Self Publishing - Page 15 of 36

SHAKEN Shakes Things Up

May 1, 2013May 17, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

Joe Konrath is breaking new ground on the e-front yet again. Today Amazon announced that Amazon Encore is publishing SHAKEN, his latest Jack Daniels novel, first as a $2.99 ebook in October and then as a traditional trade paperback in February 2011.

Up until now, Amazon Encore has only reprinted books that didn't make a big splash in their initial release and had fallen out of print. This is the first time they are publishing an original novel.

Joe took the deal after Hyperion dropped the Jack Daniels series and no other publisher stepped up to publish the new book…and after his extraordinary success selling his other unpublished manuscripts as ebooks on Amazon.

There's no doubt Amazon has noticed how well Joe's books are doing on the Kindle. From their POV, this deal had to be a no-brainer (though I suspect they would have liked to charge more than $2.99 but less than $9.99 for the ebook). It certainly was a no-brainer from Joe's side. On top of that, Amazon will find no better cheerleader for the Kindle than Joe, which should lift up sales of all Kindle titles across the board as he works tirelessly to promote SHAKEN. In the Amazon press release, Joe says:

“My Kindle readers have been incredibly faithful fans and I’m excited to be able to release the Kindle edition of ‘Shaken’ several months before the physical version is available to purchase,” said Konrath. “Since it’s easier, faster and cheaper to create an e-book than it is a physical book, Kindle owners will get to read the seventh Jack Daniels before everyone else. The ability for authors to reach fans—instantly and inexpensively with a simple press of a button—is the greatest thing to happen to the written word since Gutenberg.”

He elaborated in on the deal, and why he took it, in more detail on his blog. He said, in part:

Traditional publishers had a chance to buy SHAKEN last year. They passed on it. Their loss. Their big loss. Their big, huge, monumental, epic fail.[…] I signed a print deal with a company that can email every single person who has every bought one of my books through their website, plus millions of potential new customers. I've never had that kind of marketing power behind one of my novels. I'd be an idiot not to do this.

I think it was only a matter for time before Amazon reached out to Joe to aggressively capitalize on his success instead of passively (they have been getting the lion's share of the money on his ebooks by doing nothing but hosting him).

Joe is calling this deal a defining moment in publishing and so are his many fans. I'm not so sure that I'd go that far, but it was certainly inevitable. I think the only real difference between what Joe has been doing up with his ebooks and this Amazon Encore deal is that now he will have the full promotional might of Amazon behind him. As an e-venture, this will surely be a massive success, but as a print-publishing venture, I am not so sure. There's no doubt, though, that it's a win-win for Joe, who is bound to see the sales of his current slate of ebooks skyrocket as a result of the Amazon push for SHAKEN (including, ironically, the books still held by Hyperion).

UPDATE 5-18-2010: I woke up this morning to a bunch of emails asking me why this is a significant development in publishing. How is this any different, they ask, than what Joe is already doing self-publishing his unpublished work on the Kindle?

In essence, Amazon Encore is a publisher that has picked up Joe's mid-list series from Hyperion. They are publishing the book first as an ebook then later as a trade paperback. The difference here is that the publisher is also the largest bookstore on earth and will put their considerable promotional and marketing might behind his book. But there's a bit more to it than that. Here's how Joe explained it in the comments section of his blog post:

"In this case Lee, it's a bit more complicated.

This bookseller is the number one online bookseller in the world, and they've created the number one dedicated ereading device.

Publishers need authors to write books, then booksellers to sell those books.

In this case, Amazon owns the bookstore, and the platform for the ebooks. And by cutting out distributors, publishers, and brick and mortar bookstores, they can offer a professional product faster and cheaper–and give the author better royalties–than a traditional publisher could.

In other words, Amazon is cutting out just about all the players in the traditional publishing industry, and directly connecting reader with author.

If ebooks, and Amazon, continue to gain popularity, will there still be a need for the Big Six? Or would authors do better by either self-publishing, or dealing directly with the sellers of the new technology? I think this is pretty significant in the publishing world."

