Hugh Howey's Blog, page 23

I am currently somewhere off the coast of Cuba with intermittent internet access, so I’d like to thank Michael for taking over my blog today. Michael’s story is the real story of self-publishing. Yes, the vast majority of self-published works never sell in great numbers — just as the vast majority of queried works never sell a single copy (they never get the chance).

But there is a middle range of self-publishing success that gets almost no press. Michael’s story is one I could have written several years ago to describe what happened to me. I find these stories inspiring. And I understand that success is not a given, that it isn’t easy, that it requires a healthy dose of luck or the benevolent forces of the Great Algorithmic Unknown, but for me it helps to know that you don’t have to be the one in a million to make the hard work worthwhile. And it helps to know that writers with no prior following are still seeing results if they tell great stories.

Now I turn it over to Mr. Banner.

Best-Selling AND Unknown

by M.L. Banner

Nine months ago, I self-published my first book on Amazon. I won’t lie to you; this exercise was purely a flight of fancy for me. I really wasn’t planning a career in writing; only later did I find out I love to write. Then, something remarkable happened, an epochal event that changed everything for me: my book sold really well. Okay, maybe not Hugh-Howey-well, but still pretty darn good: over 2000 the first 30 days and over 6000 in 60 days. Just so there is no confusion, I had no following (maybe 15 people I know personally bought my book), and I had never written anything longer than an article (I’ve written many of these) before this. I certainly never expected to have a #1 bestseller in my two genres. However, I can’t take the credit for this any more than I can attribute it to luck. I know I had to write a good enough book, with a professional cover, a captivating blurb and all that. Yet, there was something else at work here.

I was a newbie author when I hit the “Save and Publish” button, but I’ve also been an entrepreneur for many years, having run businesses in lots of different markets. I have to tell you, I was absolutely blown away at the effortless and cost-free nature of self-publishing a novel and releasing it within hours to the book-buying-public. There is simply no other business with almost no barrier to entry and the ability to sell your product immediately. No doubt, it is this simplification and lack of barriers that has drawn thousands of new authors like me into self-publishing. Also true with more authors comes more bad books, but it means many more great books too.  And because the book market is not static, as indie cheerleaders like Hugh have pointed out, I believe the number of readers is expanding; add to the equation, low pricing and ease of purchase, brought on by clever self-publishing platforms, and that means the market is buying more and more books. My over-loaded Kindle and iPad can attest to this.

Okay, I know the big question is, “How did you do it?” A better question would be, “What was it that made your book sell so well?” In full disclosure, when I started, I didn’t know any of the other publishing platforms, and I didn’t spend much time researching them either. I chose KDP Select not because of any specific love for the company, it just sounded the easiest, and I knew Amazon held the largest share of the eBook market: It was a business decision.

When I published Stone Age (http://bit.ly/stone-age) in April, I had few expectations that I would peddle more than a dozen copies. A couple of days later, a few of my friends nibbled, then a few stalwart strangers bought, and then Amazon’s algorithms kicked in. My little tome made it onto Hot New Releases for both my chosen genres, giving it astounding instant visibility: As if a clerk plucked my novel from some vague pile and placed it in the front window of his book store—only this was the largest book store on the planet. And that was it. Three weeks later, Stone Age became a #1 best seller in both its categories, and has remained in the top hundred ever since.

Understand this, I am a bit of a tech guy and very process oriented—I still run several internet-based companies—so I wanted to find out why this happened and not leave anything to chance with the next one. On Halloween, I released my second book, a sequel to the first. Taking the knowledge gained from self-publishing Stone Age, I was much more purposeful in this launch, and the results were equally fruitful: it became an Amazon top ten Best Seller on the first day, #2 on the second day, and it remained in the top twenty through the New Year. Did lightning strike twice? No! Everything I did from writing to my audience, the professional cover, the editing and proof reading, the blurbs from fellow authors, advanced copy readers giving early reviews, cross-promoting my first book, and emailing my growing reader list, all contributed to my second book’s achievements and my first book’s resurgence. However, it was the Amazon structure that ensured my good fortune. Speaking of which, my November earnings from both books hit five figures.

