05 Jan 2012, Posted by caburkes in Writing, 0 Comments Tagged FREE, JANE, JANES, POD, SPECIFICALLY, Steve Jobs
Of eBooks, Downloads, Comments and Reviews
The idea of setting up a fan base off of free short stories is working on one front, but not entirely on another. Also during this experiment, I am also discovering which portal delivers more readership than others as well.
For instance, over at Smashwords.com, The Daylight Werewolf has over 600 downloads, but two comments/ratings. Both positive and 4-5 stars, but the lack of comments and ratings doesn’t reflect or balance with the amount of downloads. Same with the other stories: people are not just clicking links, they’re physically downloading the work by choice and some sort of conversion is indicating a few are actually advising others to download it too. Not a lot of conversion, but the numbers show an increase in each of the short stories to be sure.
At least at Smashwords. Over at WattPad.com, things just came to a dead halt. The same short stories held relatively low numbers since uploaded.
What I have learned from YouTube is your work increases in views/downloads the more you upload. So, you put up a movie now, get a couple of views, but up another movie next week, now both are suddenly getting more views. Put up a third and so on. Your older stuff gets more play the more you put up something recent.
Same with short stories, but that also depends on where you put it.
Places like gather.com works well with very current topical articles and I just recently gave it a shot uploading short stories (fiction verses commentary). So far so good, but nothing beats Smashwords.
That includes Lulu.com. But I think the ability for anyone to see a lulu.com free short story is based on how much people see the ones they have to pay for. I was considering starting the Butta‘ eBook series through LuLu, but with Smashwords giving my stuff more play and visibility ‘for free’, why even bother with Lulu at all except for the hardcopy versions.
Of course, more data needs to be accessed and I’m not judging any one service yet. Amazon’s direct Kindle service is still a possible player. I’m not opposed to using as many services as possible either. If I were to consider all roads lead to Amazon.com, my considerations have to be:
- Who gives the best percentage?
- Who POD’s quickly and puts it into stores?
- Who gets the best visibility?
So far Smashwords gives the best visibility for eBooks, and they arrange to have your work available for other readers and stores if you’re part of the premium catalog. Including Amazon. The more I think about it, the more I think Lulu is the move for one and Smashwords for another. while Lulu also does eBooks, the numbers impress me more with Smashwords … BUT NOBODY beats Lulu’s price per hardcopy book. I remember how mad i was that I spent 99.00 at some short-run online website … the name escapes me … and then a few months later, discovered Lulu.com and paid $16 (that includes shipping) for the same exact printing and page count of the same book!
Anyway, I would love more feedback from the short stories I write if so many people are downloading them. I was told by a friend that she doesn’t comment on the things she downloads either, but then I’ll look on Amazon and see 50 comments for one author. 1210 comments for another. All out discussions and practically creating a private social network on a few.
Okay, so they may be more established authors, but still: where are the comments (good bad or indifferent) if people are downloading?
For reviews, I know I have to get ‘novels’ into the circle of places I already know of. That’s not a big deal. Just the average downloader would be nice because it’s much more ‘earthy’ and current from an average user compared to one reviewer that may not get a review back to you for months.
So I had an idea that started with questioning what the value was of an eBook.
I download it, read it and hopefully keep it on my I-whatever to read later. Maybe even delete it if it takes up too much space. Do I transfer it to friends? what else can I do with it? I, personally, don’t have any eBook readers except my IPod Touch and that screen is too small. I want an IPad. I really do.
I seen some really nice eBooks from Apple back when they first swore to change the landscape of eBooks. some with animated pictures which was a plus to me … but only if you had an Apple to make those things for those kinds of eBooks. eBook development isn’t settled yet. The Beta/VHS was is still going on it seems and with Steve Jobs out of the picture, I don’t think anyone at Apple has the balls to make sure one format will stick over an entire industry. That’s why Amazon put out Kindle Fire conveniently after Jobs death. While Apple is talking about a new IPad like they talk about putting out a new IPhone … all this damn hardware is piling up like it was Sega all over again … and we all know what happened to Sega. People really can’t (or shouldn’t) afford a new IPad at $599 every couple of months when it’s really the same thing MAYBE with a new camera or something minimal.
Plus Steve isn’t around to put the “Gotta Buy It” in your brain.
So the idea is to give an extra value to my books. at least starting with the eBooks. starting with the CommonSense series part two, I’m going to add a ‘call to action’ at the end of the story to encourage people to add a review or comment with a link directly to a location to add said comments.
That’s one thing, but I was thinking of offering them something extra as an incentive. Something affordable that I can dole out in bulk, but a nice gesture of appreciation to the reader all the same. Like a promotional pen. It would be free and I get names, email and addresses in order to build a customer/reader database.
One of the more interesting ideas I had was to consider limited edition novels/ebooks. Maybe a novel individually number to a certain count. That doesn’t work well with POD, but the early genesis of Butta, I had printed novels at an external source. So, what if I printed 1000 versions of a book, each with a unique number and I signed them all and issued a certificate of authenticity or something. The first 1000 purchasers would receive it or something like that. That sort of thing always goes on in the book industry but not at a self-publisher level.
Least of all for eBooks. A limited edition eBook? Why would anyone have a limited edition eBook for something that can be copied and distributed? What if that eBook was to be valued. Lets say it’s numbered, it belongs SPECIFICALLY to the buyer and their name is locked into the version. So no matter where it goes, it’s JANES copy of whatever book. Not only that, there are only going to be 1000 copies of that eBook and if you find a bootleg, it’s either a fake copy with no name attached, or a copy from JANE and it was stolen. Either way, JANE will have received in the mail a certificate of authenticity that finalizes it all. So no matter what happens to her eBook (one of only 1000), she gets a lifetime download of her copy if she looses it because she’s an exclusive owner.
These are just thoughts. Brainstorms to get more value out of an eBook.
Another was to dispatch original copies of handwritten pages of the same story to readers: numbered and signed as a gift to show 1) the creative process 2) something they can have that might be a cool investment. Shit, if I had a letter signed by Steve Jobs back when he was on the comeup, how much would it be worth now? I’m thinking of testing that out with a story I’m working on called ‘Blended Family: Lupine’, another werewolf story but a re-adaptation of one I wrote in 1989. I found the original handwritten pages and thought, in exchange for an honest review (good or bad) I can send out numbered and signed pages of the original handwritten version as a gift.
I know, sounds cheesy. Like, ‘do I matter enough that anyone would want my signed and numbered handwritten stories from the past’? who knows. It’ll be a free giveaway in exchange for a comment and an address to mail it. some people may value my stories as much as I do and believe it’s a easy investment of time compared to the future potentials. I don’t have an official page count but from a 5 subject college ruled spiral ThemeBook, I would be tearing out about 25-30 pages. Maybe Less. But it’s also in 5 different drafts. Drafts prior incomplete and title changes. It’s a mess … but a creative mess from the past.
Plus a FREE mess that gets me direct contact with customers. so if I dole out, lets say 150 pages, I’ll get 150 comments plus a customer/reader database. I think it’s a low-overhead chance to take. If it works for the free short story, then I can do the same for stuff that will be priced.
Corey A. Burkes Author/CEO
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