UPDATE: Jason Pinter, author and former editor, shared his worries on The Huffington Post about what this deal means for the future. He said, among other things:

Amazon and other online retailers have made it incredibly easy to publish books on their servers. They give each author the ability to format books price them how the authors themselves see fit. There is certain freemarket sensibility here that is inspiring, and in a way each author becomes the proprietor of their own small business. However, I feel that the example of Konrath will inspire other, less successful and even less talented authors to publish their works online. They might see the Kindle as a bypass, a way to showcase their works that the Evil, Stupid Publishing Overlords in New York were too blind to realize are, in fact, literary masterpieces.

Now, publishing is not a perfect industry. And the examples of books that were rejected numerous times or even self-published that went on to become great successes are many. Because book publishing is a wholly subjective business–the only books that are published are the ones that editors truly love (let's ignore celebrity and cynical publishing). Many wonderful books are rejected because one or more editors simply didn't 'get' it. There are plenty of books I passed on as an editor that went on to be published to tremendous critical and/or commercial success. Every editor has their list of books that they kick themselves for having passed on. That is a flaw inherent in the system, only now it is easier than ever for authors to circumvent the system.

The Ark: A Kindle Success Story

May 1, 2013May 12, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

On Joe Konrath's blog, author Boyd Morrison shares the amazing story of how he turned his Kindle ebooks into a four-book print deal, kicking off with the launch today of THE ARK. His story is unusual, and inspiring, but newbie writers should read it carefully before thinking they can easily replicate his success.

One thing he didn't do was go to a print-on-demand vanity press, and for reasons beyond just the outrageous, and unreasonably, high cost and false promises:

I decided to put all three books on the Kindle store just to see what happened. Irene (Goodman, his agent) was fully supportive of the plan. I had nothing to lose.

What I didn’t do was self-publish in print because I would have something to lose. From the beginning, my goal was to get a traditional publishing deal (remember this was in early 2009, which seems not so long ago, but the ebook market was still in its infancy, and making a living from self-published ebooks seemed like a pipe dream). If I had published print books, not only would it be a hassle I didn’t want to deal with, but it would also mean my novels would need ISBNs.

ISBNs are international standard book numbers that can be tracked by publishers. If my sales were low, publishers would be able to see that and might not even want to look at my next book. But with ebooks on the Kindle, you don’t need an ISBN. If my sales were bad, no one would ever have to know. And if they were good, I could use that data as evidence that readers were interested in my books.

[…]Would I recommend self-publishing ebooks? It depends what your goals are. If you want to see your book in print, as I did, I wouldn’t choose that path as your first option. I was in a unique limbo because I had an agent and blurbs from bestselling authors, but I couldn’t get a publisher. Once my sales jumped, my agent was able to act on it immediately. If I had to start the agent search from scratch at that point, it would have been much more difficult.

Good luck doing that if you, unlike Boyd, don't already have power-house representation. But the e-book market has changed. It's actually possible to make good money on an ebook. So why go thhe print route at all? Here's Boyd's take:

My goal was always to be traditionally published. I wanted to get my books in front of as many readers as possible, and while ebooks are the fastest growing part of the market, they still represent only 3-5% of all books sold. If I wanted to reach a broad market, I’d have to be in print, and the only way to get into most bookstores is through a traditional publisher. Plus, foreign rights, which represent a surprisingly large segment of the market, would have been virtually impossible to sell without a deal with a traditional publisher. And as much as I love ebooks, there’s still no substitute for holding a print book in your hands to make you feel like a real author.

I agree and am not ready myself to forsake print for the digital publication.

But the publishing world is changing very fast. If you'd told me a year ago that I could actually make $18,000-a-year off my out-of-print work on the Kindle (or potentially $55,000 with the new royalty rate), I would never have believed it.

So some of my attitudes are changing as a result. I am beginning to rethink the advice that I've always given aspiring writers not to self-publish their novels. I still believe that going the vanity press route is a huge mistake…but posting on the Kindle cuts the print-on-demand scammers entirely out of the equation and all the risk of getting swindled (you DON'T need Lulu or Authorhouse or any other vanity press to get your book on the Kindle or iPad, no matter what they those self-publishers may tell you). So why not do it?

On the plus side, Kindle/ebook publishing can be cost-free and, if your book is really good, and you are very lucky, you could make some real money…and, perhaps, attract the attention of a major publisher.

But if your book is awful, and truly "not ready for prime time," you can embarrass yourself, create negative word-of-mouth, and potentially seriously harm the reputation you are seeking to build.

