works, do it x 1,000 (and monitor the metrics along the way).

[Ash]

Tim why is heavy spending on advertising "suspicious"?

Ultimately publishing is a marketplace, and within any marketplace there is competition. If I could spend 20 grand a month on AMS ads to make 40 I otherwise wouldn't have made, I would do it. Frankly if I had the free cash, wasn't doing anything else with it, and had the opportunity to make even 25 grand, or five grand additional profit, then it would be worthwhile.

Now I hasten to add that I'm not very good with AMS ads. At best I'll spend a thousand dollars this month, although I have spent six or 7000 in a month before. What I basically don't understand is why you consider say $10,000 as being an "excessive" amount to spend.

Mark Dawson, for example, freely states that for the past couple of months he has been spending about $30,000/month on AMS ads. He's pretty much the prime example of someone who has purchased his way to success. What's your opinion on him?

[Bill Hiatt]

Tim why is heavy spending on advertising "suspicious"?

Ultimately publishing is a marketplace, and within any marketplace there is competition. If I could spend 20 grand a month on AMS ads to make 40 I otherwise wouldn't have made, I would do it. Frankly if I had the free cash, wasn't doing anything else with it, and had the opportunity to make even 25 grand, or five grand additional profit, then it would be worthwhile.

Now I hasten to add that I'm not very good with AMS ads. At best I'll spend a thousand dollars this month, although I have spent six or 7000 in a month before. What I basically don't understand is why you consider say $10,000 as being an "excessive" amount to spend.

Mark Dawson, for example, freely states that for the past couple of months he has been spending about $30,000/month on AMS ads. He's pretty much the prime example of someone who has purchased his way to success. What's your opinion on him?

I'm trying to figure out which scams it is that large ad spends would benefit. Obviously, the bot can flip pages in KU regardless of how much or how little someone spends on AMS ads. In the days of KU 1, it made sense to drive people to just open the book on a short scamphlet to get automatic credit, and I guess the same thing can still be done to inflate rank, but encouraging ghost borrows that way seems awfully expensive.

I think there is a tendency to identify anything a scammer does as part of a scam. So if some is engaging in unethical behavior and also has a big ad spend, the ad spend gets lumped in with the actual scam, when really they're two different things.

Perhaps there is a way to scam using large ad spends. If so, I'm sure someone will clarify for us.

[TimothyEllis]

Perhaps I need to reassess my opinion.

I have no opinion on Mark Dawson, seen nothing about him doing that, but it makes me wonder how many people are, and if its why the rest of us cant get AMS to work.

I've obviously not seen some of the figures floating around out there. Just figures known scammers were spending.

So yes, maybe that one needs rethinking.

But I do wonder if people doing 100 ads at a time, are not competing with themselves, and driving up the costs when they dont need to. Just a ponder.

[Ash]

Bill I do not believe that the banned authors were using bots to flip through their work. It doesn't make any sense. The way that strategy works best is to get bots to read through long books no more than a few times a day, each, and to have hundreds if not thousands of those books. You never want to have your books come above rank 30,000, (or something equally obscure) so that no-one ever notices. For a scammer, sunlight is the worst disinfectant - they prefer the shadows. Which is why hitting top 100 would be the last thing they want!

Let's say you had a thousand books, each 1000 KENPC, so approx $5 per full read. Get your bots to read through all of your books just once a day, and that's $5k. Per day. And all of this can be easily automated - I believe that a couple of years ago there was an article on just how someone had automated tens of thousands of bot accounts to do just this.

Even at their peak, the top romance authors from the MM were making $100-200k/mo (see the Empire Flippers listing - and that account if I'm right would have been the very TOP earner), and at least 50%+ was going on ads, whether FB or AMS. You can/could see the ads on both platforms. They drowned everything else out through dint of spending power.

If you're using bots, wasting all your ill-got winnings on ads is extremely dumb. Much better would be to invest in opening more LLCs, AWS servers and whatever else you need to further your scam.

[Lorri Moulton]

Everyone should do what legally works for them.

That being said...I have never used AMS ads or Facebook ads. I don't have the money and I saw what happened with internet advertising.  Keyword costs went through the roof and the big companies usually became the only ones who can afford to be in the top listings.

We may not have gatekeepers saying who can publish, but the bottom line is the cost of advertising is pushing many books out of the market.  Yes, there are other ways to promote our books and again...I do not think there is anything wrong, illegal or immoral about using AMS ads or Facebook.  I'm just saying that as larger pockets discover the effectiveness of any form of promotion, it will probably go up in price.  Basic economics. 

For now, I'll stick with social media and building an organic following.  Not as fast, but hopefully it will survive the ups and downs of advertising costs.

[Bill Hiatt]

Everyone should do what legally works for them.

That being said...I have never used AMS ads or Facebook ads. I don't have the money and I saw what happened with internet advertising.  Keyword costs went through the roof and the big companies usually became the only ones who can afford to be in the top listings.

We may not have gatekeepers saying who can publish, but the bottom line is the cost of advertising is pushing many books out of the market.  Yes, there are other ways to promote our books and again...I do not think there is anything wrong, illegal or immoral about using AMS ads or Facebook.  I'm just saying that as larger pockets discover the effectiveness of any form of promotion, it will probably go up in price.  Basic economics. 

For now, I'll stick with social media and building an organic following.  Not as fast, but hopefully it will survive the ups and downs of advertising costs.

Yes, that's the problem--financial resources become a virtual gatekeeper. It's sad, but somewhat true. It becomes more true as the number of authors competing continues to increase.

Hopefully, your approach can still work. Time is a resource, too, and patient use of it may still lead to eventual rewards.

[angela]

...
Mark Dawson, for example, freely states that for the past couple of months he has been spending about $30,000/month on AMS ads. He's pretty much the prime example of someone who has purchased his way to success. What's your opinion on him?

Is it really so little? I've spent hundreds a day at times, and gotten my ranks up significantly, but it's a lot of $$ to claw up from top 1000 to top 500 and higher.

He's had his book in the Amazon top 100 recently. I don't think you get it there on a mere 1k a day. Hell, I'd spend 1k a day in a heartbeat if it got me on the top 100 reliably.

[Ash]

Here's where he says it, Angela: https://imgur.com/a/jisfbFQ

You can absolutely spend $1k a day to be IN the top 100, although not the higher reaches. The most important thing is you need a huge spike of sales in the first few days, enough to drive yourself into the top 100, and then back that up with high ad spend. You will only generate about 10-20% of overall unit downloads directly through your ads, the point is just to hold your position with the algo.

Also at least IME this only works with new releases in large genres (top hit top 100 I mean), although the principle holds true for any launch. Ads will not spike your book, but they're amazing for holding rank, and holding rank is how you make the big bucks. Being in the top 10 for a day and then f*cking off to the #5000s is pointless. Holding at #90 for a month will make you probably dozens of times as much.

It's important to note that Mark makes a large proportion of his income from the UK market, where there's less competition and his ad spend would be enough to drive him into the top 100 and hold there. Sometimes he has multiple books in the UK top 100.

[angela]

Here's where he says it, Angela: https://imgur.com/a/jisfbFQ

You can absolutely spend $1k a day to be IN the top 100, although not the higher reaches. The most important thing is you need a huge spike of sales in the first few days, enough to drive yourself into the top 100, and then back that up with high ad spend. You will only generate about 10-20% of overall unit downloads directly through your ads, the point is just to hold your position with the algo.

Also at least IME this only works with new releases in large genres (top hit top 100 I mean), although the principle holds true for any launch. Ads will not spike your book, but they're amazing for holding rank, and holding rank is how you make the big bucks. Being in the top 10 for a day and then f*cking off to the #5000s is pointless. Holding at #90 for a month will make you probably dozens of times as much.

It's important to note that Mark makes a large proportion of his income from the UK market, where there's less competition and his ad spend would be enough to drive him into the top 100 and hold there. Sometimes he has multiple books in the UK top 100.

Ah. And I have to assume he's a lot better at getting cheap clicks than I was, not being the expert. :-)

You are right that we can't discount the algorithm love, the synergy of his ads working in tandem with the ads from similar authors who populate each other's alsobots, as well as the Amazon recommendations.

I had the algorithms working for me briefly in the summer of 2016, following a Bookbub. It was a bonanza. It didn't last forever, but it sure was nice. The algorithms are real!