This made something else plain to me: It turns out that self-publishing is far more lucrative than convincing a publisher to take your work for a minuscule royalty, just so you can say, “I’m published!” Don’t get me wrong, there are times when selling to a publisher may become a strategically wise move, but that doesn’t have to be the end game. I’ve met several authors who are “published” with large presses but haven’t sold very many books. I’m not bragging, just pointing out that making money as a self-published author, even quit-your-job-kind-of-money, is still very much possible by folks like me with practically no following.

To this end, Amazon’s brilliance shines. They’ve created the distribution network and the algorithms that give unknown authors’ books visibility in front of scores of readers who are looking for books in similar sub-genres. Understanding this and a few other things I’ll share, I know that if you write a good enough book, one that hits some of the hot buttons your readers expect, it will sell well.  In my case, Amazon’s network made my two books visible enough that almost thirty thousand people have found them. Without this structure, one word comes to mind: obscurity!

I’ve had an mind-numbing crash course in writing and publishing this past year. Yet, there are several things I’ve learned (both good and bad) that I wish my present-self could go back in time and warn my past-self about. Hopefully, you will benefit from my top mistakes and recommendations, and avoid the need for time travel.

My Top Five Mistakes that you’ll want to avoid:

1.  Don’t be cheap on editing – I went with the cheapest editor I could find. I just didn’t think anyone would buy my first book and so I didn’t want to invest that much in it. Big mistake! I am quite sure I would have sold thousands more copies of my first book had I not initially published with so many errors. Now I employ an editor and proofreader, and I get help from many wonderful volunteer beta readers.

2.  Don’t rush your book to the marketplace – Hold off clicking that “publish” button, no matter how tired you are of rereading it. Again, editors and betas can help you with this.

3.  Don’t think of other authors in your genre as competitors – Quite the opposite. Reach out to other authors, especially those who have had success in your genre. Read their books and post reviews on your platforms and then tell them about it. That’s how relationships start.

4.  Don’t be cheap on your own platform – Buy a domain and set up a website (you can do so with GoDaddy for less than $100 per year). Then, make sure your site’s focus is on building your subscriber list: These will be your future advanced copy reviewers and fan base that will push your next book onto the Hot New Releases list.

5.  Keep writing – Your most important activity is to write. Don’t stop. Make it a habit and write every day. Then when it’s ready (see #2), release your next book. Each book you publish (if it gains visibility) lifts the sales of your other books, especially those in the same series.

My top five recommendations to improve your chances of success:

1.  Take as much time to write your best book possible – I cannot stress enough how important this is. Again, get it right the first time. I lost many potential readers, perhaps permanently because I wasn’t careful with my first book.

2.  Publish to Kindle Select – I know this is a powder-keg issue right now because you’re reluctant to give into Amazon’s exclusively requirement (even though it’s only for 90 days), but this will absolutely help you in their algorithms and therefore their Best Seller Rankings. Remember, a higher ranking leads to more visibility, which leads to more sales. Married to exclusivity is anxiety over KU, but my KU borrows continue to boost my books’ rankings over those that are not in Select. Certainly if you have a big readership base you’ll need to examine this point more closely. But if you do not have many followers, this action is practically a necessity these days.

3.  Choose the right sub-genre – For your next book, choose the two sub-genres (fitting to your readership and the book’s storyline), with the lowest number of books in it. Check the bottom 100 of the Hot New Releases (in that sub-genre) and see what it would take to make it there. Use http://kdpcalculator.com/index.php to help you translate Best Seller Rank (BSR#) into the approximate number of daily sales you’ll need.

4.  First goal: Make the Hot New Releases in at least one sub-genre – To do this, you’ll need to sell a progressive amount for the first five to eight days after launch. In most sub-genres, this is not a big number, but something like one sale the first day and maybe eight sales by the eighth day ought to be more than enough: That’s 42 books total. Do that and you should make it on the Hot New Releases list for your sub-genre(s). Boom, instant visibility! I’ve known other authors who set their book price at $0.99 for the first ten days or so, just to give it the added boost to make the HNR. Once you’re there, you’ll have up to 30 days of best-selling fun ahead of you.

5.  Use Countdown + promotions to build audience & visibility – With Kindle Select, you can run a Countdown (after your first 30 days) to get your book in front of another group of readers who haven’t tried you out yet. Then run a few promotions during those days. A $100 to $200 budget should be sufficient.

