Sam Thomas and I had discussed parodying the BBFC black card more than once, but it really did seem to fit the need this time – specifically, if I was going to include all of each episode’s identifying text on the cover, I’d need a layout that supported it. This was the demo version I sent to the BBFC when asking permission to parody their intellectual property, and it was approved as being ok, but no closer… Nice people, and a nice experience.

Unfortunately, the nagging doubt that it’s just not that iconic outside the UK got to me, and I decided it wasn’t the right project to use the idea. That, and it’s illegible and unidentifiable in a product thumbnail.

Thought I’d share it anyway, not for any reason other than I think it’s cool.

Roz’s post holds some great advice on how to publish serial works (although I’m not comfortable with the idea of categorising a work of fiction using non-fiction categories – that feels like gaming the system to me, and has the potential to annoy readers), so it’s well worth reading if you’re planning to split a novel into episodes.

While I’ve been working this week, some cool news came out of Amazon regarding their new French Kindle store, which is great news for all authors (bigger market) but particularly great for me, given the French focus of my book. With the launch of the Amazon.fr channel in the back of my mind, and while otherwise thinking of the benefits of serial publication:

• Greater visibility/discoverability
• Greater number of potential tags/search results
• Option to give part one away for free if publishing on Smashwords too

another benefit occurred to me.

Amazon’s KDP program allows 7 keyword tags per book. That’s not a lot, so you’d never want to waste a single one on a redundant tag, but with a serialised book, you have (in the case of Make a Move) 6 times the number for the episodic releases, and another 7 for the collected edition. That’s 49 tags, and I can definitely “waste” a few of those. Now, while French and German book buyers will be looking for English language books (the rates of English speaking in those countries is orders of magnitude higher than the number of Americans/British with a second language), that doesn’t mean that they aren’t performing a significant number of native language searches too, which will completely miss your book. By taking some of your tags, translating them into French and German (I recommend Google Translate) and spreading them across a couple of episodes of your book, you can get your work to feature in those searches.

It’s not a major leap in discoverability tricks, but if you had a book you thought would appeal to readers in those markets, wouldn’t you want to give them every chance to find it?

But which is it?

I ask because I’m not too bothered about my author brand. As a writer in control of my own output, I’ve no one telling me what to write, and I intend to exploit that opportunity to the point of abuse. I don’t, however, want to alienate readers by “conning” them into believing I’m only going to be one type of writer, when the next book could share no trace of DNA with the previous one. Yes, it’ll always be my voice, but is that enough?

Given the metadata surrounding eBooks – the myriad opportunities to communicate with a potential buyer before they commit to a purchase – do they provide digital-only writers with a blank canvas upon which to paint their career, or does too much freedom dilute the relationship between authors and readers, to the point that the readers lose trust and look elsewhere?

When I decided to put Make a Move out myself, eBooks were still the next big thing, and print was an obvious choice for me. I don’t regret that choice, and I’ll release a small print run of the next book when it’s done, but it did steer me down a path that undermined what Make a Move was meant to be. It was never supposed to be a novel – it’s six stories – but the cost equations of print forced me to squeeze it into that container, and defused some of its impact, its originality. I compromised.

I’ve never been happy about that, but now eBooks are mainstream, and give me all the flexibility I need to deliver the story as it was intended, which is what I’m working on. The hard part is the pricing, but I’ve got some ideas on how to get the numbers to balance. It’s going to take some more work, and probably some time booked off my day job, but it’ll be worth it as it will free me to create book two the way it should be done. Think of this processes like when Apple released Mac OSX Snow Leopard; a re-architecture step to make what follows even better.

So what else have I been up to? Well, something strange happened about 6 months ago, when I said yes to doing something I had no real idea how to do, namely shooting a video for a local Roller Derby team (YouTube link). I said yes because I was bored and thought it’d be fun, which it was. I learned so much about shooting and editing video, and even more about recording, mixing and mastering music. That was a period of extreme creativity for me, and I loved every second. It was also a lesson in the benefits of just saying “yes” and working out the details later; as long as you can outline what you need to learn in the time available, taking risks is a great way to get fired up.

I’m really happy with the result: the music-video-speed edit, the over-compressed colour palette, the punk-rock-meets-High-School-Musical soundtrack… I think it came out great.

And so did some other people…

I was asked off the back of that to do a studio shoot for a newly formed burlesque troupe (www.burlettes.co.uk) including stills. We had no idea how to light a shoot like that, but we knew we could work it out in time, and we nailed it. We’re still editing the dances together, but the quality of the footage is something the whole team are proud of.

Another derby video shoot came up, and we were happy to do that, as this time it included interviews, so the audio recording/processing gave us another learning opportunity, and it was off the back of that shoot that we were invited to work with some local magic practitioners, shooting a street magic show on a full set of broadcast-quality gear. And this show is targeted for more than YouTube…

So what has this got to do with Make a Move? Well, everything.

I can’t work in a vacuum, creating derivative plots and characters, recycled from all of the other media I’ve consumed. I just don’t see the point. I have to live these adventures, meet these people, breathe in these places, and capture those experiences, all enhanced with a touch of fantasy to elevate the narrative beyond the limits reality can endure.