I'm too niche to employ the Full Mark Dawson. What I found with my own ad spends on a series, even when I was firehosing money, was that I had to sell every book myself, once the book was over 90 days old. Like pretty much every copy, with no algo love. It could still have worked, but I got fatigued by the grind of tweaking ads with ever-diminishing returns, so I just quit cold turkey and gave up. I'm not maximizing my potential income at the moment, but sanity has its value too, LOL.

Marketing techniques definitely vary by genre! You are sure right about that!!

[dgcasey]

But I do know some authors who do regularly spend several thousand on AMS every month. And they are not suspicious. I have no actual idea how they do this, since I have a lot of trouble getting AMS to spend $5 a day at the moment, and I'm not sure why it works for them, but apparently it does.

I have limits of $2 a day on the two ads I'm running right now and Amazon seems to have no trouble at all spending it all. I'm averaging around 2 clicks per thousand impressions, which I'm told is a good number.

[lyndabelle]

So, I was just checking on my RWA loop of info, and found the whole "book stuffing" subject is starting to hit a little more main stream because of Nora Roberts blog post a month ago. Here's an article in the "The Guardian" with David Guaghran being quoted. I know we've been talking about this subject on "the board that will not be named" and here for awhile, but maybe her blog post has finally put the spotlight on this subject.

**Just for the record, I pulled my entire catalog from KU and went WIDE because of all the problems going on with the book stuffing, the author witchhunt by Amazon, and the recategories for Erotic Romances and Erotica. So, I've been in the thick of this and following it for almost two years. It's directly affected my income, but I have to say. Pulling my catalog has been the best. With half my catalog out, and more to still release wide, I'm starting to see my sales numbers come back and match some of what was happening before KU started going wonky last year with the recategories. It almost seems like all this talk is too late, unless of course, you're just starting out in the game.

Here's the article from The Guardian by the way: Just came out on March 29, 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/28/plagiarism-book-stuffing-clickfarms-the-rotten-side-of-self-publishing

[bardsandsages]

I really was happy to see Nora Roberts taking a stand like this. It did "smart" a little when she talked about selling a book at $0.99 and underselling yourself.

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Half the books published by trade publishers every year are from either first-time authors or authors with only a couple of books. The trades price those books the same way they price every other book. Because the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a first-time author is the same as the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a bestselling author.

She is 100% correct. Authors adopted this mentality because Amazon encouraged it, because Amazon needed tons of cheap content in order to get people to adopt the Kindle. The majority of authors who use the 99 cent price point do so because they don't believe they can sell above that, not because they have a clear marketing plan that pivots from 99 cents to higher price points later. And because of this, it created a glut of content that has conditioned a large demographic to devalue the price of books.

[Tom Wood]

The 99 cents genie is not going back into the bottle. It's the state of the current marketplace. Nora Roberts also slammed the idea of KU and being paid by the page. KU is not going away either. Her observations are irrelevant and not helpful for dealing with the current self-publishing situation because she keeps conflating the mechanics of the self-publishing marketplace as it currently exists with the tactics of the scammers.

[PJ Post]

Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, we know exactly how we got here, and I mean exactly; hint: it was Indies/self-publishers. But as Tom says, it doesn't matter who says what now, this is the new world order. CPC marketing is more of the same, but that's not going anywhere anytime soon either. As I've said before, there's enough newbies, wannabes and hatters out there to keep all of these predatory platforms supplied with content, no matter how onerous the terms of use become.

The only way to win is not to play...

We need a better, more creator friendly, curated platform – a better mouse trap kind of thing. It's only going to get worse until we do.

[OfficialEthanJ]

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Half the books published by trade publishers every year are from either first-time authors or authors with only a couple of books. The trades price those books the same way they price every other book. Because the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a first-time author is the same as the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a bestselling author.

Sorry if this is a hijack, but:

Aziz Ansari was once a first-time comedian. His first gig was not in Vaudeville.
Ed Sheeran was once a first-time musician. His first album was not produced in 8-track.

Point: Reaching back to the olden days of trade paperbacks is akin to reaching back to the early days of radio. Times and technologies change. I'm not condoning a "everything should be $0.99" mentality regarding eBooks, but to be fair, that's up from the $0.00 expectations set by Napster, et al when downloadable music happened.

[PJ Post]

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Half the books published by trade publishers every year are from either first-time authors or authors with only a couple of books. The trades price those books the same way they price every other book. Because the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a first-time author is the same as the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a bestselling author.

Sorry if this is a hijack, but:

Aziz Ansari was once a first-time comedian. His first gig was not in Vaudeville.
Ed Sheeran was once a first-time musician. His first album was not produced in 8-track.

Point: Reaching back to the olden days of trade paperbacks is akin to reaching back to the early days of radio. Times and technologies change. I'm not condoning a "everything should be $0.99" mentality regarding eBooks, but to be fair, that's up from the $0.00 expectations set by Napster, et al when downloadable music happened.

Sorry, but this is an apples and pianos comparison.

I think Julie was talking about consumer behavior and market expectations vis-ŕ-vis existing supply chains.

[Bill Hiatt]

Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, we know exactly how we got here, and I mean exactly; hint: it was Indies/self-publishers. But as Tom says, it doesn't matter who says what now, this is the new world order. CPC marketing is more of the same, but that's not going anywhere anytime soon either. As I've said before, there's enough newbies, wannabes and hatters out there to keep all of these predatory platforms supplied with content, no matter how onerous the terms of use become.

The only way to win is not to play...

We need a better, more creator friendly, curated platform – a better mouse trap kind of thing. It's only going to get worse until we do.

Indie authors certainly contributed, but I think it's important to note the forces that shaped those decisions.

As Julie points out, Amazon encourages low price points (though not necessarily $0.99), It used to push free giveaway days, and those were initially quite successful for people. It also allows permafree (bizarrely, from where I sit, since the only way to be permafree is to go wide, which Amazon theoretically doesn't want).

Another force encouraging low pricing (though occasionally, not all the time) are the newsletter-style promotions. The bigger the markdown, the more likely your book is to be selected. That also encourages customers to wait until a book is on sale--which in turn perhaps encourages lower regular price points to capture those bargain shoppers faster.

In other words, indie authors aren't existing in a vacuum, and the nature of the marketing tools available to us in the early days would have made lower price points seem attractive.

I'm torn on this issue, not because my prawny self is going to be much affected either way, but because of the different way market conditions affect others. Someone who can move a lot of books at a low price point may not necessarily do better at a higher one. Also, new authors can sometimes get an audience at a lower price point, when they might not be able to at a higher one. You may recall that there are posters on this very board who've said they won't try a new author for more than $0.99. Multiply that response out across the entire population. It's probably a significant number of people. Also, low prices can be a way to compete with trad publishers in a way they can't readily match. Don't large companies frequently get into price wars? Usually, it's small companies that suffer, but in the case of publishing, indie authors can actually win that game--at least in the short term.

On the other hand, there's no denying Julie's point that the glut of free and low priced books creates problems. It makes it harder for people in general to make a living at writing. It makes it harder to sell book at higher price points. Even some years ago, I thought that problem was not the existence of occasional lower price points, but that a lot of people were overusing the strategy. I think that's even truer now.

[PJ Post]

Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, we know exactly how we got here, and I mean exactly; hint: it was Indies/self-publishers. But as Tom says, it doesn't matter who says what now, this is the new world order. CPC marketing is more of the same, but that's not going anywhere anytime soon either. As I've said before, there's enough newbies, wannabes and hatters out there to keep all of these predatory platforms supplied with content, no matter how onerous the terms of use become.

The only way to win is not to play...

We need a better, more creator friendly, curated platform – a better mouse trap kind of thing. It's only going to get worse until we do.

Indie authors certainly contributed, but I think it's important to note the forces that shaped those decisions.

As Julie points out, Amazon encourages low price points (though not necessarily $0.99)...

Amazon didn't encourage 99 cent price points any more than it encouraged $9.99 price points. Most Indies had/have zero business experience. Back in 2012, no one was talking about branding or messaging or even practical marketing. But virtually every self-publisher had seen advertisements for Memorial Day mattress sales. They all understood how to compete on price, or thought they did - and that's what drove down prices: they didn't have to outrun the bear, just their fellow self-publishers.

