Mystery and Romance Authors - How Many Books Should You Publish?

 

Antique Underwood Typewriter and Calla Lilies

Social media has swept instant and fleeting tidings over us - the expectation of continuous news snippets. I wondered how this impacts the work of authors. In doing research, I found an interesting quote from Donna Tartt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch:

“There's an expectation these days that novels – like any other consumer product – should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.”

Every couple of years? I was astounded. Quite a few authors, including New York Times bestselling ones produce at least one book a year, such as Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Harlan Coben, and Jeffery Deaver. I also know writers who publish four books a year – and happen to be USA Today bestselling authors. Probably none of the ones I’m thinking of will be honored with a Pulitzer, but they are satisfying their fan base by penning multiple novels per year.

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Antique Printing Press

It gives the aphorism “publish or perish” a whole new meaning. The impact on genre authors to keep
publishing new books increases their fan base, improves their rankings on Amazon, and sustains their visibility among readers within their genres.

Yet The Goldfinch author takes ten years (that’s right – a full decade!) to write a novel. A literary genius, Tartt has fans across the globe. Plus, she’s backed by big publishing houses and their gargantuan budgets, here and abroad.

Most of us who write genre would “perish” if we only produced one novel every ten years.

Selling novels boils down to two basic issues:

A. Storytelling ─ writing a compelling and fascinating story.

B. Markets ─ how these “consumer products” that Tartt mentions are advertised and distributed.

In 2018, more than 1.6 million books (both print and eBook with registered ISBNs) were published in the US alone. You can dismiss a portion of these as coming from aspiring writers or people doing a memoir for family purposes. But the point is made ─ the diversity of choices for readers contributes to the difficulty new authors encounter when trying to distinguish themselves in a crowded market.

Despite the intense competition, I would not for a minute give up my writing! It’s the most satisfying, and craziest, endeavor I’ve ever done.

Care to share how you distinguish your novels in the crowded market?

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Photo credits: Kathryn Lane for Antique Underwood Standard Typewriter, Printed page flying off antique printing press; Bobbye Marrs for Nikki Garcia Trilogy

Kathryn Lane started out as a starving artist. To earn a living, she became a certified public accountant and embarked on a career in international finance with a major multinational corporation. After two decades, she left the corporate world to plunge into writing mystery and suspense thrillers. In her stories, Kathryn draws deeply from her Mexican background as well as her travels in over ninety countries.

https://www.kathryn-lane.com

https://www.facebook.com/kathrynlanewriter/

If I knew then...

Someone recently asked me the one thing I wish I’d known before being published.

I thought back to 2014, the year I first signed a contract. I was beyond excited, so full of happiness my feet didn’t touch the ground for days.

I signed my name to contracts with blissful abandon.

I don’t mean to suggest I signed without reading the contract, but I was so new to publishing, I didn’t understand the myriad ramifications of my name on that signature line.

Here I am five years older, five years wiser.

I wish I’d known I’d be running a small business. My products are books. And, if I want readers to find my books, I must market them. Like most new authors, I believed my publisher should take that role (my husband still believes publishers should do that).

My first mystery, The Deep End, released in 2015.

That first release, I waited for a confetti cannon. Instead of confetti, the universe responded with a pffft. Still, my publisher was pleased and told me, “Keep writing.” The second release was worse than the first. A bigger pffft, less confetti, fewer sales. My publisher told me, “Second books seldom do as well as debuts.”

That would have been great information to have as I managed my expectations.

The releases have steadily improved since that second book. I have a theory about that.

Traditional publishing companies push their latest books—thrillers for the holidays, beach books for summer, romances for Valentine’s Day.

I push The Deep End. I believe that once readers meet Ellison Russell, revisit (or visit) the 1970s, and fall in love with her extended family, they’ll keep reading.

Recently the Country Club Murders (The Deep End is the first book in the series) surpassed 100,000 books sold.

I love spending my days spinning stories. I like editing. I love engaging with readers. All things I expected when I took the first steps down this path. Knowing more about Facebook ads and AMS than most marketing executives? Let’s call that a bonus. Or a curse. Tomato-tomahto.

Five years from now, I may be writing another I-wish-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now blog. Lord only knows what mistakes I’ll make, but at least I’ll make them doing something I love.

Ode to a Library

Ode to a Library

By Cathy Perkins

When was the last time you visited your local library? 

Libraries have been around for a long, long time. The earliest libraries date back to 2600 BC. Yes, that’s Before we started counting time forward a couple of thousand years ago in the Western World. While we’ve ditched hundreds of ideas and customs as passé, in the digital age libraries are still in style. More than in style, they’ve adapted to the rise of ebooks and audiobooks. In fact, there are several great ways you can access my books from your local public library without leaving the comfort of your favorite reading chair. How great is that?!

My books are available to libraries via Overdrive, a leading digital distribution platform. Overdrive supplies the industry’s largest catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, streaming video and periodicals to 38,000 libraries, schools and retailers worldwide. (Here's the OverDrive link for So About the Money  https://www.overdrive.com/media/2496957/so-about-the-money)

Other upcoming services include Bibliotheca, an up-and-coming library-oriented option for acquiring digital content. Your library can request an author’s book through this program as an alternative—or in addition to—OverDrive. 

