The Million Dollar Idea

I've written over a hundred short stories, and twenty-eight novels.

Like most writers, I tend to think my work is pretty good. It sells well, and I get a lot of compliments from peers and fans. I think I can tell a good story, and I liberally use humor, violence, action, conflict, and sex.

That said, out of over two million words written, I've only had a few of what I call "million dollar ideas."

I remember reading somewhere, or hearing in in some writing class, that every book's premise should be able to be distilled down to one sentence. A punchy, memorable sentence that makes readers instantly think: I gotta read that.

Some famous examples include:

Little girl is possessed by demon.

Shark attacks New Yorkers.

Scientists clone dinosaurs.

Boy discovers he is a wizard.

Vampires in modern day Maine.

Virgin falls in love with billionaire sadist.

You get the point. A million dollar idea is a succinct hook that hints at the premise and engages the imagination.

My thriller WHISKEY SOUR is not a million dollar idea.

Female cop hunts serial killer who is hunting her. 

It's practically a cliche. We've all seen it, many times. In the case of my book, it is both scary and funny--something not many serial killer books are (I came out before Dexter). And I'd like to think there are a lot of fun scenes and twists to make it worth reading. But it just doesn't make people get excited like "scientists clone dinosaurs."

If I had to be brutally honest and sift through my oeuvre, I think I've only had three ideas that are larger than life. I haven't made a million bucks on any of them, yet. But when I thought them up, I got very excited by them, and I think they are the easiest to pitch:

Government gives serial killers special ops training.

That's my hook for AFRAID. Instead of training soldiers to be killers, why not train killers to be soldiers? And then, release them accidentally on a small, isolated Wisconsin town. Scares and mayhem ensue.

AFRAID has sold well (and is selling much better now that I have the rights back) and I've sold a few movie options but nothing has ever come of it.

I liked this idea of mine even more:

Cop is trapped in a house with a killer, and surrounded by snipers.

I'm crazy about this idea, and the book is spawned, FUZZY NAVEL. Written in real time, Jack Daniels is fighting with her nemesis who has taken her and everyone she loves hostage, and she can't get away because her house is surrounded by gunmen. Scares and mayhem ensue.

I've always thought the best parts of thriller novels is when the main character is in danger. I wrote FUZZY NAVEL where the main character can't get away from danger, no matter what she does. Being stuck in the house with a serial killer would be bad. Being surrounded by snipers would be bad. Both of them at the same time is, in my mind, a million dollar idea.

But the best idea I ever had is the one I never sold:

US government has Satan in underground laboratory.

I pitched this as "Jurassic Park meets The Exorcist." A bunch of scientists are studying the devil--ten feet tall, red, horns, hooves--who was discovered in a coma while they were digging the Panama Canal in 1903. Since then, he's been secretly studied by the best minds in the world in a fortified prison in New Mexico. The book begins with Satan waking up.

My agent tried to sell this to NY publishing on three separate occasions. And I wrote it to be as commercial as possible. It has a bunch of cool monsters, quirky supporting characters, romance, humor, scares, and what's at stake is nothing less than the destruction of the world. I imagined huge Hollywood deals and toy action figures and a parking lot named after the book at Universal Studios.

But no one offered me a contract. The best idea I think I've ever had, and no one wanted it.

So I wound up self-publishing ORIGIN, and have sold over 100,000 copies of it. Currently it has 286 four and five star reviews.

It isn't my bestselling book, but it is the one that gets the most requests for a sequel. People seem to dig it. So much so that a sequel, SECOND COMING, is in the works.

ORIGIN is free on Amazon Kindle from today until March 4. Please download a copy and tell others to as well. And feel free to share your million dollar ideas in the comments section of this blog.

Doom! Destruction! Not...

As I write this, Jack Daniels ebooks currently occupy nine spots in the Police Procedural Top 100 paid list on Amazon.