But I would have to say that Amazon, at the very least, appears to be complicit in the misuses of their platform, simply because they chose not to address the behavior when it came up. I mean, everything Nora is talking about is ancient history in Indie world.

[Bill Hiatt]

I really was happy to see Nora Roberts taking a stand like this. It did "smart" a little when she talked about selling a book at $0.99 and underselling yourself.

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.
Half the books published by trade publishers every year are from either first-time authors or authors with only a couple of books. The trades price those books the same way they price every other book. Because the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a first-time author is the same as the amount of work that goes into producing a professional book from a bestselling author.

She is 100% correct. Authors adopted this mentality because Amazon encouraged it, because Amazon needed tons of cheap content in order to get people to adopt the Kindle. The majority of authors who use the 99 cent price point do so because they don't believe they can sell above that, not because they have a clear marketing plan that pivots from 99 cents to higher price points later. And because of this, it created a glut of content that has conditioned a large demographic to devalue the price of books.

I agree with the potentially harmful effect of overusing the $0.99 price point, but Nora Roberts and Stephen King started long enough ago that ebooks didn't exist yet, so they couldn't have sold $0.99 books even if they had wanted to. Also, as trad published authors, they don't control the prices of their books, anyway. Their situations might have been different if both had started publishing as indie authors in the last few years. The one time King tried to break free of the trads (remember The Plant?), he was selling it in installments, with the first one free, and the others at $1.00 each--on the honor system, with the project to be discontinued if any installment fell below 75% payment. Granted, that isn't $0.99 for a whole book, or even close, but it is a nontraditional pricing model, and King was more than happy to experiment. He made "only" half a million on the experiment and didn't try again, but that was at a point at which ebooks were still in their infancy, and there was no KDP. In other words, he was ahead of his time, pushing an alternative distribution model that people weren't used to. Had he just started publishing under thoday's conditions, there's no telling what he might have done.

[Bill Hiatt]

Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, we know exactly how we got here, and I mean exactly; hint: it was Indies/self-publishers. But as Tom says, it doesn't matter who says what now, this is the new world order. CPC marketing is more of the same, but that's not going anywhere anytime soon either. As I've said before, there's enough newbies, wannabes and hatters out there to keep all of these predatory platforms supplied with content, no matter how onerous the terms of use become.

The only way to win is not to play...

We need a better, more creator friendly, curated platform – a better mouse trap kind of thing. It's only going to get worse until we do.

Indie authors certainly contributed, but I think it's important to note the forces that shaped those decisions.

As Julie points out, Amazon encourages low price points (though not necessarily $0.99)...

Amazon didn't encourage 99 cent price points any more than it encouraged $9.99 price points. Most Indies had/have zero business experience. Back in 2012, no one was talking about branding or messaging or even practical marketing. But virtually every self-publisher had seen advertisements for Memorial Day mattress sales. They all understood how to compete on price, or thought they did - and that's what drove down prices: they didn't have to outrun the bear, just their fellow self-publishers.

But I would have to say that Amazon, at the very least, appears to be complicit in the misuses of their platform, simply because they chose not to address the behavior when it came up. I mean, everything Nora is talking about is ancient history in Indie world.

Have you checked out the pricing tool, which now seems to typically recommend $2.99 to everyone? True, that's not $0.99, but it is the lowest price point for the 70% royalty, which seems a little bit as if it's in general a push for lower prices.

Amazon didn't stop the behavior because, as Julie points out, it was to its advantage to have a lot of cheap Kindle content.

Also, the behavior worked for some people. I used to know someone on the KDP forum who priced everything at $0.99, regardless of length. She made $30,000 a month. There are other examples.

That said, I don't disagree that the $0.99 strategy has been much overused. I'm just suggesting indie authors weren't working in a vacuum when they made those choices.

[dgcasey]

It's almost too bad we can't do that with books.  If our books are $4.99, readers could buy the first chapter for 99 cents.  If they like it, they can buy the rest of the book for $4.00.  Not sure?  Buy the second chapter for 99 cents.  If they like that, they can buy the rest of the book for $3.01.  On the one hand, that'd be a pretty good deal for writers, I think.  On the other hand, the less savory folks will just invest a lot of effort into the first two chapters and phone it in on the rest.  *sigh*

Except you're forgetting one thing. Readers CAN read the first chapter of most books for FREE and sometimes the second, third and fourth. The Look Inside is exactly what you're talking about here. If people aren't willing to read the Look Inside, I wonder how many would be willing to pay .99 cents for the privilege of reading one chapter?

[bardsandsages]

Mark Dawson, for example, freely states that for the past couple of months he has been spending about $30,000/month on AMS ads. He's pretty much the prime example of someone who has purchased his way to success. What's your opinion on him?

Buying advertising is called running a business. I guess you still live in the fantasy land where worthy books will rise to the top by osmosis or something?

Advertising is what drives business. Period. I work in contract packaging. When a client drops $250,000 on displays to go in stores to market a new toothpaste, are they "purchasing their way to success" or are they doing what they are supposed to be doing: promoting their product?

There is nothing nefarious about buying advertising. That is a normal business practice and has been for CENTURIES. Even so called "word of mouth" and "viral" success is launched with advertising.

[PJ Post]

Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, we know exactly how we got here, and I mean exactly; hint: it was Indies/self-publishers. But as Tom says, it doesn't matter who says what now, this is the new world order. CPC marketing is more of the same, but that's not going anywhere anytime soon either. As I've said before, there's enough newbies, wannabes and hatters out there to keep all of these predatory platforms supplied with content, no matter how onerous the terms of use become.

The only way to win is not to play...

We need a better, more creator friendly, curated platform – a better mouse trap kind of thing. It's only going to get worse until we do.

Indie authors certainly contributed, but I think it's important to note the forces that shaped those decisions.

As Julie points out, Amazon encourages low price points (though not necessarily $0.99)...

Amazon didn't encourage 99 cent price points any more than it encouraged $9.99 price points. Most Indies had/have zero business experience. Back in 2012, no one was talking about branding or messaging or even practical marketing. But virtually every self-publisher had seen advertisements for Memorial Day mattress sales. They all understood how to compete on price, or thought they did - and that's what drove down prices: they didn't have to outrun the bear, just their fellow self-publishers.

But I would have to say that Amazon, at the very least, appears to be complicit in the misuses of their platform, simply because they chose not to address the behavior when it came up. I mean, everything Nora is talking about is ancient history in Indie world.

Have you checked out the pricing tool, which now seems to typically recommend $2.99 to everyone? True, that's not $0.99, but it is the lowest price point for the 70% royalty, which seems a little bit as if it's in general a push for lower prices.

Amazon didn't stop the behavior because, as Julie points out, it was to its advantage to have a lot of cheap Kindle content.

Also, the behavior worked for some people. I used to know someone on the KDP forum who priced everything at $0.99, regardless of length. She made $30,000 a month. There are other examples.

That said, I don't disagree that the $0.99 strategy has been much overused. I'm just suggesting indie authors weren't working in a vacuum when they made those choices.

I didn't mean to suggest the 'cheap' (commodity) strategy doesn't work, after all, they sell lots of mattresses on Memorial Day weekend too. But this is still the impetus that devalued the fiction market. The $2.99 recommendation is more of the same. It comes from a statistically high number of books being published at that price, and these publishers are setting that price based on the 70% royalty rate as you point out. Again, they are gravitating to this price because it is the lowest available at the better royalty rate, not because of an analysis of market expectations.

I'm like a broken record at this point, but this is why traditional publishing was losing their collective minds and doing everything possible to discredit Indies - we were destroying their industry along with our own. These companies are not run by clueless ****, they're run by greedy conglomerates. They were just circling the wagons, but we set the wagons on fire and have effectively wrecked the entire publishing industry.

Which is why I keep talking about a new disruption - in spite of the success of some, the industry itself is in free-fall.

[bardsandsages]

I agree with the potentially harmful effect of overusing the $0.99 price point, but Nora Roberts and Stephen King started long enough ago that ebooks didn't exist yet,

No, the KINDLE did not exist yet. Ebooks as a legitimate form of media have existed since the mid 1990's. King even released a novella, Riding the Bullet, in 2000. I started ebook publishing in 2004. There was already a growing ebook market when I started. The typical genre ebook then sold for between $4.99-$9.99. Non-fiction titles routinely sold for $20 or more.