I am still thinking it all through. That said, there's no question that these are very interesting, potentially game-changing times in the publishing business. I am very interested to see how Joe's two new horror novels, published for the first time on the Kindle, sell and whether the royalties match what he could have earned with a print contract.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 18

May 1, 2013May 1, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

On April 17, I predicted in a post on this blog that I'd earn $1400 in Kindle royalties this month. I was right. I earned $1416. It was, by far, my best Kindle month since I began this experiment eleven months ago. Last month, I sold 1360 books…this month I sold 1798, an increase of 438 books and $400 in royalties. (Click on my royalty statement for a larger view).

I credit the surge this month to three things:

1. my bet with Joe Konrath, which resulted in new covers and titles for my Vigilante novels. It was a bet I was thrilled to lose.

2. raising the price of THREE WAYS TO DIE from .99 cents to 1.99.

3. adding a Kindle edition of my out-0f-print book THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE to my available titles.

Sales of the VIGILANTE books (now known, thanks to Joe, as The Jury Series) shot up enormously. For example, the previously titled .357 VIGILANTE #4: KILLSTORM sold 14 copies last month. This month, by rebranding the book GUILTY, I sold 125 copies. I now have someone re-reading the manuscripts of all four books, correcting the conversion errors that have bedeviled me since I posted them a few months ago.

Last month, THREE WAYS TO DIE sold 201 priced at 99 cents and earned $70. This month, I sold 169 and earned $103. Fewer sales, but higher royalties. I can live with that.
.

THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, priced at $2.99, quickly became my second best-selling title, if not in volume (234 copies sold) certainly in profits ($245). Those sales reassure me that my bestselling title, THE WALK, will do fine when, in late June, I raise the price from $1.99 to $2.99 to take advantage of Amazon's new royalty formula, which will give me a 70% royalty instead of the 35% I get now.
By the way, this month THE WALK sold 629 copies, earning me $440 (last month I sold 575 copies). A new high.

Changing the cover and title of BEYOND THE BEYOND boosted sales a bit. Last month, under the BEYOND title, I sold 73 copies. This month, rebranded as DEAD SPACE, I sold 92.

I can't wait to see how things shake out in July once my royalty doubles. Will my earning, if not my volume of sales, go up? Or will it level off? Or will the bubble burst and sales slowly begin to deteriorate? I don't know, but no matter what happens, I am already a winner. As I keep saying, this is all found money on out-of-print books that were packed away in my garage or in a dark corner of my hard-drive.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 17: The Bet

May 1, 2013April 17, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

The following is an email exchange between me and Joe Konrath earlier this month:

TO: LEE GOLDBERG

FROM: JOE KONRATH

If I were you, I'd rename all the .357 Vigilante books getting rid of ".357" and "Vigilante" in their titles. The new covers should be generic–maybe a gun or some sort of weapon as the central image–but they should also tie together as a brand. And they should be done by an artist. Maybe a friend (you must have graphic artist friends) or maybe you can hold a contest on your blog. I'm convinced your covers and titles (which scream "Men's Action") are holding back sales of this fun series.

TO: JOE KONRATH

FROM: LEE GOLDBERG

I'm not sure that changing the covers for .357 VIGILANTE (or the titles) will help. The books are what they are — pulpy, mens action adventure novels from the 1980s. That is their appeal…and their drawback.

TO: LEE GOLDBERG

FROM: JOE KONRATH

Give me $XYZ. I'll give it to my graphic artist to redo the covers for the Vigilante books. Let me retitle them and do the product descriptions, and I bet your sales go up at least 25% in a two month period (compared to your last two months of sales.) If they don't, I'll give you the $XYZ back, and you get the covers for free. That's how sure I am those books will sell with the right packaging.

TO: JOE KONRATH

FROM: LEE GOLDBERG

You have a deal!

So I sat back and let Joe have his way with my books. Here's the original cover for .357 VIGILANTE:

And here is what he did with it:

Here is the original cover for .357 VIGILANTE #2: MAKE THEM PAY:

And here is what he did with it:

Here's the original cover I cobbled together for .357 VIGILANTE: DIE MR. JURY, an omnibus collection of all four .357 VIGILANTE books:

Here's the revamp I did for it last month:

And here's what Joe did:

It's only a little past mid-month, but already it's clear that he's won the bet and his repackaging is a success.