I truly feel blessed to write this.  After some initial luck, lots of hard work, marvelous people who have helped (including betas, editors, artists, other authors, etc.), and a little skill–hopefully improving daily–I have found an endeavor that has brought joy to me and to tens of thousands of people I can now call my readers.

This is an amazing age we live in where anyone can invest some time and a little money and be entrusted with almost complete power by platforms like Amazon to release a book to their immense customer base. More amazing still is that today, a complete unknown can complete head-to-head with big publishers and well-known authors and sell a lot of books.

For more from or about Michael, visit him at,

Website: http://mlbanner.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMLBanner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ML_Banner

G+: https://google.com/+Mlbanner/

They slide through the harbor on a catamaran, this future we. He, at the helm, hair touched blond by the sun and set in a permanent muss of salt spray. She, coiling a line with the practiced ease of a thousand miles.

Paddle boards are strapped along the rails, and towels are clipped out to dry. The sail is lashed to the boom in rough folds, not put away in the neat flakes of the largely unused. No, the sail is rumpled with joy, like clothes tossed to a bedroom floor.

Fenders adorn the side of the hull like ornament beads, promises of a night in port. But the ship will strain against her dock lines, halyards snap against spear-straight spars, a tan-brown beard seen on the bows, brought on by lapping waves.

This is a ship for the sea, a thousand miles left to go, another harbor to slide into — she at the helm this time, he coiling a line with the same care that he braids her hair.

You may have heard the sky is falling. You may have heard that the self-publishing gold rush is over. There have been a number of forum threads, blogs, and articles about this lately. I’ve been mulling over whether there’s truth to the claims that everything is getting worse for indies. And naturally I have few thoughts:

My first thought is that self-publishing is maturing, which means it’s beginning to share some of the cynicism seen among many traditional writers. There’s a big difference in the subject of this cynicism, however. Forums for authors with traditional publishing aspirations have long been peppered with threads about the query grind, the rejection letters and emails that pile up from agents and publishers, and the desire to quit and give up on the hopes of ever making it as a writer.

For self-published authors, the situation is in some ways better and in some ways worse. It’s better in that their works have made it out to market where they had a chance of being purchased by readers. It’s better in that they probably spent more time writing the next work and less time writing query letters, pitching the last work, or doing endless rewrites according to the whims of some half-interested agent.

But it can be worse, because the self-published author feels that much closer to success. Their works are available in the largest bookstore in the world. Why aren’t they selling? Rewriting blurbs, hiring another editor, changing the cover, playing with the price and promotions, all of these things make the lack of success harder to bear in some ways. These decisions fall on a single set of shoulders.

The recent rise in cynicism and pessimism stems from two sources, I believe. The first is a change in expectations. Five years ago, the thrill was in joining a crowd as it overran the gatekeepers. There were suddenly ways around and ways through. Now, anyone could be published. For the aspiring author, the ability to reach a single reader or just make works available felt like a win. A few years later, getting through the gate no longer has that new-car smell. Now people want and expect to be able to earn a living here.

This is a truth that bears repeating: Making it as a writer is difficult, however you go about it. I contend, however, that it’s far more difficult along the traditional route, as a writer getting started in today’s market. The chances of going from query letter to published work is as abysmal as ever. Over 95% of submitted works never gain representation by an agent. And fewer than half of those that do go on to get a book deal. So the failure rate for a traditionally aspiring author is around 98% right out of the gate.

It gets worse from there. Most books that get published don’t do well. There’s a small window of availability in bookstores before that title is returned and goes out of print. Advances are not large enough or steady enough to live on. And few authors get chance after chance after chance. If the first few books (or first book) underperforms, that might be the only opportunity they get. The dream of making it as a writer vanishes just when it seems like all the obstacles have been cleared.

And here is the second source of cynicism and pessimism bubbling forth from the self-publishing community: The natural failure rate, even if it’s lower for self-publishing, is now being seen for the first time. Traditionally published authors have (at least somewhat) understood the odds for years. The natural waves of rejections, failures, successes, outliers, and mid-listers have been rolling through for a long time. Self-published authors are just now seeing it.