And we were selling PDFs...seriously...PDFs.

The whole reason Amazon bought mobipocket and developed the Kindle in the first place was because the ebook market was starting to take shape and they saw an opportunity to control it. But ebooks have existed for a long time as a viable format.

I can tell you EXACTLY why the 99 cent point worked originally, and it had nothing to do with "new authors." Because by the time Amazon's Kindle came out, ebook readers had an expectation of paying $4.99-$9.99 for an ebook. Because originally, people did not realize that the bulk of Amazon's ebook catalog was self-published books, people thought they were getting "deals" because the expectation was that ebooks costs $4.99-$9.99.

But then the market became flooded with low-priced books, and, in the beginning, low quality. That is when the "self published books are crap" mantra started. Before Amazon, there were plenty of bad self-published books, but because most digital retailers curated their virtual shelves, readers didn't see them. So the self published books people were exposed to met certain minimum expectations (because the ebook sellers were in the market to sell ebooks, and only ebooks, it was in their interest to make sure they didn't spook customers away with a ton of crap in the store).

But Amazon didn't curate. Amazon sold anything and everything. And all the crap that had previously been hidden from customers flooded to the surface.

Regardless, the existence of ebooks is not relevant. Even today, trade publishers are not selling the work of new authors for 99 cents as the norm. Even today that doesn't happen.

[bardsandsages]

I'm like a broken record at this point, but this is why traditional publishing was losing their collective minds and doing everything possible to discredit Indies - we were destroying their industry along with our own. These companies are not run by clueless ****, they're run by greedy conglomerates. They were just circling the wagons, but we set the wagons on fire and have effectively wrecked the entire publishing industry.

Ironically, the trade industry doesn't really think much about indies themselves. They DO however think about Amazon and the companies that weaponize indies. There are a lot of vanity presses and "service providers" who got rich selling the "us versus them" narrative to indies. Amazon is one of them. Even to the point of calling what they pay "royalties" instead of "revenue." That was a psychological choice, not a legal one. Because then Amazon could claim it paid higher ROYALTIES than publishers. Sure, Amazon pays you 70% of the net of the sale. But publishers traditionally paid $10-20% on the LIST price of the book, and they paid 100% of the editing, proofreading, design, distribution, marketing, and all other costs associated with publishing a book.

But indies bought it, hook-line-and-sinker. And they chuckled with glee whenever Amazon 'stuck it' to the 'greedy publishers.'

And you are right. Most of the trades aren't saints. They are in this for profit. And sometimes that means making decisions that benefit the company over the author. But anyone that thinks Amazon has the best interest of authors and not themselves at heart is not paying attention.

[123mlh]

With respect to the pricing discussion, I saw this today on the Bookbub FAQs and thought it was very interesting:

What price should I discount my book to?

We’ve seen a significant decrease in sales for Featured Deals between $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99. Ultimately, the price you choose for your deal should depend on your marketing goals. Are you trying to hit a bestseller list? Market a series? Drive sales and revenue? You can learn the best way to accomplish each of these goals here.
Updated on March 10, 2019

https://support.bookbub.com/articles/what-price-should-i-discount-my-book-to/

On a personal note, I've been moving my book prices up to get distance from the "99 cent because I can't sell at any other price or because I'm new" market. I'll do promos at 99 cents or free to give a title a boost, but there are readers who will pay a decent price for my novels even if I'm not a household name and those are the readers I want.

[Bill Hiatt]

I agree with the potentially harmful effect of overusing the $0.99 price point, but Nora Roberts and Stephen King started long enough ago that ebooks didn't exist yet,

No, the KINDLE did not exist yet. Ebooks as a legitimate form of media have existed since the mid 1990's. King even released a novella, Riding the Bullet, in 2000. I started ebook publishing in 2004. There was already a growing ebook market when I started. The typical genre ebook then sold for between $4.99-$9.99. Non-fiction titles routinely sold for $20 or more.

And we were selling PDFs...seriously...PDFs.

The whole reason Amazon bought mobipocket and developed the Kindle in the first place was because the ebook market was starting to take shape and they saw an opportunity to control it. But ebooks have existed for a long time as a viable format.

I can tell you EXACTLY why the 99 cent point worked originally, and it had nothing to do with "new authors." Because by the time Amazon's Kindle came out, ebook readers had an expectation of paying $4.99-$9.99 for an ebook. Because originally, people did not realize that the bulk of Amazon's ebook catalog was self-published books, people thought they were getting "deals" because the expectation was that ebooks costs $4.99-$9.99.

But then the market became flooded with low-priced books, and, in the beginning, low quality. That is when the "self published books are crap" mantra started. Before Amazon, there were plenty of bad self-published books, but because most digital retailers curated their virtual shelves, readers didn't see them. So the self published books people were exposed to met certain minimum expectations (because the ebook sellers were in the market to sell ebooks, and only ebooks, it was in their interest to make sure they didn't spook customers away with a ton of crap in the store).

But Amazon didn't curate. Amazon sold anything and everything. And all the crap that had previously been hidden from customers flooded to the surface.

Regardless, the existence of ebooks is not relevant. Even today, trade publishers are not selling the work of new authors for 99 cents as the norm. Even today that doesn't happen.

I apologize in advance for being nitpicky. Having had website issues all week is probably putting me in a bad mood.

That said, in the post I was responding to, you said

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents. Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.

While I agree that ebooks have been around for a while, Nora Roberts published her first book in 1981; Stephen King published his first in 1973. Both were comfortably before the mid-90s, and, as trad-pubbed authors, had not control over their pricing, anyway. I think there is an argument to be made for pricing lower as a newbie indie author, just as there is for permafree first-in-series. Indies, after all, don't have all the promotional opportunities and advantages that trad publishers have, which to me suggests that following the same strategy the trad pubs follow might be a mistake. I think the problem is so many people overdoing it so much, creating the glut you described earlier. More nuanced and restrained use of the tactic might have some value. In the old days, virtually every book store had a bargain table, and those bargain items moved fast. They drew customers, who then also bought some full-price items as well. Of course, there were a much more limited number of bargain books relative to the whole store than is probably the case in the kindle store. That's a critical difference.

It's true that trads still don't debut people's ebooks at $0.99, but they may err in the other direction, given their stated desire to slow the adoption of the ebook format. I've also heard complaints from some people that trad publishers overpriced their ebooks, which ended up not selling well. The people I'm familiar with weren't pushing for $0.99 either--they just wanted the ebook to be comfortably below the paperback price. In a couple of cases, they self-published when their rights reverted and did better than the publishers had, both in terms of sales and revenues.

A better guideline than the trads might be how experienced indies, such as yourself, price ebooks. I think you posted about that at the other place, if I recall correctly. (Or maybe I'm thinking of your helpful information about pricing paperbacks.) What this thread needs might be a little feedback from indies who price higher and are successful. Or maybe that deserves a pinned thread of its own.

The situation is unlikely to change unless a fairly large mass of indies starts pricing higher. Of course, Amazon could raise the minimum price, at least for full-length books. But since, as you point out, Amazon wants to sell Kindles, and a lot of cheap ebooks to fill them helps do that, I think that's unlikely to happen.

[Bill Hiatt]

Whether or not anyone wants to admit it, we know exactly how we got here, and I mean exactly; hint: it was Indies/self-publishers. But as Tom says, it doesn't matter who says what now, this is the new world order. CPC marketing is more of the same, but that's not going anywhere anytime soon either. As I've said before, there's enough newbies, wannabes and hatters out there to keep all of these predatory platforms supplied with content, no matter how onerous the terms of use become.

The only way to win is not to play...

We need a better, more creator friendly, curated platform – a better mouse trap kind of thing. It's only going to get worse until we do.

Indie authors certainly contributed, but I think it's important to note the forces that shaped those decisions.

As Julie points out, Amazon encourages low price points (though not necessarily $0.99)...

Amazon didn't encourage 99 cent price points any more than it encouraged $9.99 price points. Most Indies had/have zero business experience. Back in 2012, no one was talking about branding or messaging or even practical marketing. But virtually every self-publisher had seen advertisements for Memorial Day mattress sales. They all understood how to compete on price, or thought they did - and that's what drove down prices: they didn't have to outrun the bear, just their fellow self-publishers.