Last month, 357 VIGILANTE sold 59 copies or about 2 copies a day. This month, with the new title and cover, it has already sold 46 copies, or about 3 copies a day. It remains to be seen whether that pace of sales will continue for the rest of the month. But wait…

.357 VIGILANTE #2: MAKE THEM PAY sold 39 copies last month and now, with the new title and cover, it has already topped that by selling 43 copies. But wait…

.357 VIGILANTE #3: WHITE WASH sold 23 copies last month. So far this month, with the new title and cover, it has sold 27 copies. But wait…

.357 VIGILANTE #4: KILLSTORM sold 14 copies last month. But with the new title and cover, it has sold 48 copies. That's right, the sales have more than tripled and the month isn't over yet. But wait, it gets even better…

.357 VIGILANTE: DIE MR. JURY sold 20 copies last month and now, with the new title and cover, it has sold 47 copies…the sales have more than doubled and the month isn't over yet. What's really surprising about this bump is that the book is priced at $4.99, making it the most expensive of my previously published/out-of-print titles on the Kindle. They aren't buying it because it's cheaper than everything else out there…I believe they are doing it because they think they are getting a great deal, four books for the price of one, a point Joe hammered home on the new cover far more effectively (and clearly) than I did on the old ones.

Based on these results, I quickly reworked the covers of MY GUN HAS BULLETS, THREE WAYS TO DIE and BEYOND THE BEYOND (retitling it DEAD SPACE) to take advantage of what I learned from the bet and from Joe's example.

What did I learn?

1. Your covers should have a clear, simple, striking image that will still pop out when the cover is reduced to the size of a postage stamp.

2. Your covers need to have a consistent, branded look.

3. Don't be afraid to experiment, to rethink everything about how your book is presented: the title, the cover art, the categories its listed under, the way you describe it, the way you've priced it. Just because your book has been posted, that doesn't mean it's been carved in stone and can't be altered. You need to adapt to find your audience. In other words, you can't just post your book on the Kindle and leave it. Your book will continue to need attention and, if necessary, updating to stoke sales.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 16

May 1, 2013April 17, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

I've taken Joe Konrath's advice and have been tinkering quite a bit with my covers…and discovering that it makes a big difference in sales. Here was my original cover for MY GUN HAS BULLETS:

It was the dust jacket on my hardcover and I didn't own the rights to the art, so I asked my sister to create a new cover for me. I loved what she came up with. I thought it looked classy and professional. Here it is:

But I wasn't selling as many copies as I thought I could. I just assumed people weren't responding to the book. But Joe blamed the cover, he said it was too bleak, too busy, it didn't pop. So as much as I liked that cover, I put the old one up for a while. Sales went up slightly, which got me thinking maybe another change couldn't hurt. So I created a new cover myself using stock photos (which I licensed) and Microsoft Paint It…

And sales have shot up. I sold 204 copies of MY GUN last month and I am already up to 170 this month. That means I've gone from selling about six copies-a-day to ten. Encouraged, I've changed the cover and title of BEYOND THE BEYOND. Here's the original cover

Here's the second one I tried:

And here's the one I have now.

I sold 70 copies last month…and I am already up to 60 now. I am still not selling as many as I would like, but at least it's cropping up. The new cover has only been up for a few days, so it's too soon to tell how it will pan out.

Meanwhile, again on Joe's advice, I scrapped the cover of THREE WAYS TO DIE. Here's the original:

And here's the first version of the new one, which was up last month:

And here's what I've got now, which has only been up for a week or two:

In addition to spiffing up the cover, I also jacked up the price from 99 cents to $1.99. As of today, I've sold 109 copies…so I am on track to sell just as many copies as last month (207) but I'll earn more money. I think the new cover has a lot to do with it.

I've also played with the cover of THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE. Here's the publisher's cover:

Here's the first one I put up last month:

And here's the revised cover I've got up now.

I sold 160 copies in March, so far I've sold 145 this month. Sales are definitely up.
But that's not the whole story. All of this cover-tinkering was sparked by another experiment, also initiated by Joe, but I will tell you more about that later…

That said, this is shaping up to be my biggest Kindle month ever. As of 7 pm tonight, I have earned $810 in royalties. If sales continue at this rate, and that's a big if, I could reach about $1400 this month. But I will certainly top the nearly $1000 I earned in March.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 15

May 1, 2013April 1, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

This was my best month of Kindle sales since I began this venture in June. This month I sold about 1360 books and made about $975 (click on the image for a larger view of my royalty statement as of 9:47 pm, March 31st)

I sold 575 copies of THE WALK, earning $420, which is actually slightly down from February, when I sold 573 copies in 28 days, but it's still my best-selling title.