Keep in mind that three sources of pent-up works hit the market all at once: long-queried manuscripts, manuscripts sitting in drawers, and rights that reverted to authors back when this was more likely to happen. After this sudden wave, we should expect to see — several years later — the first of those authors getting frustrated and/or quitting. And we are.

The fact that self-publishing provides better chances doesn’t mean great chances. The fact that self-publishing can be less frustrating than the query-go-round and the delays inherent with traditional publishing doesn’t mean that self-publishing is frustration-free. Again, the joys of being able to storm the gate have been replaced by the expectations of what one would find on the other side. As the two paths to publication become more similar to one another, the new arrivals will have to learn that the market is fickle, that the market is not fair, and that the market is ever-changing.

Which brings me to my last observation: Careers in entertainment are rarely steady. Five or so years into the disruption of the publishing industry, we should be seeing the first wave of authors who are working harder while earning less. This is natural. Those who work in TV, film, and the music industry know how this works. A hit TV show or band continues to produce quality work while the audience moves elsewhere. That’s what happens.

It’s tempting to assign blame, but knowing what or whom to blame is impossible. John Q. Public has ADHD. And we are all part of John Q. Public. Note how you flit from one thing to another, how you abandon TV shows you once loved, how you move to another genre of books, how you give up a film or video game habit or cancel a magazine subscription and get a new one. As content producers, you may find yourself on the other side of an equation you’ve long been a part of.

Some successful indie authors are watching earnings go down, which is always what was going to happen. Others are watching earnings go up, which is always what was going to happen. These things just go up and down. The reason for the new perception is that we practically started from zero just a few years ago. Everyone either stayed flat or saw an increase for several years. There were no heights to descend from. So this is the first time our cadre has had anyone able to report declining sales. We finally had someplace for them to descend from.

A few things that have helped me maintain perspective during my writing career:

1) I always assumed the last copy of a book I sold would be the last copy I would ever sell. I never planned my finances around sales going up or even leveling off. I planned as if every moment, my career was perched on the edge of a cliff. This affected how I handled my personal finances, how I controlled my expenditures, and how I was able to celebrate every small milestone and accomplishment as if it were new and wouldn’t last.

2) I made a conscious effort not to become inured to the things that excited me years ago. I geeked out over hitting “publish” with my twelth novel like it was my first. I want to maintain that fascination with having the freedom to make my works available to a worldwide market at the press of a button. I don’t want to get used to the view up here, at even the smallest of peaks.

3) I remind myself every day that I would write even if I had no audience. I never expected to make a living at this. I wrote because I enjoy reading, and I wanted to create worlds and characters that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I love being able to comment on the world as I see it. Everything that follows is a bonus.

And now here is a separate list of the reasons self-publishing is less brutal than the alternatives for those hoping to make a living from writing:

1) You decide when your career is over, not anyone else. This means you can publish ten novels that don’t perform well, and you can publish that eleventh if you want.

2) You can walk away or take a break and come back at any time. No one is going to hold you to book-a-year deadlines, and no one is going to object if you come back in five or ten years with a new story.

3) All your works stay available forever. This is true for your print books, your ebooks, and your audiobooks. You might give up or lose hope, but your odds of something taking off will remain practically the same. I’ve heard from writers who gave up only to see a work gain traction, and then they dove right back in.

4) The next big opportunity is right around the corner. No one knows what outlets will be available in five or ten years. With self-publishing, you own the rights to your work. Everything you write will be ready for the next big shift in the marketplace or in reader demand.

Which leads me to my final conclusion: The sky isn’t falling. The world is turning.

The sun goes down on one person while it comes up on someone else. This is a profession of cycles, of constant change. Hang around long enough, and the sun will come up on you again. People are freaking out largely because we’re seeing the first real revolution, the first time around. It got dark. That’s scary, but it’s normal. The sky falls, but it’s just as prone to rising.

I recently posted a video describing my new digital reading lifestyle and why what I’ve learned signals a very strong future for digital books. I’m very curious about people’s reading habits, as a book lover, a book seller, and a writer. This week, two other avid readers chimed in. I’m loving these accounts.

The first I’ll share is from Joanna Penn, whose blog is amazing, and who is one of the nicest and smartest people in all of publishing. You should definitely read what she has to say. There’s so much overlap with my habits that it leads me to think that the natural advantages of digital reading are going to continue to win over converts.