But I would have to say that Amazon, at the very least, appears to be complicit in the misuses of their platform, simply because they chose not to address the behavior when it came up. I mean, everything Nora is talking about is ancient history in Indie world.

Have you checked out the pricing tool, which now seems to typically recommend $2.99 to everyone? True, that's not $0.99, but it is the lowest price point for the 70% royalty, which seems a little bit as if it's in general a push for lower prices.

Amazon didn't stop the behavior because, as Julie points out, it was to its advantage to have a lot of cheap Kindle content.

Also, the behavior worked for some people. I used to know someone on the KDP forum who priced everything at $0.99, regardless of length. She made $30,000 a month. There are other examples.

That said, I don't disagree that the $0.99 strategy has been much overused. I'm just suggesting indie authors weren't working in a vacuum when they made those choices.

I didn't mean to suggest the 'cheap' (commodity) strategy doesn't work, after all, they sell lots of mattresses on Memorial Day weekend too. But this is still the impetus that devalued the fiction market. The $2.99 recommendation is more of the same. It comes from a statistically high number of books being published at that price, and these publishers are setting that price based on the 70% royalty rate as you point out. Again, they are gravitating to this price because it is the lowest available at the better royalty rate, not because of an analysis of market expectations.

I'm like a broken record at this point, but this is why traditional publishing was losing their collective minds and doing everything possible to discredit Indies - we were destroying their industry along with our own. These companies are not run by clueless ****, they're run by greedy conglomerates. They were just circling the wagons, but we set the wagons on fire and have effectively wrecked the entire publishing industry.

Which is why I keep talking about a new disruption - in spite of the success of some, the industry itself is in free-fall.

I agree with the general point about the problems of pricing too low, but I'm inclined to question the idea that the entire publishing industry is wrecked. In fact, the trad revenue picture looks more or less steady. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271931/revenue-of-the-us-book-publishing-industry/ I'm sure the trads would rather have seen enormous growth rather than a relatively flatline situation, but part of that, to judge from Author Earnings Reports, is that indies are taking a bigger piece of the pie. If we had an accurate picture of indie earnings, we might well find that publishing income as a whole has actually grown.

[sstreet]

All I gotta say about all this is you all are a lot smarter than me!!

That aside. The world is full of literary snobs which could mean a lot of things. Some people only like trade-pub authors that come out with snazzy covers and have awards and NYTBS tags after their names, but on the flip-side there are people like me who couldn't give two craps about that junk. I read a book a day at least (which I likely couldn't sustain without KU). Nora Roberts is not considering this because of who she is and what she does, but not everyone cares. I know I sure don't. And that doesn't mean she isn't great, she is, but you know what? I really like the $0.99 books and FREE with KU books I read daily just as much...probably. I can't afford to read her books since I keep forgetting to return library books and my fee is too high to borrow any of them (I'm kidding) But come on. She is living in the past when it comes to readers, in my opinion, and only looking at this from her own lofty perspective, no disrespect. I'd love to be in her lofty position.

I guess my point is, it doesn't have to be an either/or situation. Why can't we just co-exist?

[lyndabelle]

I'm going through a complete redistribution of my catalog as I'm continuing going wide this year. And I really thought through how to price my books to do this. Now, I do have romantic shorts, one - two hour reads. These don't usually sell well above $0.99. I even put a series together into an omnibus edition, but at $2.99. That way, I usually use the first in the series to promote it as a permafree or freebie/giveaway.

With that said, I have noticed when I was doing new releases, if I sold them even slightly higher, like at $1.99, which I did for one of my shorts, it tanked, badly. But when I lowered the price to $0.99, it started to sell. I'm not sure if this is because the buying public is trained to buy at $0.99 or not. I still even get complaints that a person is getting a short for $0.99 instead of a full novel. But even at $2.99, it's still not going to break my costs. But raising it to a higher price doesn't seem to sell them. I'm not sure if that's because I'm more of a prawnie level author or what. But I'd rather have my books sell than not sell. Having a novel sit and not sell at $4.99, but then sell at $2.99? Which would you choose?

Not to mention the fact that AMS costs so much more than the previous version of advertising on the Zon. I keep hitting the run out of budget on my ads, and if I raise it, my costs will go through the roof. I mean, $100 of advertising a month is about my cap. And still, I'm only making like $25 on Amazon from selling books. SO, the whole AMS ads seem like a scam these days. I was able to get the old system to work for me better, but now that I can't advertise ANY of my spicy or erotic titles, I'm stuck with just the contemporary romances. So, yeah, Amazon REALLY doesn't care about it's authors, and you have to really pick price points that work for your business plan. My current wide plan is starting to get on track again, but it's taken 6 months to get my sales numbers back up. But luckily, I have to release the last half of my catalog still. So, doing better than being in KU. But heah, that's a whole other thread of discussion, right?

Anyway, I find that moving the price of books out of $0.99 or $2.99 for a full novel seems to kill sales, and I'm guessing, people are just conditioned now to buy at those prices. Though, I did hear at a romance con from a reader that she likes to read strictly Indie, and not the trads. So, here's a positive. In all this pricing and marketing we've been doing in the last several years, an Indie market has been created for readers to choose from. And maybe that is something special in itself.

[LD]

With that said, I have noticed when I was doing new releases, if I sold them even slightly higher, like at $1.99, which I did for one of my shorts, it tanked, badly. But when I lowered the price to $0.99, it started to sell. I'm not sure if this is because the buying public is trained to buy at $0.99 or not.

$1.99 is considered a dead zone.  Not high enough to give the impression it's a worthy read, and not low enough to give the impression it's a good deal on promotions.

I price according to word count.

[David VanDyke]

It's a matter of scale I think. 2000 is a very active author doing a lot of advertising. 10,000 is an excessive amount.

More totally unsupported opinion, with no basis in fact. This is like a small business owner claiming Coke spending $100M on a Super Bowl ad is "suspicious." He has no experience with that level of ad spend, so he thinks it's somehow "suspicious" or unfair.

Baloney.

I generally spend 4 figures of advertising per month. I could easily do 5 figures. I don't because I find there's diminishing returns and it's not worth it to me--but it's worth it to others. The numbers don't magically equate to "suspicious."

Advertising is what drives business. Period. I work in contract packaging. When a client drops $250,000 on displays to go in stores to market a new toothpaste, are they "purchasing their way to success" or are they doing what they are supposed to be doing: promoting their product?

There is nothing nefarious about buying advertising. That is a normal business practice and has been for CENTURIES. Even so called "word of mouth" and "viral" success is launched with advertising.

This ^

[Lorri Moulton]

As more people 'go wide' I don't know why $1.99 is seen as a dead zone.  It pays $1.18 on D2D. 

Since going wide, I price my short stories at 99c and $1.99, novellas at $2.99 and novels at $3.99.  My non-fiction is shorter, but I have that at $4.99.  It's trial and error, but these prices seem to work for now.  I don't sell huge amounts of books, but again...I can't afford to pay for advertising.

That's not to say advertising isn't a good idea.  I am just trying some options that take more time than money right now.

[TimothyEllis]

I'm sure the trads would rather have seen enormous growth rather than a relatively flatline situation, but part of that, to judge from Author Earnings Reports, is that indies are taking a bigger piece of the pie. If we had an accurate picture of indie earnings, we might well find that publishing income as a whole has actually grown.

Dataguy at the 2018 Nebula conference. He proved it. The presentation is on youtube.

Ebook sales are booming, not growing.

The Trads are losing ground to Indies at a rapid rate.

[Bill Hiatt]

It's a matter of scale I think. 2000 is a very active author doing a lot of advertising. 10,000 is an excessive amount.

More totally unsupported opinion, with no basis in fact. This is like a small business owner claiming Coke spending $100M on a Super Bowl ad is "suspicious." He has no experience with that level of ad spend, so he thinks it's somehow "suspicious" or unfair.

Baloney.

I generally spend 4 figures of advertising per month. I could easily do 5 figures. I don't because I find there's diminishing returns and it's not worth it to me--but it's worth it to others. The numbers don't magically equate to "suspicious."

Advertising is what drives business. Period. I work in contract packaging. When a client drops $250,000 on displays to go in stores to market a new toothpaste, are they "purchasing their way to success" or are they doing what they are supposed to be doing: promoting their product?