Admittedly, the highest ranked book is Pushed Too Far by Ann Voss Peterson, where Jack is only in a chapter. But my first six JD ebooks are on there, as is Shot of Tequila (where Jack is a Detective in the 1990s) and The List (where Jack has a cameo.)

I attribute this good fortune to getting my rights to those books back (or in the case of The List and Tequila, getting rejected legacy publishers so I kept the rights), but also to another important promotional element that I've rediscovered.

Namely, the KDP Select program. Specifically, the ability to make ebooks free for 5 days. More specifically, the websites that mention free ebooks and drive traffic to Amazon.

How does this work?

In a nutshell, if you give away a lot of ebooks, and the ebook bouncebacks to the paid bestseller lists, getting it eyeballs. Once people can see your book, they'll buy it.

How many will buy it? This depends on a lot of factors. But as of 11am on Feb. 27, I have sold 21,358 ebooks, loaned 3829, and given away 223,167 so far this month.

Ann is also doing well, having sold 735 copies of Pushed Too Far since coming off the freebie promo three days ago. With borrows, she's averaging over $800 a day, on one title.

Ann and I have taken the same path to get here. We promoted the free ebooks on www.BookBub.com and www.ebookbooster.com.

These last few days, I've gotten many frantic emails about Amazon's new policy, which makes writers worried that the free ebook golden goose will soon stop laying eggs.

In a nutshell, Amazon is telling its affiliates that they need to derive the majority of their income via sales. Here's the announcement:


"In addition, notwithstanding the advertising fee rates described on this page or anything to the contrary contained in this Operating Agreement, if we determine you are primarily promoting free Kindle eBooks (i.e., eBooks for which the customer purchase price is $0.00), YOU WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE TO EARN ANY ADVERTISING FEES DURING ANY MONTH IN WHICH YOU MEET THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:

(a) 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links; and

(b) At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks."

Now, I really haven't really begun using ebook sites to actively promote my freebies until recently. In the case of BookBub, I don't see this as being a problem, because I believe they derive their income from author payments, not from the Affiliate program. But eBook Booster is a service that announces free ebooks on 50+ free ebook websites, and I believe some of these do derive income from links.

I'm not going to speculate why Amazon made this call. Frankly, it isn't my concern, and I don't believe it will effect me. I can still use BookBub, and I'm sure other free ebook websites will figure out some other ways to monetize their service.

Here are some options they have:

1. Stay in the Affiliate program, but only announce discounted ebooks, and don't use Affiliate links if they do announce free ebooks.

2. Charge authors to be listed.

3. Put ads on their websites.

If a site gets a lot of traffic, or has a big email list, there should be ways to monetize it other than through the Affiliate program. The websites that provide this service are essentially aggregators. The largest aggregator in the world, Google, seems to make money. Certainly these smaller sites should be able to as well.

And if not, it won't harm writers. Think it through. If a site closes, and no writer has access to it, no writer can use that site to their advantage.

In other words, even if all of these sites go under, the playing field will stay even.

Well, mostly even. If you're a smart author who has cultivated a fan database, you'll have the advantage by announcing to that base when your ebooks are free. Or if you have a popular blog, or website, or Facebook page, or Twitter followers, you're got a leg up on your peers.

I don't see this as being the end of free ebooks = sales. I see it as a small bump in the road that will resolve itself. Save your panic for something real, like the world ending on December 21, 2012.

Laugh all you want. It's gonna happen. Those Mayans were pretty sharp.

Ann Voss Peterson's Big Regret

Joe sez: And now a word from my frequent collaborator and good friend, Ann Voss Peterson...

Ann: Last May I wrote a guest blog here about my decision to stop writing for my publisher (Harlequin) and self-publish my new thriller instead of submitting it to traditional publishers. In the piece, I shared terms of my publishing contracts and showed how those terms translated into money, using one of my books as an example. I did this not as a complaint, but to give other authors--some who might be thinking of writing for Harlequin--a look at how the numbers stack up.

