Warning: The Backlist has a Double Edge

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backlist, self-publishing caveats

By way of a coda to my previous post about the power of the backlist, I should mention that it can be something of a double-edged sword. The power of the backlist can cut both ways.

It is true that the backlist can work in your favour–that when you have multiple titles, then for every book you sell, at least a subset of those readers will buy your other books. But tempting though it is, don’t rush out and publish all your back-drawer, barely-edited manuscripts just yet, because the readers who come back will do so because they enjoyed your first book. You have to make sure the other books you put up are of similar quality and are in a similar style.

The Power of the Backlist

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backlist, experiments in publishing, leveraging the synergies, rebranding

New, $30 pre-made stock cover for The Clarendon Rose, from http://www.razzdazzstock.com/: an affordable option if you can find something that fits your release amid the proffered selection.

Leveraging the Backlist

Back in the days of traditional publishing, the backlist was a cherished asset. What is a “backlist” you ask? It’s everything except the author’s current release: namely, all the books an author has previously written.

The power of the backlist was this: any new readers, drawn by the prominent merchandising of the newest release, would then be potential customers of all the author’s previous titles. Think about it: you find a book you really enjoy and you generally start looking for the other books by the same author. That’s the backlist. And that stuff’s valuable. While it might not sell as well as the new release (so you hope), it will often be steady. It was in the backlist that authors would end up recouping their advances and starting to earn royalties, and it was this part of the author’s catalogue that a publisher would generally be investing, in signing them on in the first place.

See, in traditional publishing, the backlist is already typeset and sitting out there. In general, it has lower costs associated with it–though authors with strong, steadily selling backlists might also see their entire list with a publisher getting “refreshed” every few years to establish a uniform, distinctive look that will appeal to the ever-shifting aesthetic tastes of readers.

Readers also Bought

If there’s one thing that reading the publishing stories of John Locke and Amanda Hocking told me, it’s that the backlist is as powerful as ever it was–or so I suspected.

The Blind Librarian of Buenos Aires

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favorite authors, jorge luis borges

Yesterday was Jorge Luis Borges’s birthday–google reminded me of this, while making use of the quote that has long been one of my email signatures: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”

Happy belated, wonderful Jorge.

It’s probably safe to say that Borges and his marvelous ficciones changed my life, because they shifted my way of seeing the world. The blind librarian of the national library in Buenos Aires wrote short, conceptual sketches. Many of them didn’t really have a story, per se, but were more like cerebral explorations of fascinating concepts, formulated by an original and beautiful mind.

So many of his pieces are like exquisite jewels. They are wonderful thought experiments that emerge and find shape and form as you read the story. The concept soon reveals itself in its full elegance, like the ingenious, mechanical clockwork at the core of a faberge egg.

The Quest for a Title

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creating a brand, fire rusalka, konstantin's gifts, rusalka virus, vasilisa the brave

What do I call The Book? O the dilemma!

I started with “The Rusalka Virus” as my working title, but I knew that was off the table, as it sounds like a contemporary thriller–not a novel set in an alternate version of 19th century Russia, featuring serfs turned hybrid supernatural creatures whose enhancements last the entire month, while their negative traits, such as vampirism and and pyromania, are tied to the full moon.

Finding the Right Brand

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creating a brand, fantasy, fiction, science fiction, steampunk

I wish I could say that this post was going to provide the insights and ideas that any self-publishers might need or want, in seeking to distill the brand that they would like to create for themselves. Nope. This is more by way of a question to the Cosmos: Help! I don’t know what to do!

So there are a lot of challenges in self-publishing. There’s kind of an ideal convergence of factors that have to come together, in order for such endeavours to thrive–or even to achieve some modicum of success. Things like putting together a professional package, marketing it to the right people in the right way (and the fact with that is that what worked last year might well not work this year because we’re already inured to that novelty). This is the stuff that the publishers offered–or tried to.

The Power of Impulse

Tags

impulsive decisions, law school

A week after creating Crow Girl Publishing, I’m still a little startled by the idea of being a business owner. It’s something that it would never have occurred to me that I would ever be, until about a day or two before I registered the name. Even when I was writing, freelancing, doing all that, I never thought of myself as having a business (I thought of writing as a business, but that is a different thing).