My friend Joe Konrath, who did amazingly well this month, strongly urged me to drop my new covers for MY GUN HAS BULLETS and BEYOND THE BEYOND because he felt they were the reason my sales weren't so good. So I took his advice and temporarily restored the original covers. The result? MY GUN sold 167 copies in February with the new cover (or roughly six copies a day) and sold 204 this month (or roughly seven copies a day) with the old cover. BEYOND sold 85 copies this month (about 3-a-day) and sold 73 this month (about 2 copies a day). My take? It's a wash. Even so, I'm thinking about creating two new covers for the books and seeing what happens.

Joe also suggested that if I dropped the Jack Webb cover for THREE WAYS TO DIE and replaced it with something bolder, I would see sales go up. Last month, I sold 140 copies of THREE WAYS, or 5-a-day. This month, with the new cover, I sold 201 books, or 6.5 copies a day. My take? It's up, and I like the new cover better anyway, so I'm sticking with the change.

The spike in sales this month came from releasing the Kindle edition of THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE mid-month, priced a $2.99, a dollar more than my other books. I sold 160 copies, earning $166.95. What's encouraging about this is that I earned more selling 160 copies of BADGE than I did selling 204 copies of MY GUN, which was priced a dollar less. It tells me that raising my prices to $2.99 across the board in July to take advantage of Amazon's new royalty rate may actually increase my profits rather than reduce them.

I also started offering "preview chapters" of Joe's books THE LIST and SUCKERS in THE WALK and MY GUN HAS BULLETS (and he did the same for me) in an experiment to see if the cross-polination/cross-promotion gooses our sales. But it's way too early to judge how that test is working.

But I've accepted a challenge and a little wager from my buddy Joe, who is proposing a radical approach to boosting sales of my VIGILANTE novels. I'll tell you more about that development later…but it should be very interesting, as well as a lot of fun.

UPDATE: Romance writer Ellen Fisher shares her Kindle royalty report and her sales experience.

Wideman on Lulu

March 29, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

There's been a lot of hype and talk over the last few days about National Book Award finalist John Edgar Wideman self-publishing his latest collection with Lulu as the inaugural author in their VIP Publishing Program. But what has been left out of the discussion, at least until the Los Angeles Times story today, is that his son Daniel is a Senior Product Manager with Lulu, which explains a lot about how they snagged the acclaimed author. My guess is that Wideman got his books published for free, or at a very low rate, in return for allowing Lulu to use him to publicize and market their new (and pricey) VIP Publishing service, which is aimed directly at previously published authors. But you will notice that none of the Lulu blogs, interviews or press materials mentions Wideman's personal connection to the company and any role that may have played in his decision to go with them.

Lie to Me

May 1, 2013March 27, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

Authors talk a lot about the power of hand-selling, how a bookseller's positive recommendation of a book means more than all the self-promotion, blogging, and twittering you can do. That's because customers trust that booksellers are knowledgeable and well-read…and that they are sharing an honest opinion when they recommend a title and are telling the truth when they say a book is particularly popular with their customers. But that could change if independant booksellers follow the sleazy example set by the Boulder Bookstore, where the booksellers are being paid off to recommend certain books and to claim a book is a "local favorite" when, in fact, they haven't read the books and they aren't local bestsellers:

The “Recommended” section at the Boulder Book Store, an independent bookseller in Colorado, features a mix of titles and genres. And also: a mix of distribution models. Among the traditionally published works on display stand a smattering of print-on-demand titles — many of them being sold on consignment by authors from the Boulder area.

They’ve paid for the privilege. The store charges its consignment authors according to a tiered fee structure: $25 simply to stock a book (five copies at a time, replenished as needed by the author for no additional fee); $75 to feature a book for at least two weeks in the “Recommended” section; and $125 to, in addition to everything else, mention the book in the store’s email newsletter, feature it on the Local Favorites page of the store’s website for at least 60 days, and enable people to buy it online for the time it’s stocked in the store.

