What I Have Learned in Six Years of Digital Publishing.

Louis Shalako

Here’s what I’ve learned by publishing my own works, as well as making submissions of novels and short stories since January 1, 2010. That was almost six years ago. On that day, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to publish a book, ‘…no matter how bad it was, no matter what it took or what it cost, no matter what anyone said, no matter how hard it was, no matter how painful success or more likely failure might be…’

That book still sells in minute numbers and has a few nice reviews. That’s quite an accomplishment for a kid who originally dropped out of school halfway through grade ten.

During that time I have made approximately 1,031 submissions, mostly short stories, although there were at least 125 novel submissions. Those would have mostly been my first six manuscripts, which I already had, on that New Year’s Day.

I spent ten months editing two books side by side and digitally-published them around the end of September 2010. In six years, I've learned a lot about editing.

Since that time, I’ve sold a few books. I’ve written twelve more novels and I’m just in the middle of writing another. I written almost a thousand blog posts and hundreds of short stories. Over the five or six years, I’ve written something like two million words. Back in 2010, my writing wasn’t necessarily bad. It was loose and undisciplined. I knew nothing of literary style—the use of punctuation, apostrophes, and those little marks that help to make sense of the text on the page.

I've learned a lot more than I can put in one blog post, that's for sure.

Six years later I’m a phenomenal writer. I’m a fantastic writer, ladies and gentlemen. This only comes from training and experience. It is not a matter of luck. With a hundred and twenty-seven products, maybe more, plus another twenty titles issued in paperback, you have to admit that I have gotten some experience.

I’ve learned a lot about the business. I’ve had contracts offered to me, and have had a partial requested, and I’ve had short stories published in for-pay markets. Some of them have since gone defunct, and pretty much all of them are obscure.

I’ve learned how to format a simple ebook and design a simple cover. I’ve learned how to write an effective blurb, I’ve learned a lot about metadata. I’ve learned a lot about social media. I’ve learned a lot about a dozen different publishing platforms.

I’ve learned how to write, every day, and produce a new book in two months or less in some cases. I’ve learned about the internal logic of the story, and the internal logic of the series. 

I’ve learned how to keep going when things aren’t going well. I’ve learned how to finish the damned thing, walk away, don’t look back, and get on to the next one.

I’ve written and published a couple of online serials. What was really challenging was to begin publishing something in installments when the thing wasn’t done—I still had twenty or thirty thousand words to go and I didn’t even have an ending.

Those serials were illustrated, something I’d never done before.

The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue

Speak Softly My Love

I have built my own digital publishing machine, and learned how to use it.

I have learned much by reading other people’s opinions, testing my own theories, and watching my own analytics and statistics. I have learned how to listen and when not to listen. 

I’ve learned how to spot a phony.

I have learned how to tell a good story. I have learned how to create a living, breathing character, and ultimately, I have learned how to build a whole new world.

It’s a pretty darned good world, and that’s a good thing, because I built it, and I am still building it, for you.

Thank you for reading.

END

On Social Media.

Louis Shalako

When it comes to simple posting of content on social media, I use three or four websites pretty consistently to discover content.

Digg.

Long-form journalism on a host of topics that probably won’t make the headlines today or any other day. Yet these stories are important, in-depth and well-written.

Ars Technica.

Plenty of tech stories, internet, gaming, (not my biggest priority), privacy, surveillance, drones, all kinds of interesting stuff there.

Fark.

Mocking the news, tend to be shorter stories. I do like the bizarre, the maudlin and the slightly-creepy.

Reddit.

A vast compendium of stories submitted by internet-cruisers. The style and the substance are different and therefore complementary to other sites.

***

Facebook.

On Facebook, I have resisted the urge to build up to five thousand followers as quickly as possible. I add friends slowly, as often as not taking a quick look at someone’s profile page before sending that friend request.

When notified that x-number of friends have birthdays, I go to their page and find something to like. If someone has given them a big virtual birthday cake, I click on that. It’s a way of acknowledging someone. It’s a way of keeping track of people whom you might have friended ages ago. If they’re not particularly active, if you habitually click like on the same small group, the other folks drop off of your time-line. After a while, you can’t see them and they can’t see you. It’s a way of keeping things fresh, and constantly rotating through the friend-list so that everyone gets a bit of your time.

Etiquette.

After people have had a chance to observe you for a while, they can quickly tell if this is your schtick. We as writers have an online presence. People understand it is an act to some extent. 

We are what we choose to present, and I’m a fairly funny, sometimes impulsive guy.

The other day I posted on Twitter: “I’m going to kill all of you.”

No one said boo, and that’s probably a good thing. It’s just part of the entertainment after a while and no one takes it all that seriously.