Plenty of people weighed in on this blog and others, both in support of my decision and criticizing it (some of whom didn't even bother to read the post).

So the question is, after nine months, do I regret my decision?

Let me share some numbers:

Last May 8 through 12 using KDP Select, I gave away 75,420 copies of Pushed Too Far.

In May and June, I sold 11,564 copies, netting me $22,316.30.

I also had 874 borrows during this time for another $1902.30.

So in a bit over six weeks, Pushed Too Far earned $24,218.60 and was downloaded onto 87,858 e-readers. My highest earning Harlequin Intrigue earned me $21,942.16 in the last twelve years.

Verdict: In less than two months, Pushed Too Far became my highest earning book. EVER.

As Joe has said many times, sales ebb and flow, and PTF has been no different. But for May through December of 2012, this one book (Pushed Too Far) has had a grand total of 15,257 (paid) sales and borrows, netting me around $31,179.03.

Of course there's no guarantee. I've known authors who have done better. I've known authors who've done worse. But the question is, do I regret my decision to self-publish?

Are you kidding?

I regret I didn't do it sooner.

Joe sez: Ann paid for a www.BookBub.com promo this weekend, and I hope to see her hit the Top 100 Free with Pushed Too Far.

Another friend of mine, Melinda DuChamp, has one of her Alice ebooks for free the next few days. and I also have a few titles available. So piggybacking on Ann's guest blog, I'm going to talk a bit about promo and numbers, and also link to these titles I'm discussing.

I used eBook Booster to announce these titles to 50+ free websites. I did it at the last minute, and eBook Booster suggested I put off the free period for a week, because some freebie sites need lead time. I appreciate the concern, but ebookbooster.com only charges $25 to list the ebooks everywhere, and that seems like the deal of the century. If we're excluded from these sites because we're too late, I'm okay with that. Next time I'll do it in advance. But for $25 I couldn't pass it up.

Pushed Too Far by Ann Voss Peterson

Free on Kindle 2/22 - 2/23

Fifty Shades of Alice Through the Looking Glass by Melinda DuChamp

Free on Kindle 2/21 - 2/25

Bloody Mary by JA Konrath
Free on Kindle 2/22

Endurance by Jack Kilborn
Free on Kindle 2/22 

Shot of Tequila by JA Konrath
Free on Kindle 2/21 - 2/25

A few days ago, when I had three freebies, I was selling 1000 ebooks a day. Since coming off the freebie period, sales have slowed to 600 a day. I find that interesting, considering I'm now selling three more titles.

The "free downloads spurs paid sales" axiom seems to be in effect here. Which makes me even more curious to try making a title permafree in order to improve sales.

I'm also trying another experiment. I just lowered the price of my first Jack Daniels thriller, Whiskey Sour, to 99 cents.

Whiskey Sour by JA Konrath

99 cents on Kindle

It is currently ranked at #814 and I've sold 1334 copies this month at $3.99. 

Some may be saying (me included), "Joe, why would you discount a book that is selling well?"

I'd love to drop in rank and hit the Top 100 paid list. It makes more sense to strike when the iron is hot--when the rank is under 1000--then to wait for Whiskey Sour to go back to #2000 or #3000 and then lower the price. I want to make it an automatic impulse purchase, and I'm hoping enough people will buy it to goose it up onto the Top 100.

I have ZERO hope this will work. But what's the point of having all these titles to play with if I don't experiment with lowering prices? 

Whiskey Sour was earning me $300 a day, and I may be pissing that away. But I won't know until I try. Coming off freebie promos for Dirty Martini and Bloody Mary, and having seven titles in the Kindle Top 100 Police Procedural category, I might as well give it a go.

My sci-fi action novel Timecaster, which was free last week (I gave away 18,000 copies), is now enjoying its best ranking ever on Amazon, at #6400. In order to promote the series, I dropped the price of the sequel to 99 cents for a limited time.