I suppose I should be used to it. A number of decisions that have ended up changing the course of my life have come upon me quickly, often as not sneaking up from behind and then settling over me and snapping into place as if they had always been there. I’d deliberate after the initial idea came, and ask myself if it was the right choice. But the real decision was made in a snap, not in the subsequent investigations and self-doubt.

Flying Horses

Dulac, Flying Horse; I think this is public domain. If not, let me know, and I'll take it down.

My dad had an assortment of stories he used to tell my brother and me when we were kids. There was one about a king and a magician, which recently found its way into Konstantin’s Gifts, my upcoming release from Crow Girl Publishing:

One of the stories his sister had always loved best had been about a proud king, who had summoned a magician to his court. When the sorcerer and his assistant arrived, the king led them to a stable, where a magnificent black stallion was kept.

“You are the fifth magician I have brought here,” he said. “I command you to make this horse fly.”

The magician was all too aware that the other four magicians had failed—just as he was aware that what the king asked was impossible.

Crow Girl Publishing

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

(from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens)

This week, I decided that it probably made the most sense to start a publishing company. So, I did. I did the necessary searches, registered the name etc. It didn’t take long. World, meet Crow Girl Publishing. If Crow is on my side, then this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

It’s not open for submissions–sorry writer friends. It’s just for the whole self-publishing undertaking. Nor is it an attempt to conceal that I’m self-publishing. Anyone going to the website will find it patently obvious (I think), that it’s just me, doing my thing. It’s just a matter of branding, and the overarching vision I have, in that context.

Hearts and Bones

Her Roman Holiday Cover art (though this pic isn't of Rome. It's somewhere in Tuscany, I think. But my Rome photos didn't have the right "feel" to them). Courtesy of vacation pictures, Phoster, Hipstamatic and 15 minutes of my time.

It has been a busy couple of weeks, so I haven’t done as many “outreach” type things (emailing review sites etc.). But still, it has been rather productive…

• figured out how to generate kindle and epub formats. The kindle simulator I downloaded as well as the rendering on my devices (once I figured out how to transfer the files) seemed just fine, so hopefully there are no anomalies. I don’t have a kindle though (YET), so I can’t test it there.
• Uploaded my two Regency romances to the Amazon.com kindle store (the link is to my author page, which has click-throughs for the two titles) for $2.99 each, and added an e-pub format to the lulu.com listing.
• Uploaded my three Harlequin Presents-style romances to the Amazon.com kindle store under the name Jamie Anderson (just to keep it clear that these books are in a very different style–and again, the link is to the author page).
• Created “cover art” using low-cost apps from the app store (phoster, tilt shift generator, hipstamatic, photoshop) and my own photos, for the three above books. Now, I won’t say that they’re fantastic, or even that the books are spectacularly branded or anything. In fact, they could be a lot better. But for fifteen minute covers, and so that there’s some picture there, instead of the little Amazon icon (and the books are .99 so I’m obviously not trying for a premium brand, here), they’re not bad. Also, to my great sadness, I can’t draw worth a damn, and these are better than the “drawn by a distracted three-year-old” style covers I would have created had I tried to put pencil to paper and draw something!
• Decided to release Fire Rusalka as an indie title and did a pile of research on what that entails.

I always wanted to be an Amazon type

I’m live on Amazon with An Immodest Proposal–so exciting (*doing a happy dance*)! I have had to redraft my download page to make it clear that the pdf edition is different to what is being offered for pay (format and some content) because I’ve heard that Amazon will match their price to the lowest elsewhere (even if that’s free) and that would skew my experiment terribly.

So, yes, they’re different. And you can still download the pdf edition.

Still, I’m super excited about being on Amazon and having my book available for the kindle–check it out just for the sake of it, if you get a chance! And if you happen to have read the novel, I’d really love it if you could post a little comment about it–or even just put in a star rating. I think this will help people find the book.

Regardless, this feels very, very cool. What a world we live in.

The Kindle download (US store).

My Author Page (just cause it’s so dang fabulous to have one). I tried to find a picture that was kind of “authorial”.