You might be surprised how much of Make a Move is based on experience…

But I have a mortgage, and a child in nursery, and a day job to support them both, and the opportunities for adventure are harder to find. So when I get a chance to explore this life, and meet new people, and create something cool, I’m going to say “yes”, and fight that nagging thought that I should be writing, knowing that the only way that I’ll write anything worth my readers’ time will be to live it first.

But that doesn’t mean that there’ll be magicians in Make a Move 2, and you might be thinking that a show about magic might be boring (it won’t, not the way we’re going to shoot it) but you have to remember the fact of which I remind myself daily:

This is only the beginning.

But rather than be negative, I’ll try to be balanced by suggesting a fix. Saying something’s “broken” is pointless commentary unless you can state, clearly and with neither emotion nor agenda, what “fixed” is.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking on Amazon for a book on audio mixing. I’d already bought one title for my Kindle (the well-written and professionally converted Zen and the Art of Mixing by Mixerman) but I wanted something more in-depth. A friend of mine did a degree in audio engineering, and has a load of books on the subject, but they’re all over ten years old, and a lot of the technology described within has moved on to the point of being unrecognisable, so I wanted something published within the last couple of years. I found Mixing Audio – Concepts, Practices and Tools by Roey Izhaki, and it has a Kindle edition, but I decided to go for the print copy for a few of reasons:

• It was only £2.21 more than the Kindle version
• It comes with a DVD, that I then won’t have to download
• I can lend it to my friend when I’m done

The second point is just laziness on my part, but the first and third could have been predicted and negated by the publisher. The point about lending is a contentious one, as legally, I’ve bought the book for personal use, and don’t pay the publisher for lending rights. Fair enough, but it’s a bit… backwards. Many software programs allow you multiple installs within certain, fair, scenarios. I’m thinking of audio plugins from Stillwell and Cytomic, but that’s just where I’m at right now. Other, much larger, companies are moving to the same kind of thinking. And that got me thinking.

I’ve bought books that teach software or technology, read them, and each time a new version of the product is released, I’ve just read up on the changes from the website; I’ll never buy a new release of that book again. But eBooks, in their simplest form, are software. You don’t buy a full license each time a new version is released; you buy a much cheaper upgrade. And you always buy it, because you like software, and you want the latest and greatest.

I ordered the Roey Izhaki book, and I’m reading it now, but once I’ve read it, I’ll never buy a subsequent edition. It’s too expensive for the 20%-or-so of updated content you’d get in that full-price printed book. If the eBook came with updates – new editions at discounted prices to the owners of previous versions, as confirmed by your Amazon purchase history, I’d have bought it. I’d have bought it because the eBook, even at the same price, offered better long-term value. Never mind colour, or video, or embedded sounds (I can download them from the website once I pull my finger out…) upgrades to content that becomes quickly outdated are a serious value-add, at little cost to the publisher, that don’t impact future sales, of which there won’t be any anyway.

So that’s my suggestion for a new business model; find out how your customers want to use your products, and work with your distributor to allow them to do it, and pay you for the privilege.

I’ll be running this discount for two weeks; after January 1st, it will return to its usual price of $2.99.

You Said You’d Never Discount Your Book That Low

Yeah, I know, but I’m working this DIY publishing thing out as I go, so I have to be prepared to admit when I’m wrong. When Make a Move first came out earlier this year, things were different. There was no significant Kindle ownership in the UK, and eBook sales were still negligible, even if they were growing. In that market, I believe that discounting is bad for everyone, and I wasn’t prepared to be part of the race to the bottom. Now though, things are different, and I hope to see a lot of DIY publishers offering holiday discounts for the following reasons:

• The Kindle Wifi model is sold out in the US. Although Kindles seem to have sold well this year (with no sales data to corroborate that, it’s just my opinion) I think this is the holiday shopping season in which they’ll finally go mainstream. Every publisher – DIY or otherwise – should be taking the opportunity to get their books onto Kindles as people load up after Christmas Day.
• Traditional/Legacy/Mainstream Publishers aren’t in a position to discount that deeply without selling at a loss, which no one is going to do in this sales season, so this is a chance for DIY publishers to get a toehold in the market. By offering people the chance to try your books at reduced risk – while still making some money yourself – we can get people reading/discussing/recommending indie titles. DIY publishing isn’t going to eclipse the mainstream, but I do think we deserve a little more of the storage space on people’s Kindles.
• Amazon is the only platform through which I can distribute directly from the UK; for all other retailers, I have to work through Smashwords. That’s fine – I love Smashwords – but the turnaround time on price changes with the other retailers is just too slow. Barnes and Noble is still an 8-week lead time to see changes I make at Smashwords reflected on the site. For the duration of this sale, Make a Move will be one third the price on Amazon as it is on B&N, iBooks, Kobo et al, and these retailers need to realise that agility is everything in this emerging market. If they can’t open their platforms to individuals, then they need to work with Smashwords to reduce those lead times.