There is nothing nefarious about buying advertising. That is a normal business practice and has been for CENTURIES. Even so called "word of mouth" and "viral" success is launched with advertising.

This ^

Unfortunately, the fact that some scammers allegedly have big ad spends has led some people to conclude that big ad spends are inherently wrong. There's nothing wrong with it if you know what you're doing and if you're not using it in conjunction with questionable practices.

Whether an ad spend is reasonable or not depends on what an author's ROI is, not on the raw spending total.

[TimothyEllis]

Unfortunately, the fact that some scammers allegedly have big ad spends has led some people to conclude that big ad spends are inherently wrong. There's nothing wrong with it if you know what you're doing and if you're not using it in conjunction with questionable practices.

Whether an ad spend is reasonable or not depends on what an author's ROI is, not on the raw spending total.

Unfortunately, it makes a mockery of ranking systems. Those with money can buy their way to the top. Everyone else cant.

Personally I think AMS is the worst thing to happen to eBooks.

Ranks used to mean something. Now the top ranks dont mean this is a great book, it means most of the top ranks were bought. Getting a top rank without spending tens of thousands is now the exception to the rule, unless you have a huge mailing list, in which case you get there, but only a big spend can keep you there.

With pay to play, the majority of us are basically screwed before we start. I'm resigned to never getting above 1500 again.

[PJ Post]

The really weird thing is that Amazon's original claim to fame was their recommendation algo. And as far as I can tell, they've pretty much abandoned it in favor of CPC marketing. And while AMS may make way way way more money, the customer experience is clearly suffering. I'm having a hard time finding stuff on Amazon lately because so much of my search is filled up with sponsored products, rather than what I'm actually looking for. But they're big enough now (monopoly powers) that they don't care. They're making money on both ends, their customers are their customers, and so are their vendors.

[Bill Hiatt]

I'm sure the trads would rather have seen enormous growth rather than a relatively flatline situation, but part of that, to judge from Author Earnings Reports, is that indies are taking a bigger piece of the pie. If we had an accurate picture of indie earnings, we might well find that publishing income as a whole has actually grown.

Dataguy at the 2018 Nebula conference. He proved it. The presentation is on youtube.

Ebook sales are booming, not growing.

The Trads are losing ground to Indies at a rapid rate.

Here's the link for those who might be interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdXU2V_Wr48

Of course, he's only talking about two genres, but the figures are consistent with his earlier reports. A case could be made that the publishing industry is changing rather than being destroyed.

[Bill Hiatt]

Unfortunately, the fact that some scammers allegedly have big ad spends has led some people to conclude that big ad spends are inherently wrong. There's nothing wrong with it if you know what you're doing and if you're not using it in conjunction with questionable practices.

Whether an ad spend is reasonable or not depends on what an author's ROI is, not on the raw spending total.

Unfortunately, it makes a mockery of ranking systems. Those with money can buy their way to the top. Everyone else cant.

Personally I think AMS is the worst thing to happen to eBooks.

Ranks used to mean something. Now the top ranks dont mean this is a great book, it means most of the top ranks were bought. Getting a top rank without spending tens of thousands is now the exception to the rule, unless you have a huge mailing list, in which case you get there, but only a big spend can keep you there.

With pay to play, the majority of us are basically screwed before we start. I'm resigned to never getting above 1500 again.

There's no denying that it's harder to get up to a higher rank. I used to do better, at least in the subgenres, when I first started than I can do now, despite having a larger (but still prawny) fan base.

On the other hand, isn't what you're describing pretty much true in any business? Don't the companies with the biggest ad budgets tend to also have the highest sales?

Getting into better ranks is harder also because the competition keeps growing in numbers. One of the reasons some indies started spending more on ads was that it was harder and harder to get visibility. In other words, I think big ad spends are partially a result of visibility issues, not just the cause of them.

I'm not a big fan of AMS ads, either, but I think if they didn't exist, the people who are spending huge money on them would simply be spending huge money outside Amazon. True, FB ads might not be as effective, but clearly someone dumping huge amounts of money into FB would have a better chance than someone with modest ad spends or none.

Perhaps PJ Post is right, and we need to develop a completely new set of platforms and a new business model. But in what business model is ad spend not going to have an impact? I don't see that problem going away.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love it if books rose or fell solely on merit, as determined by readers. But readers can't support what they don't know exists.

It would also be great if self publishing gave everyone an equal chance to succeed. That's never really been the case, though, even at the beginning. People who could afford better editing, covers, etc. would always have had an advantage. I heard people bemoan how expensive self publishing could be long before AMS ads even existed.

[Bill Hiatt]

The really weird thing is that Amazon's original claim to fame was their recommendation algo. And as far as I can tell, they've pretty much abandoned it in favor of CPC marketing. And while AMS may make way way way more money, the customer experience is clearly suffering. I'm having a hard time finding stuff on Amazon lately because so much of my search is filled up with sponsored products, rather than what I'm actually looking for. But they're big enough now (monopoly powers) that they don't care. They're making money on both ends, their customers are their customers, and so are their vendors.

This may depend on where one is (and what kind of A/B testing Amazon is doing). I think we all agree that there's too much advertising on the product pages, but mine are still showing also boughts at the top, right under the cover and product description, I tried searching for fantasy. The search results had one big ad at the top, followed by two sponsored product ads. There were also two ads at the bottom. All the other search results were actual search results. It's easy enough to skim over the sponsored product ads if one wants.

[Anarchist]

Unfortunately, the fact that some scammers allegedly have big ad spends has led some people to conclude that big ad spends are inherently wrong. There's nothing wrong with it if you know what you're doing and if you're not using it in conjunction with questionable practices.

Whether an ad spend is reasonable or not depends on what an author's ROI is, not on the raw spending total.

Unfortunately, it makes a mockery of ranking systems. Those with money can buy their way to the top. Everyone else cant.

No more so than the ability to buy one's way onto the NYT bestseller's list.

Personally I think AMS is the worst thing to happen to eBooks.

Maybe. But for me, AMS has been an absolute boon.

I prioritize my own success over the state of a market.

Ranks used to mean something.

Sales ranking systems that are shown to customers have always been flawed. They're a form of social proof, so they get gamed. It's inevitable.

I'm pragmatic. I look for ways to exploit the current state of things.

Getting a top rank without spending tens of thousands is now the exception to the rule, unless you have a huge mailing list, in which case you get there, but only a big spend can keep you there.

I got into publishing as a business. From the beginning, I focused on PPC and email. I could see the direction the winds were blowing. Everyone could (I'm not clairvoyant).

Today, I have a big ad spend and big mailing lists. I ignore everything else. I'm not launching under 100 like Amanda, Wayne, and Ellsworth. But I can easily get under 500.

I've never been a complainer. If something is unfair, I don't agitate about it. I try to get on the right side of it.

[Lorri Moulton]

As others have mentioned, if Amazon changes anything, it will be for the readers.  If enough readers stop buying on Amazon because they can't find the books they're looking for in the appropriate areas, they'll go elsewhere.  And the advertising money will follow the readers.

[Bill Hiatt]

I watched the Data Guy video that Timothy pointed out earlier. (This is perhaps why I'm still a prawn--I keep doing things that take me away from writing!)

I wrote a long post summarizing DG's findings, only to realize I might be running into infringing on copyright territory, so I'll be much more general and let you watch the video for the evidence.

In the genres examined (fantasy and science fiction) for the period examined (April 2017-April 2018), based on ebook sales at Amazon, Apple, and Barnes and Noble, trad publishers are doing OK, indies are doing better on unit sales, somewhat worse on gross dollars, better on gross author share of dollars, than their trad counterparts. There are more indies, of course, but the number is not grossly larger than the increased size of their unit sales. There isn't much fodder here for the narrative that the publishing industry is collapsing. (That doesn't mean that it couldn't, merely that it isn't trending in that direction. Ebook sales are up considerable in the two genres studied.)

There are more indie authors in the top 2000 in these genres than there are trads. Make of that what you will.

In terms of pricing, most of the trad ebook prices fall between $7 and $9. Most of the indie prices fall between $3 and $5. Is the difference justified by differences in production cost and other overhead? DG didn't address that question.

He did say something interesting to the effect that the indies that were most successful were likely to find their way to the optimum price point for their work. I thought it would be interesting to look at some successful indies and see how they're pricing. (I just picked a few names I knew. This isn't a scientific sample. Also, I got a general feel for prices without trying to get an exact average.)