Timecaster Supersymmetry by JA Konrath

99 cents on Kindle

BTW, for those keeping tallies, I've sold over 12,000 ebooks this month, the majority at $3.99, had 2200 borrows, and have given away over 120,000, all on Kindle.

I also asked my buddy Melinda DuChamp for a sales update, and she emailed me.

Melinda: "Happy to share, dearie. The two ebooks have made me over $65k in seven months. I'm working on a third, then I'm going to follow your lead and make a trilogy boxed set and a paper version via Createspace. Considering how quickly I wrote these books, this is the highest paid I've ever been as a writer per hour, even with traditional paper sales in the millions under my other names."

Joe sez: I want to stress that Your Mileage May Vary. I don't think there's any magic bullet, secret to success, or guarantees. All we can do is write good books, get good covers, and experiment until we get noticed. The more books you have, and the more you change the variables, the better chance you have at making some money.

If you regularly follow this blog, you know I'm never content. I'm always trying new things, investigating new possibilities, playing with platforms and prices.

If you're new to this blog, looking for the secret to success, here's my tried and true formula:

1. Write a good book.
2. Get a professional cover.
3. Write a terrific product description.
4. Price it right.
5. Keep writing and experimenting with self-publishing until you get lucky.

You may not be successful yet. But yet is the term you need to focus on.

Ebooks are forever. That gives you a lot of time to build a backlist, find an audience, and get lucky. The longer you try, the more your odds improve. And trust me--success is worth decades of discouragement.

Hungry Dogs

I have three dogs.

No, this isn't a blog about my pets. It's a blog about selling ebooks. But bear with me.

When they aren't sleeping, my dogs spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get fed. Even though dogfood is available to them 24/7 in the form of always-stocked dog dishes, they prefer human food.

This is my fault, which goes back to the days when I was poor and hated seeing food go to waste. I still hate wasting food, and giving the dogs table scraps satisfies some base need in me. Plus they're so damn happy to get a french fry every now and then. And why shouldn't they be? It's not like wolf packs in the wild get to eat french fries. 

But my dogs eat more than fries. They eat things that dogs don't normally eat. Lettuce. Pickles. Peppers. Pretty much anything you put in front of them.

Once my dogs are presented with something new, it becomes their main focus, and they devour it. Even when their regular food is available.

It's all about whatever is currently right under their noses. 

You're probably catching on to where this is going.

In the past seven days, on Kindle, I've made about $15k. I currently have two ebooks in the Top 100 Free list--the same ebooks I blogged about two days ago. Dirty Martini and Trapped are #3 and #4, and Timecaster will hit Top 100 later today. I also blogged about four other ebooks by my friends Barry Eisler and Blake Crouch. Both of Barry's ebooks hit the Top 100, peaking at #3. One of Blake's did, and it is still #1 in the UK.

In the past 60 hours, I've sold 2200 ebooks in the US, and had over 400 borrows.

Why?

I have a hypothesis.

Back in the time of paper books (I'll call that time the Analogue Years), your exposure to readers was dependent upon your publisher. In order to sell a lot of books, you needed to be in a lot of retail outlets. The more you were in, the more you sold.

So James Patterson, who had 400 copies of his latest hardcover, discounted 40% off, on the New Release table at Borders and Barnes and Noble, sold more books that JA Konrath, whose latest hardcover had three copies, spine-out in the mystery section. In that same mystery section, Patterson had thirty more titles, each with multiple copies, taking up an entire shelf. If the bookstore bothered to stock my backlist, it was only one copy each.

If you walked into a bookstore in 2007, you couldn't avoid Patterson if you tried. Ditto the many other bestselling authors.

I always wondered about supply and demand when it came to bestsellers. Was it that the authors were so popular, they had to be available everywhere in huge numbers because people demanded it? Or was something else going on? Was it possible that the reason bestsellers sold so well was simply that they were available everywhere?

If you're at the airport, looking for a thriller book for the plane ride, and they only have six thriller titles on the shelf, you're going to pick one of those.

You're going to take what is right in front of you, currently under your nose.