It's another attempt to separate aspiring, self-published authors from their money. The bookstore is offering the self-published authors shelf-space for a small fee, which would be laudable if it wasn't coupled with misleading the public into thinking the books were actually read by the bookseller and popular among their customers.

And for the self-published, print-on-demand author, it's one more check to write on top of what they've already paid for the book to be published, what they paid to buy copies of the book to resell, and what they paid to have them shipped. Add to that what the bookstore is charging to stock and dishonestly "recommend" the title as a "local favorite," there is slim chance the author will ever make a dime on his books…

To be fair the Boulder Bookstore, what they are doing is giving self-published authors a chance to get their books on a store shelf…something few bookstores are willing to do. And booksellers charging publishers for store placement isn't entirely new: Barnes & Noble and Borders charge publishers for front-of-store placement and prominent displays. However, and I may be wrong about this, the big bookstore chains don't charge publishers a fee to have their books "recommended" or falsely listed as a local bestsellers. But whether B&N does it or not, that doesn't make accepting pay-offs to deceive customers any less sleazy and shameful.

Photo of Boulder Book Store by Jesse Varner used under a Creative Commons license. Thanks to Richard Wheeler for the heads-up on the article.

The Man with the Iron-On Badge Kindle-fied

May 1, 2013March 11, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

“As dark and twisted as anything Hammett or Chandler ever dreamed up […] leaving Travis McGee in the dust.” Kirkus, Starred Review

My favorite, and most acclaimed book, THE MAN WITH THE IRON-ON BADGE, is now available in a Kindle edition. Up until now, this Shamus Award-nominated novel has only been available in a hard-to-find, out-of-print, hardcover edition.

It’s about Harvey Mapes, a 26-year-old security guard who spends his nights in a guard shack outside a gated community in Southern California, reading detective novels, watching reruns, and waiting for his life to finally start. He gets the chance to become a “private eye” when a homeowner asks Harvey to follow his wife. The only problem is, Harvey has learned everything he knows about detective work from mystery novels and “Magnum PI” reruns. Harvey quickly discovers that the difference between fiction and reality could be fatal.

Here’s just a sampling of the critical response:

“Approaching the level of Lawrence Block is no mean feat, but Goldberg succeeds with this engaging PI novel.“ Publishers Weekly

“A wonderfully fresh voice in the mystery genre, Goldberg will delight fans of Janet Evanovich and Robert Crais,” – Rick Riordan, author of “Percy Jackson & the Olympians”

“Lee Goldberg bravely marches into territory already staked out by some fierce
competition–Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, the early Harlan Coben–and comes out virtually unscathed.” The Chicago Tribune

“Goldberg has a knack for combining just the right amount of humor and realism with his obvious love for the PI genre and his own smart ass sensibilities. THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE is a terrific read. Goldberg is the real deal and should be on everyone’s must read list.” Crimespree Magazine

“The Man With The Iron-On Badge is a quick, fun read with a satisfying and unexpected ending. Harvey Mapes is a hero I hope we see in a sequel.” — Phillip Margolin, author of “Gone But Not Forgotten”

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 14

May 1, 2013March 8, 2010 by Lee Goldberg

Joe Konrath recently changed the covers for some of his weaker-selling Kindle books and saw his sales shoot up overnight. He suggested that I do the same thing for some of my books and I am following his advice. I just changed the covers for my short story collection THREE WAYS TO DIE and DIE, MR. JURY, my compilation of the four .357 VIGILANTE novels. I'm very curious to see if he's right.

I've also updated THE WALK to include the first three chapters of Joe's novel THE LIST… and MY GUN HAS BULLETS to include a chapter of his book SUCKERS. He's done the same for me. It will be interesting to see if this cross promotion boosts both of our sales. It could be a month or two, though, before we see a spike, if there is even going to be one, since lot of folks download books as impulse buys and then don't get around to reading them for quite a while.

I have to hand it to Joe, he has been the trailblazer when it comes to exploiting all the possible potential out of selling books on the Kindle. And he's been right more than he's been wrong…and has had the success to prove it. He's on track to earn more than $40K this year in Kindle royalties from stuff that was in a drawer.

But he's also realistic. He offers some very sobering advice on his blog this week to aspiring authors who think they can follow in his footsteps and by-pass entirely the struggle to get an agent and have your book bought by publisher. Bottom line: you probably can't.