Facebook is a bit different. Let’s say I like someone. I tend to click like on their stuff.

If they haven’t responded, and the impression is that they’re never going to respond, the best thing to do there is, if necessary, to break myself of the habit, is to unfollow at the very least. 

That way they’re out of sight, out of mind.

To constantly click like on someone is probably a bit needy. If I can’t take a hint, I’m probably just tormenting them to some degree and it’s better to walk away from any sense of entitlement.

You really can’t make someone like you.

Sometimes it’s just better to accept that.

Twitter.

On Twitter, when I get up in the morning and check my email/notifications, I very often find that someone has re-tweeted something I posted the day before. As often as not, they’re experienced Twitter users, and they will often have a pinned tweet. The problem there is that they’ve often re-tweeted me before and I’ve already re-tweeted their pinned tweet, sometimes more than once. In that case, I’ll just pick someone at random from their feed; tweet them out and see what happens. Sometimes you get a new follower, someone who’s interested in internet marketing, and they catch on pretty quick.

Some folks spend a lot more time on Twitter than I do. They’ve seen my tweet go by in real-time, where I’m just checking notifications the next morning. The odds of them ever re-tweeting my pinned tweet are small, and there’s no sense in resenting that.

I just do the best I can with what I got.

Does Social Media Sell Books?

Yes. I've never had a  traditional publishing contract. I have sold or otherwise distributed over 100,000 books since September 2010 when I published my first title. That first book actually sells, where some of the other ones don't.

I've never had a story in a pro magazine. So far this year I have not placed a single story in any other market, not even at a penny a word, and I haven't given away any stories either.

When people say social media doesn't sell books, they may be right...up to a point. What are they hoping to achieve? Some of us are pretty wrapped-up in the idea of being a bestseller, attracting the notice of a literary agent, all that sort of thing. In which case it might work and it might not.

You never can tell just what is going to work. 

END

How to Tell If People Are Reading Your Books.

Louis Shalako

There have been some recent studies conducted on how much of a book people actually read. With ereaders tied to an ecosystem such as Amazon’s or iTunes’, the device reports back to the retailer. The data is fine enough that analysts can determine at exactly which point someone might have abandoned a book. Armed with such data, a content provider can fine-tune their product to be more appealing, more interesting, more engaging.

Authors don’t really have access to this information—not yet anyways.*

So how do I know if people are reading my books, especially when I give them away in such numbers?

At the end of every book or story, I have a link to the blog of the pen-name in question. There is some background here. Smashwords’ founder Mark Coker (and others) have blogged about the importance of enhanced end matter. It might provide links to other products, it might be an excerpt from a future release. This is all very well, but iTunes and possibly some other retailers won’t allow ebooks in their stores if they contain direct links to other retailers. Some online retailers don’t seem to care. But when I upload a book to Amazon, that file might have a link to the author page on Amazon—not another retailer. At least with Amazon, with no outward distribution channels, I can fine-tune that end matter.

The issue was how to beat that limitation when using Smashwords, bearing in mind they distribute to iTunes, Barnes & Noble, etc. The simple solution was to use the blog address for that link.

On the blogs, there are links to free and priced products. However, those seem to be okay with iTunes. It’s a direct link to another retailer, within the actual product, that they object to.

Okay.

So when I’m giving away hundreds of ebooks, and if a reader really enjoyed the book, there is a very good chance that they will click on that link. That link is at the end of the book. 

They’re clicking on there to see if there is something else for free. They’re clicking on there to see if there is anything else they might like to read by that author.

Not everyone who gets to the end of the book will click that link. However, if I gave away a hundred copies of a book on one particular day, and within a day or so, that particular blog is showing a surprising number of hits…and if that particular pen-name hasn’t blogged in a while, the question is where are the hits coming from.

The only logical answer is that people, a good percentage of them, are at least finishing the books and stories. They enjoyed what they read and they want to know more.

Since I have a number of pen-names, some of whom publish irregularly, and there is some juggling of actual story production, I really haven’t tried putting an excerpt for an upcoming novel into the end matter.

That being said, it would be possible—certainly in the case of a series such as The Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series, to go back, modify a file, and re-upload it to all the platforms where it is presently published. Those excerpts would obviously be for other books in the series. If it was a numbered series, you would obviously try to suck them into buying the next book in the series.

The only thing there is time. The author would have to set aside a block of time and essentially do the work. Upload the file, check the formatting, and your product helps the readers to find the next book in the series.

END

The latest in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series, How to Rob a Bank is presently free with price-matching from Amazon. It’s also free from other fine retailers.

Thank you for reading.

*Correction: on Scribd, books published thruogh Smashwords will tell you that a book received a 'ten percent read' and the same is true of some other platforms. I'm not a big expert on Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited or some other subscription services.