The other response I saw was from Rachel Eliason, who dubs herself a “Digital Expat.” Like Joanna, Rachel had the same storage issues many voracious readers experience. Like myself, she enjoys being able to fit her entire library of books inside her purse. Her reading habits and experiences with going digital are super informative.

I hope to see more of these. And it would be great to hear from the people who tried digital but gave it up, or who read print and say they’ll never go digital. My suspicion for a long time has been that the heaviest of readers are the ones who will end up going digital, as cost and physical space are major constraints. Not to mention the instant access to a near-complete list of what’s been published.

This transition may end up looking a lot like the music transition to digital downloads. It took a while for music studios to focus on their digital products ahead of their physical CDs. What changed was the money flow. When most of their profits came from digital, that became their focus. This was driven by customer behavior and new products and online retail spaces. iTunes and the iPod led to the closing of the previously ubiquitous music stores, which changed the focus of music producers. It also helped to partially democratize the music publishing scene.

The same is happening with books. The iPod and iTunes equivalent are the Kindle and Amazon. The effect on the physical product is going to be the same, as will the effects on the publishing industry. I think this transition will be slower, however. And there will be more resistance. For a few reasons:

•  Music was already consumed digitally. Only the delivery format changed. Consumers already listened to music through their headphones, speakers, and car stereos, so they didn’t have to get used to a new interface. They just had to get used to where their music was stored and how it was accessed. Songs gradually replaced entire albums as the target of purchasing decisions.

• Music listeners had already dealt with a change in format (or a few). I’ve used records, 8-track, cassettes, CDs, MiniDisc, and radio prior to MP3s. Books haven’t changed much for over a century.

• There is more cultural status with reading than listening to music. Far fewer people read novels and books for pleasure than listen to music, but the cultural status of the former trumps the latter. There are dozens of programs aimed at increasing the number of people who read and few that focus similarly on music. Public libraries are one hint at this cultural significance. The previous fact (that books haven’t changed much) combined with this fact (that reading is highly regarded) has resulted in very loud objections to digital adoption from some quarters.

• The self-betterment effect is a very powerful drag on digital adoption. This is related to the point above (that everyone should read more, and reading makes you a more highly prized member of society). For many consumers, books are like exercise equipment. They are purchased with the hope of being used because of the future ideal or bettered self they represent. And then they sit around. Related to this and the point above are those who have shelves full of books that they’ll never read but that they like having around them, especially for others to see. Digital adoption will never satisfy these cravings, and I think some of the loud objections to digital adoption come from these sorts of shoppers.

A decade from now, the reading landscape will look very different than it does today. I think we’re in the original iPod phase of adoption. The iPhone of reading hasn’t been invented yet. When MP3s first became popular, music purists went nuts over the lack of quality. Many still do. But consumption advantages (price, storage, availability, selection) trumped any of those concerns. I think we’ll see the same pattern for digital reading adoption. It may be slower due to the reasons listed above, but the results will be similar. In fact, digital adoption rates are already far higher than publishers admit, something we’ll look at in the next Author Earnings report.

A common refrain in this new age of self-publishing is that there are too many books. The outflow of new material has been likened to all sorts of natural disasters spewing forth and flooding the land. Not only are there too many books, these books are way too cheap! Many of them are even — egads — free. From down here in Florida, one can hear the chant of Glut! Glut! Glut! emanating from the glass canyons of New York City.

Everyone must be referring to Project Gutenberg, right? If you head over to www.gutenberg.org, you’ll find 46,000 free ebooks, ready to download in multiple formats, or readable in your browsers. Check out their top 100 downloads; it includes many of the greatest works of fiction ever written. Half of this list could keep most readers busy for the rest of the year, and no one could hope to read all 46,000 titles in their lifetime. These are free books, arguably many of the best, so no more books need to be written or read, right?

If you followed the logic of the most paranoid and hysterical among the Glut-Chanters, you’d have to reach this conclusion. Bookselling is dead. There are enough fantastic and free books to last us all for the rest of our lives. And yet, book-buying continues to be a $30 billion dollar industry. What gives?