These digital access programs mean anyone with a library card can remotely check out an ebook or audiobook if your library owns a copy of the book. After a reader borrows a particular title (say, my Holly Price novel So About the Money), it automatically goes to their reading device through OverDrive. Since “my” libraries are forty-five minutes and two hours away by Interstate, browsing through my phone is a lot easier than driving to the physical building! Instead, the requested book shows up on my e-reader in moments.

If you’re new to OverDrive you can sign up HERE. Signing up is a quick process and allows you to customize your experience by choosing your preferred genres. You can even opt-in to receive book recommendations. You need a library card to access books using OverDrive. I have two library cards (yes, more is better 😉 ) and both libraries appear in my OverDrive account.

Now that I’ve piqued your interest, here are several ways that you can take advantage of this terrific library resource.

OverDrive recommends the Libby app for public library users. I admit, I eyed the app skeptically at first. Why mess with what’s working beautifully for me? Libby is a free app that streamlines the virtual borrowing process and lets you get those books from the library straight to your device. Best of all, Libby is compatible with Android, iOS, or Windows 10, and is one of the easiest ways to access library books on your devices.  

The original OverDrive app may be a better option for you if your library isn’t public, if you are using an older device, or you want to read on your computer (Windows or Mac). This app also has some great features to personalize your reading experience, such as adjustable font size (which I love for reading in bed at night without reading glasses), highlighting favorite passages, and a bookmark function.

 

Sounds pretty neat, doesn’t it? Now before you start borrowing my entire Holly Price Mystery Series, here are a few things about how requesting ebooks from the library system works:

1.    The authors’ and publishers’ responsibility is to make books available to the libraries. We have no control over whether your library will stock my books, unfortunately. Wish we did!

2.    If your local library doesn’t stock my books, sometimes simply asking your librarian to get them for you will be enough. Librarians are resourceful people! Once requested, the library can request a book for purchase or loan through Overdrive or Bibliotheca.

3.    You need a library card to use your library, whether you are reading ebooks or listening to audiobooks on your devices, or physically checking out “tree books” from the library. Ask your local library about their card policies. (For example, one of my library cards is free. I pay an annual fee to use a larger regional library since I live outside their city limits.)

4.    While OverDrive is available at most public libraries, there are still some libraries that are not connected to the program. You can check to see if OverDrive is available at your library HERE.

Wrapping up

Libraries are a great way to keep on top of your TBR pile without breaking the bank. At my libraries, I hunt for new to me authors or download favorite authors when the publisher prices the ebook at $14.99 (yikes!) 

Digital loans are eco-friendly. No trees harmed in their production. 😉

And an additional benefit? No late fees! (Yay!) Not through reading/listening to the book at the end of the loan period? Simply request it again.

So grab your library card and find out how easy it is to enjoy a slew of library books (including all of mine!) from the comfort of your sofa. 

An award-winning author of financial mysteries, Cathy Perkins writes twisting dark suspense and light amateur sleuth stories.  When not writing, she battles with the beavers over the pond height or heads out on another travel adventure. She lives in Washington with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd.  Visit her at http://cperkinswrites.com or on Facebook 

Sign up for her new release announcement newsletter in either place.

She's hard at work on sequel to The Body in the Beaver Pond, which was recently presented with the Killer Nashville Claymore Award. 

Digital Publishing

By Bethany Maines

Recently, I’ve been learning about the nitty gritty “how-to” of e-publishing.  While there are many how-to’s on how to put your story up for sale in the virtual marketplace, learning how to make an epub file is a lot more difficult and confusing. 

As someone trained in how to make print books, this status is infuriating to me.  I can make words magically appear on paper – why is the screen any more difficult?  But as it turns out epub formatting is more akin to website programming than to traditional book design.  Both epub and websites must account for the fact that the designer can never be certain on what or how the end user will view their product.  Will it be on a phone, a tablet, or a desktop screen?  Will it be a horizontal or vertical?  Which operating system will be accessing the file?  All of these factors play into how an e-book is seen and creating a file that can be used in ANY format means that many of the traditional design elements beloved by graphic designers, such as color, size, and forced white space, must be set aside. Learning to create an epub is a bit like feeding content into a slot in the wall, letting the machine in the next room whir away, and then trying to guess how the machine works by looking at the book it produces.

In the last few years website programming has experienced a burst of development that can make creating a website an almost drag and drop, WYSISWYG experience.  Meanwhile, digital publishing lags behind, still in it’s infancy. 

Take a look at these images of the first page of my third Carrie Mae Mystery novel, High-Caliber Concealer.  One is a screen cap from a mobile phone kindle app and the other is a photo of the printed book.

You’ll notice several differences – the large area of white space before the chapter title is gone and the fonts are not the same.  Fonts in epub’s must utilize a websafe font or embed the font within the file.  But, not all devices recognize embedded fonts, and they make a file larger and some platforms take a percentage out of an author’s royalty based on download size (you’re hogging space on their server).

However, there are some similarities that the programmer managed to achieve.  Notice how the gap between “Brunch” and “Mexico” mimics the print version?  And you’ll see that while the font isn’t the same, the font hierarchy and general sizing of the chapter information is the same as the print version. 

And beyond the appearance of words on a screen there is the tricky business of making all the chapters appear in the right order and having a hyper-linked (click and go) table of contents that allow readers to navigate easily through the book. 

No digital book is as simple as a word doc you type at home.  So if you see a well-crafted book on your e-reading device, take a moment to appreciate the book programmer!  

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Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of Destiny and An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.