Amanda Lee: $3.99 to $4.99, with $9.99 box sets
Bella Forrest: $3.99 to $4.99, with at least one $0.99 (the first book in a fifty book series)
Michael Anderle $4.99 (with at least one $0.99 box set, but I don't know if that's a promotional price)
(Not relevant to the discussion of ebook prices, but I noticed Anderle prices most paperbacks at $9.99, while Forrest varies more but seems to average over $20.)

At that point, I decided to look at Amazon's fantasy top 100. I didn't have the patience to be really systematic about it, but it appears the predominate indie price point for listed books is generally $3.99 or $4.99. There were some $2.99, one of which was trad published. There were a couple at $1.99 (from 47 North, one of Amazon's imprints--go figure), and two $0.99, both from the same author and both with man chest covers, whatever that may or may not tell us. Most of the trad books covered a wider range from $6.95 to $13.99.

From this quick, unscientific survey, it looks to me as if the $3.99 to $4.99 zone might be the current sweet spot for indie novels, at least to judge from those who are successful sellers. There's some room for lower--it doesn't appear low price points are an automatic turnoff if some of them are hitting the top 100. Still, the variety of people pricing in the range mentioned above and succeeding there is striking.

Take all of that for whatever it's worth.

[bardsandsages]

That said, in the post I was responding to, you said

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents. Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.

While I agree that ebooks have been around for a while, Nora Roberts published her first book in 1981; Stephen King published his first in 1973. Both were comfortably before the mid-90s, and, as trad-pubbed authors, had not control over their pricing, anyway. I think there is an argument to be made for pricing lower as a newbie indie author, just as there is for permafree first-in-series.

It doesn't matter when Roberts or King first published. Even today, trade publishers don't price their new authors cheaper than their bestsellers. They just don't. Because their costs for publishing a first time author are the same as their cost for publishing a bestseller (with the up-front difference of an advance). But the cost of running the printing presses doesn't change because it is a new author. The price of paper is fixed by the commodities market. Shipping and warehousing costs are the same. Your accountanting and legal departments get paid the same regardless of who you are publishing.

Insofar as trade publishers overpricing their ebooks, they price based on their profit structures. Indies, alas, often think backwards. They think they have to get a great sales rank before they can make money. Sales rank is a BYPRODUCT of sales, not the other way around. The indie obsession with sales rank causes a lot of the disconnect when it comes to looking at pricing. You think trade ebooks are overpriced because you are looking at it as an indie with no real corporate overhead and expenses.

Trade publishers are following a very common business model. Early adopters will be willing to pay more for a product when it first comes out. The marketing mantra is that you can always drop your price, but it is almost impossible to raise it. Psychologically, having a list price of say $10 for an ebook gives you more flexibility down the road for marketing. Because maybe one day they put the book on sale 50% off, and then all of those people who wouldn't buy it for $10 suddenly say, "WOW! It's 50%! I should get it now while it is on sale."

Because remember, Amazon allows the trades to actually "show" a sales price. And showing that discount is a huge psychological motivation. If your book is always 99 cents, there is literally no reason to get it now. I can buy it later for 99 cents. But with higher priced items, people will jump on a 50% off sale because it is time-sensitive. With a price-matched lower price, the customer thinks your sale price is the regular price and there is no time sensitivity to buy now.

I price most of my books around $5, but I use coupons through Smashwords and Drivethru all the time, because in order for something to be a "deal" it has to have a higher perceived value than what you are asking the customer to pay. This is why things like coupons and BOGO deals work so well in the retail environment.

Think about any new product that comes out: cereal, soup, cleaning products. Do they price at dollar store prices when they come out? No. They don't. New products price themselves the same as their competition, because they want customers to think of them as the same quality as their competition. Then they use other incentives to encourage customers to try. Maybe it is a coupon for $1 off. Or maybe it is a rebate. Or maybe it is a buy one/get one free. Or a loyalty program (buy X number of products and get Y for free). But they do everything in their power to preserve their list price because they don't want customers to simply think about their brands in terms of price. Because when people think about you only in terms of price, you become an interchangeable commodity.

[Tom Wood]

The authorearnings.com website is down, but here is the pricing/sales chart for SF&F from the presentation in that video by Data Guy:

[Bill Hiatt]

That said, in the post I was responding to, you said

Nora Roberts was once a first-time author. Her first book was not sold at 99 cents. Stephen King was once a first-time author. His first book was not sold at 99 cents.

While I agree that ebooks have been around for a while, Nora Roberts published her first book in 1981; Stephen King published his first in 1973. Both were comfortably before the mid-90s, and, as trad-pubbed authors, had not control over their pricing, anyway. I think there is an argument to be made for pricing lower as a newbie indie author, just as there is for permafree first-in-series.

It doesn't matter when Roberts or King first published. Even today, trade publishers don't price their new authors cheaper than their bestsellers. They just don't. Because their costs for publishing a first time author are the same as their cost for publishing a bestseller (with the up-front difference of an advance). But the cost of running the printing presses doesn't change because it is a new author. The price of paper is fixed by the commodities market. Shipping and warehousing costs are the same. Your accountanting and legal departments get paid the same regardless of who you are publishing.

Insofar as trade publishers overpricing their ebooks, they price based on their profit structures. Indies, alas, often think backwards. They think they have to get a great sales rank before they can make money. Sales rank is a BYPRODUCT of sales, not the other way around. The indie obsession with sales rank causes a lot of the disconnect when it comes to looking at pricing. You think trade ebooks are overpriced because you are looking at it as an indie with no real corporate overhead and expenses.

Trade publishers are following a very common business model. Early adopters will be willing to pay more for a product when it first comes out. The marketing mantra is that you can always drop your price, but it is almost impossible to raise it. Psychologically, having a list price of say $10 for an ebook gives you more flexibility down the road for marketing. Because maybe one day they put the book on sale 50% off, and then all of those people who wouldn't buy it for $10 suddenly say, "WOW! It's 50%! I should get it now while it is on sale."

Because remember, Amazon allows the trades to actually "show" a sales price. And showing that discount is a huge psychological motivation. If your book is always 99 cents, there is literally no reason to get it now. I can buy it later for 99 cents. But with higher priced items, people will jump on a 50% off sale because it is time-sensitive. With a price-matched lower price, the customer thinks your sale price is the regular price and there is no time sensitivity to buy now.

I price most of my books around $5, but I use coupons through Smashwords and Drivethru all the time, because in order for something to be a "deal" it has to have a higher perceived value than what you are asking the customer to pay. This is why things like coupons and BOGO deals work so well in the retail environment.

Think about any new product that comes out: cereal, soup, cleaning products. Do they price at dollar store prices when they come out? No. They don't. New products price themselves the same as their competition, because they want customers to think of them as the same quality as their competition. Then they use other incentives to encourage customers to try. Maybe it is a coupon for $1 off. Or maybe it is a rebate. Or maybe it is a buy one/get one free. Or a loyalty program (buy X number of products and get Y for free). But they do everything in their power to preserve their list price because they don't want customers to simply think about their brands in terms of price. Because when people think about you only in terms of price, you become an interchangeable commodity.

As always, you're providing much food for thought.

I think I wasn't making myself clear. I wasn't trying to suggest that pricing everything at $0.99 is a good strategy. I don't think it is at all. What I was suggesting was that trad pricing wasn't necessarily always a good model for indie pricing. In a POD environment, we're not paying upfront for running the printing presses, paper, warehousing, or shipping. Ebooks, of course, have none of those, anyway. We don't in general have legal or accounting departments. (Those of us running small presses might.)

However, in spite of the fact that we have less infrastructure to maintain, I agree with you completely that going for the lowest possible price, even when one is new, is a mistake. I would argue that newbies trying to build an audience might want a somewhat lower price point in the same way that restaurants often start out with lower prices when they first open (or at least send out floods of coupons)--not because of the sales rank, but simply because people tend to try something new more easily when trying is incentivized. I know trad publishers don't typically operate that way, but a lot of businesses have special introductory prices, and new software updates often debut with a limited-time introductory price. (Obviously, a limited-time introductory price is a lot different from having a low price all of the time.)