So I’m going to swallow my pride and give discounting a try this season, and hopefully turn more of my browsers into readers, but I do think this Christmas will be a turning point for eBooks, and I’m hoping that all independent author-publishers get to share in that success.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Steve

Pretty much straight after I put Make a Move out, one of my editing team suggested an idea for the major arc of book two – a multi-level plot involving assassination, betrayal, abuse of power, and media whoring. It sounded just the thing for Make a Move, so I put the idea in my back head and waited for the detail to well up from my subconscious.

And waited.

And waited.

And you know the rest. The book’s dead in the water.

I was watching some great TV last night (The Walking Dead episode two, and the season finale of Dexter season 4, just in case you’re interested) and my mind was wandering on the problem with my book. I don’t know if it was the characterisation I was seeing on the screen (these really are two of the best shows in the last decade) or if I was jolted out of my creative mindset, but I realised what the block was. Although the story idea was great, and very Make a Move, it was a scenario into which I could drop my characters, but it didn’t come from the characters. The question I was asking myself was “what can Freddy do next?” instead of “what is Freddy doing next?”. It’s a subtle distinction, but to my characters, and my way of writing, it’s everything. With that idea locked in and generating no additional ideas of its own, there was no room for my subconscious to work – no creative space into which new ideas could arrive. Asking myself that question – “what is Freddy doing next?” – produced two results:

• Firstly, it produced the answer “not this”, and that act of confirming the fallacy of the manufactured plot finally allowed me to let it go.
• And secondly, it finally gave Freddy – that part of my subconscious that is Freddy – the opportunity to answer for himself.

And I liked what he had to say.

There are many reasons for piracy, from being cheap (actually, the least common I’ve noticed), to frustration with territorial release-windowing, to lack of easy access to content. Usually it’s some combination of the three.

As I released Make a Move myself, there is no release-windowing, and I’ve made sure it’s as widely available as possible. So that just leaves the prices tag. $2.99/£2.20 is the kind of price no one can argue with; if you think that’s too much, you’re not going to buy it at any cost. So I’m confident I’ve done everything I can do to make my book available and affordable.

I can see why publishers are worried though. I believe that the extent of piracy is directly proportional to your cover price or, more accurately, perceived value. As a reader, I hope they deal with the issue in a more mature way than the film distributers have (guys, you do realise that the only people forced to sit through your “don’t pirate films” stings are the people who paid for the DVD, right?) but they’re against the clock; the longer they wait in making books easily available on all platforms, the more chance they’ll alienate customers and devalue their offering once it is available.

A couple of weeks back, I started wondering if I should start submitting Make a Move to publishers again. It was never my intention to stop; I decided to put the book out myself to have some fun while waiting for responses, but the process has taken so much of my time that the submissions have fallen by the way. Then a couple of people independently asked about my submission status, and that confirmed that I needed to give it more brain time.

The problem is, I like where I am right now. Not in a “indie ’till I die!” kind of way, but I like the creative freedom that I have. I’m not a writer who worships the process; writing has always been hard for me, and I have to force myself in front of the computer most days. What I do love is how the stories and characters make me feel – how they make my readers feel. I love ideas – how they collide and coalesce into something amazing. Books let me capture these experiences and share them, but they’re not the only way.

Right now, I’m working on a script for an indie film – nothing major, just a 10-minute short – that features a band. I’m also writing/playing/recording the music for the soundtrack. Thinking about the roll-call of musicians in the fictional band, I realised that the soundtrack would need to feature the instruments they play (I have a keyboard player, there need to be keys/synths in the music). The reverse is also true; I can’t have characters playing instruments that I (or the multi-talented @theanonwonder and @jooleemarie) can’t play, as we wanted to do the music ourselves, without bringing anyone else in. I love that relationship between the reality of the music and the fiction of the film – it gives me the restrictions I need to produce my best written and musical work. The situation transcends story.

I love working this way. I fires me up. I have the best job in the world. I’m just not getting paid for it…

But would an advance on Make a Move change anything? I’d be contractually compelled to write the second season of the book, instead of being able to rely on the understanding of my readers while I get the film done. And I’d have more money, but not enough to give up my day job, which I like. I’d have print distribution, which would get my books out to more readers, but unless the goal is financial reward, more readers isn’t a goal in itself. Sales of the book are far from stellar, but I know the best way to drive more sales is to get the second book written and published, which I can currently do at my own pace.

I think the main reason I still want a book deal is that I love the publishing industry. Yes, I said it. Even though I find their output largely unreadable, and I’ve often said bad things about the way they operate and the mistakes they’re (in my opinion) still making, I love the concept of the institution of publishing. I guess it’s the same way people still see a need for the royal family; they’re a flawed institution, but they’re important just because they are. And as I love publishing, I feel like I should play my part in the big machine, even if I’m not convinced it’s the best path for my career as a writer, or for Make a Move.

Like I said, I’m conflicted.

Credits

• Cameras, video editing and audio mixing – Chris Collins
• Audio recording and editing – Julie Cunningham
• Music – Theanon Wonder