How can people spend $30 billion dollars on books when there are libraries full of books that just sit there, un-checked-out and without waiting lists? How can people spend $30 billion dollars a year on books when I’ve seen piles of free physical books on the streets of New York, abandoned and left for passersby after someone moved out of their apartment? Why are people spending this much money when library overstock sales get rid of hardbacks for a buck and paperbacks cost 50 cents? Literature is being devalued everywhere, and yet it still brings in $30 billion a year? What gives?

What gives is that books aren’t perfectly interchangeable. Or another way to say this is that all books don’t appeal equally to all people. The industry could release ten trillion free ebooks tomorrow, all told from the perspective of ninja zombie llamas, and those ten trillion extra free ebooks would impact book shopping not a whit. Zilch. Nada.

Okay, you’d probably lose two or three sales. But that’s it. Those ebooks would disappear into the ether just like billions of un-surfed websites do. Do all those websites clog up the internet? Make it impossible to browse around and find what you’re looking for? No — they make it more likely that you’ll find what you’re looking for. Because there’s a greater chance that someone has self-published onto the World Wide Web just the information you’re seeking.

Forget the number of books being published every year. Raw numbers of books are meaningless, as are the price of those books. What matters is whether each individual reader can find enough quality reads to make him or her happy at prices they are willing to pay. Which is why Project Gutenberg hasn’t destroyed the publishing industry. There are enough people who want physical books, enough who want new books, enough who want non-fiction, and enough who don’t care about the classics, to keep this $30 billion industry humming right along.

So why all the consternation? Well, seeing things in the most negative light imaginable is just how a lot of humans are wired. But I suspect it’s deeper than that. We are also biologically geared to worry over scarce resources and to use up any commons that we fear others might use before we get a chance. This puling over the glut of books is ape-brain-shit gone wild.

You mostly hear about this glut nonsense from book producers, and they aren’t worried about an infinite number of books, they are worried about the finite number of wallets. They see every one of those ten trillion llama books as taking money out of their pockets, because they think every reader would enjoy their work if there was nothing else to read. They think if they could just limit the number of books, they’d sell more. They’d be richer. So is there any way to shut down the spigot? Any way of shaming people who write too fast, price too cheap, give ebooks away, serialize, participate in subscription services, etc? That’s the goal. To have more wallets spread among fewer people.

The tools you see employed to reach that goal are shame and fear-mongering. Ignore it. It’s all insane. These people miss the point, which is that the glut is good. The glut is golden. There’s never been a better time in history for literature.

Go work in a bookstore for a few years, and you’ll see what I mean. Even with tens of thousands of books in stock, you’ll encounter customer after customer who will walk in, browse for a while, and feel like they’ve already read everything that appeals to them. “When’s the next book from so-and-so coming out?” they’ll ask. “Why doesn’t anyone write such-and-such type of books anymore?”

Every reader’s taste is a microscopic subset of all the books available. I can never find enough good books about technology’s impact on civilization, or enough good books on the psychology of game theory, or enough good books on evolutionary psychology. I wait. I kill time. I read other stuff in the interim. I re-read old books for a second or third time. I play a video game or watch a movie. The lack of the right good books at the right time leads me to do stuff other than reading.

Even the current glut isn’t enough.

That’s just one reason not to fear the glut. The other is that people like to part with their money. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. We don’t just like acquiring things, most of us enjoy the feeling of sacrificing some of our resources for other resources. Things we pay for we often enjoy more than things that are given to us. We treat the things we own differently than we treat the things we rent. We go shopping because it feels good.

Yes, there are also people who steal because that feels good. There are people who download terabytes of music, movies, games, and books because of that same ape-brain impulse to acquire public resources before anyone else does. But those people are not the market. Those people don’t even consume a fraction of what they steal. They are hoarders, and focusing on them and on piracy is as crazy as focusing on Project Gutenberg. You’ve still got a $30 billion dollar industry. Those dollars represent people making the choice to pay for literature. That’s never going to change.

And the glut will never go away. For every high-cost producer out there getting squeezed by falling prices (which includes indies who have run up their living costs and/or operations costs), there are legions of people who have day jobs and enjoy writing in their spare time. There will always be avid readers out there who dream of writing their own stories. They don’t have New York skyscrapers to rent out. They don’t have assistants to pay. They didn’t quit their day jobs last year hoping their breakout sales will continue indefinitely. These are just the next generation of those who possess an active imagination, a dream, and the persistence to finish what they start.