I have no doubt that bestselling authors have a lot of fans. But it's one thing waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out, and its another seeing the latest Patterson on the new Release table and picking it up because it is there.

I'm not knocking Patterson. The guy is a genius, on several levels. But how many fans have read every Patterson book vs. every Potter book? 

Now let's do some Digital Thinking.

I have fans. I know this, because I get lots of email from people who claim to be fans, and my book reviews are largely complimentary. 

It could be that the 2600 sales and borrows I had in the last 60 hours are from fans. People who know my work and love it. Even though these ebooks have been available for years, perhaps these sales are all by fans who recently got Kindles for Valentine's Day and are now stocking up on my titles.

But I don't think that is the case. I didn't see a huge Xmas bump this holiday season. If these were new Kindle owners buying my work, I think I would have had a ton of sales over the holiday season, but my sales now are 100% better.

So what am I doing differently? I have no new releases out. Yes, I self-pubbed my Jack Daniels series for less money than my previous publisher had, but during the first few days those sales were steady, not explosive like they've been.

What's changed has been making titles free using the Kindle Select program.

To wit: there are millions of people with Kindles, and the majority of them haven't heard of me, haven't come across my titles, haven't read me before. So by getting three ebooks on the Top 100 Free list, I am making myself known to them. 

I am a tasty, free morsel directly under the nose of hungry readers. And they snatch it up.

Not all will read the free ebooks they download. But I still benefit, because the more ebooks I give away, the higher the bounceback will be on the paid bestseller lists. And when I'm on the paid lists, I'll be seen be those who have never seen me before.

Also, I have a hunch some people are reading the freebies immediately. This is why my sales are booming. A rising tide lifts all boats, and some people snatching up the freebies are also buying some of my other ebooks.

Whiskey Sour is #529. Bloody Mary is #411. Rusty Nail is #1121. Afraid is #586.  Endurance is #1439.

Last week, most of these were ranked at #10,000 or higher.

I believe it is all about being seen. Once you are under a reader's nose, some will buy. 

Some who buy will become fans, and buy more. 

This results in more sales, more reviews, more visibility.

Visibility is the key. 

Amazon is very good at making ebooks visible. The bestseller lists, direct emails, Customers Also Bought, Hot New Releases, Movers and Shakers, Kindle Daily Deal, various ads and click-throughs--there may be no company in the history of the world that makes finding products easier than Amazon makes it.

So how can you help Amazon make your books visible?

1. Publish books with Amazon Publishing. They do a lot to announce their ebooks to readers.

2. Use KDP Select to make your ebooks free. I suggest using all five days at once. The more ebooks you give away, the higher the bounceback.

3. Have a lot of IPs. The more ebooks you have available, the more virtual shelf space you take up, the likelier it is for a customer to see one of your titles.

4. Cultivate fans. Have a newsletter, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, so people can follow you and get the announcement when you put something new on sale. But remember this will be supplementary, not primary, and no one will follow you if all you're doing is advertising. 

5. Announce via third parties. I found BookBub.com to be effective in helping me give away freebies. So is Pixel of Ink.

6. Keep at it until you get lucky.

I can't stress #6 enough. It is easy to get discouraged with promotion, because it may not get the results you seek. You have to have the right book in the right place at the right time, and cross your fingers.

If you have a lot of ebooks, and consistently sell poorly, it is time to pressure check your work. Is it good enough? Do you know because your writers' group thoroughly vetted it, or because your sister loved it? Did you make the cover yourself? Are you priced too high? Does your product description sing? Do you have typos or formatting errors?

If you are convinced you are doing everything right; keep doing it. Eventually you'll have so many great books that the world can no longer ignore you.

Remember that my best selling ebooks--The List, Origin, Trapped, Endurance, Shot of Tequila--which have sold over 600,000 copies, were rejected by publishers.

Good books will find their audience. Ebooks are forever, and that's a long time to get discovered.

Keep at it.