The price point you mention in your last post, the range Data Guy gives, and my own observations from looking at the top 100 list, all support the idea that successful indies are not generally pricing at $0.99. Even if the trads aren't necessarily always a good model for us, one would expect that successful indies would be. 

[Bill Hiatt]

The authorearnings.com website is down, but here is the pricing/sales chart for SF&F from the presentation in that video by Data Guy:

I fear that site might be down permanently, but near the end of the presentation Data Guy says he's trying to find ways to make his data available to indies. He simply hasn't found the right business model for it. (That could be an indirect way of saying he hasn't found a way to charge for it that would be reasonable for indies without being offensive to his larger corporate clients. But at least he's thinking about it.)

I don't think indies need anywhere nearly as much data as his corporate clients get. A few big-picture stats like his old reports used to have would probably be enough for most of us. If I recall correctly from looking at his website when he first monetized his data, it looked as if corporate clients were buying a ton of information, with estimated sales figures even down to the author level. While that data might be interesting, it isn't really necessary.

[okey dokey]

I wish Bill Gates and Microsoft had looked at pricing as we indies do.
"We have a new product, Windows. But nobody has heard of it So let's introduce it for free. If it generates interest, then we'll jump the price to 99 cents. It'll show profit at that price point, since we can buy blank discs in bulk for one penny. All we're doing is just copying the program.
"What we really want to do is hit the best seller chart. We can't do that until it's in the hands of a lot of people."

Welcome to the indie world, Bill.

[Bill Hiatt]

I wish Bill Gates and Microsoft had looked at pricing as we indies do.
"We have a new product, Windows. But nobody has heard of it So let's introduce it for free. If it generates interest, then we'll jump the price to 99 cents. It'll show profit at that price point, since we can buy blank discs in bulk for one penny. All we're doing is just copying the program.
"What we really want to do is hit the best seller chart. We can't do that until it's in the hands of a lot of people."

Welcome to the indie world, Bill.

Ha! I'm not sure whether that's sarcastic or not.

Probably, no two industries are exactly the same, though as Julie points out, there are some psychological factors about pricing that are common to many.

Microsoft enormously expanded its audience by giving MS-DOS away for free. Yes, I'm old enough to remember when DOS was the basic operating system, and when switching to one that didn't come with the computer cost money. I'm also old enough to remember when browsers used to cost money. Then, beginning with Windows 95, Microsoft started bundling Internet Explorer for free. Subsequently, other companies released free browsers (because they had no choice if they wanted to compete with IE). Oh, and remember when Microsoft, which used to charge for software updates, popped out Windows 10 for free? Remember when it started offering free cloud storage through OneDrive? Microsoft is no stranger to giving away things for free as a way of boosting market share--even if Windows 10 backfired to some extent.

Speaking of cloud storage, think about Dropbox, which has a free plan to get users hooked. People who like it can graduate to paid plans with more storage and other features. Some other cloud storage companies do the same. Many premium Wordpress plugins follow the same strategy--a free, limited feature version from which people can upgrade if they wish. Some kinds of software work the same way. Also, a lot of software has free, thirty-day trials.

Obviously, there's no good way to publish books with a free version and a paid version. I'm not suggesting that the software model can be adapted to us. Nor am I suggesting, as I tried to clarify earlier, that indies should be pricing full-length novels at $0.99. For most purposes, that's too low a regular price point. I am merely pointing out that companies don't always follow exactly the same model, and that some even use free or cheap as ways of building market share, just as some indies have.

[bardsandsages]

I think I wasn't making myself clear. I wasn't trying to suggest that pricing everything at $0.99 is a good strategy. I don't think it is at all. What I was suggesting was that trad pricing wasn't necessarily always a good model for indie pricing. In a POD environment, we're not paying upfront for running the printing presses, paper, warehousing, or shipping. Ebooks, of course, have none of those, anyway. We don't in general have legal or accounting departments. (Those of us running small presses might.)

Keep in mind, however, that indies will generally have higher per unit production costs for print due to POD. It costs $2.50-$4 to print the typical trade paperback novel via POD. The per unit cost for offset printing is around $1. And even with ebooks, though Amazon "theoretically" pays a higher royalty, the reality is the trades have different price agreements with Amazon (they aren't forced to allow lending, aren't being charged delivery fees, have more control over their listings and what appears on their pages. Penguin isn't accepting 35% on a book listed over $9.99. Yes, we have much lower overhead than large publishing houses, but that is somewhat offset by the limitations Amazon and other outlets place on us and other hidden costs of doing business.

I would argue that newbies trying to build an audience might want a somewhat lower price point in the same way that restaurants often start out with lower prices when they first open (or at least send out floods of coupons)

Again, don't confuse an incentive with "general low price." Companies work very hard to preserve their pricing structures. A coupon for "buy one dinner, get one free" is NOT psychologically the same thing as "$5 steak dinners"...even if the end result to the consumer's wallet is the same. I know it sounds like I am splitting hairs, but that is because I work in contract packaging, and these differentiations matter.

Example (and ugly little industry secret): Next time you go to the store, pay attention to the "number of servings per container" on your favorite brands. What it over time. It fluctuates depending on the time of year. The package itself remains the same size (as does the price) but the volume of product in the packaging will fluctuate based on the commodities market. When the cost of rice is low, for example, your package of Rice-a-Roni or Lipton rice and sauce may be 3 servings per container. When the cost of rice is high, it goes to 2.5 servings per container. Instead of changing their price every time the commodities market changes, most manufacturers simply change the number of servings in the package. Hint: whenever you see a "new packaging! same great taste" promo, it often indicates a volume change.

That is my only point. The price you set for your book is going to set the perceived value of the product. Once you set the perceived value, then you can incentivize customers with sales and deals...but not until they first see the "value" to encourage the purchase during the "sale."

[bardsandsages]

Speaking of cloud storage, think about Dropbox, which has a free plan to get users hooked. People who like it can graduate to paid plans with more storage and other features. Some other cloud storage companies do the same. Many premium Wordpress plugins follow the same strategy--a free, limited feature version from which people can upgrade if they wish. Some kinds of software work the same way. Also, a lot of software has free, thirty-day trials

Most free online services aren't actually interested in selling products. They are interested in gathering data, which has value. Facebook is a "free" service, but they make a lot of money gathering information on users to sell to advertisers. Or they are hoping to sell to a bigger company for profit based on the site's traffic (like that-site-that-shall-not-be-named).

[guest1291]

Example (and ugly little industry secret): Next time you go to the store, pay attention to the "number of servings per container" on your favorite brands. What it over time. It fluctuates depending on the time of year. The package itself remains the same size (as does the price) but the volume of product in the packaging will fluctuate based on the commodities market. When the cost of rice is low, for example, your package of Rice-a-Roni or Lipton rice and sauce may be 3 servings per container. When the cost of rice is high, it goes to 2.5 servings per container. Instead of changing their price every time the commodities market changes, most manufacturers simply change the number of servings in the package. Hint: whenever you see a "new packaging! same great taste" promo, it often indicates a volume change.

That is my only point. The price you set for your book is going to set the perceived value of the product. Once you set the perceived value, then you can incentivize customers with sales and deals...but not until they first see the "value" to encourage the purchase during the "sale."

Amazing. I'm going to start doing this on my books. Same great covers and packaging on the outside at the same price point, but with fluctuating word counts on the inside dependent on my personal mental energy stores in any given month when I'm writing or crafting my work.

So, with food at the grocery store, companies slyly increase my price per gram from $0.02 to $0.04 in tandem with what's happening in the commodities markets, I'm going to do the same with my price per word in tandem with my physical/mental constitution at the time I create.

Same great looking book, same price as usual, reduced by 8-10k words this time around. Maybe at the bottom of the blurb for Book 1 it says my book contains 70,000 words, for Book 2 (at the same price) it simply states word count: 62,000 words.

Okay, I might not actually do this, but I'm not completely convinced it wouldn't be justifiable for indie businesses. Are there indies out there who price their works by the word?

Regardless, I find this whole subject and conversation fascinating. I'm learning a lot too. I appreciate everyone's thoughtful posts here.

[Bill Hiatt]

Yes, this is why it's so hard to get anything done when there's a hot topic. But one does pick up quite a bit from following the conversation.

[guest1291]

Yes, this is why it's so hard to get anything done when there's a hot topic. But one does pick up quite a bit from following the conversation.

Amen to that. I haven't written a lick today.