Soon, these new writers will add their stories to that great gorgeous geysering glut. And the readers who have been waiting on another book with werewolves and tentacles and llamas will snatch those stories up. And these new producers—excited just to be a part of the literary tradition—will price however they see fit, do whatever it takes to win over a reader, and that’s flipping awesome. It should be celebrated. If the reader is happy and engaged, and the author is finding an audience, it’s a win.

Of course, the people who had their day in the sun will go crazy. Those just on the cusp of making a real living and desperate for it to come true and looking for anything to blame other than the fickle nature of the markets will rail and beat their chests. The cultural snobs who only want the books they like to exist will self-publish screeds on websites about the evils of self-publishing. The CEOs losing market share will claim they only care about the future of Literature.

These parties will appeal to aesthetics and decry the quality of the glut. They’ll appeal to their elitism and decry the affordability of the glut. They’ll appeal to vanity and decry how some are choosing to add to the glut. They’ll appeal to ego and decry the genres of the glut. They’ll decry the hard work that allows some to write and publish swiftly and cry Glut! Glut! Glut!

And no one should pay them any damn attention. Screw that noise. Bring on the books. The more the merrier and the cheaper the better.

Awesome. After posting this, I get an email from John Joseph Adams letting me know that our post apocalyptic anthology THE END IS NOW has been reduced to 99 cents for a very limited time. An all-star lineup of authors, with each of their stories worth the full admission price, to be had for less than a buck today. How apropos. Grab a copy here. Let’s devalue devour some literature.

The Amazon Fire Phone has been hammered by the media as a colossal failure. There’s at least a story a week about the device’s disappointing launch — and Amazon has been running promotions and fire sales (sorry) for months now. When the phone came out, it was tied to AT&T (which took it out of consideration for me without needing to look at a single feature or review). Since then, the phone has also been sold unlocked for use with any carrier, occasionally for less than most smartphones cost with a carrier’s subsidy (you can get one right now for $449, unlocked. But that price has occasionally dipped below $200).

Amazon took a write-off on its unsold stock of Fire phones last quarter to the tune of $170 million. That’s a lot of money. Or as one commentator pointed out, it’s basically a Hollywood flop for a film studio. Which they suffer all the time. Some are calling this an existential crisis. Others are more cautious with their criticism, remembering the reviews and doubts about the original Kindle. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently said that Amazon would be doubling down on its investment in the Fire phone and iterating until they get it right. And they need to. Pundits who say Amazon is making a mistake to develop a phone don’t seem to understand what’s at stake. Shopping began moving online two decades ago. Now it’s moving mobile.

Online shopping is still a fraction of total consumer shopping, and mobile is a fraction of that fraction, but both are gaining steam and present massive opportunities for whoever gets it right. My money is on Google for the interface and market share of eyeballs. My money is on Amazon for the distribution network and shipping speed. Google needs to solve the latter, and Amazon needs to solve the former.

Amazon already has the best and most popular online shopping interface, but Google is making major strides in that department. Search for a product on Google, and you’ll often find a better price from a non-Amazon vendor (I did recently, and the product is shipping from Italy for less than I could buy it here). The shipping might be slower this way, so it’s a matter of how quickly you need the thing. Google search dominates lives in a way that only Facebook can match. A staggering number of people interface with the internet by starting with Google. They go where Google’s algorithms take them. By offering the Android operating system for free, Google has crushed all competitors for mobile OS market share. So more mobile searches start with a Google search, which is great for Google shopping.

Amazon needs to be on that screen in your pocket. They can’t rely on Google to provide them a window, not with Google interested in being a retailer as well as a search and ad engine. What Amazon is feeling right now from this incursion is what book publishers felt when Amazon moved into book publishing, first with self-publishing and print-on-demand and then their own imprints. Amazon was already an uneasy partner for having disrupted the publishers’ brick and mortar bookstore relationships, but then they became a direct competitor as well. Google is now doing the same thing to Amazon. The Fire phone was an attempt to inoculate against that. This is why Amazon will continue to invest in the phone. It’s as important as their Amazon.com domain.

The mistake Amazon made with the first Fire phone was to create something different in a way that nobody needed. The 3D effect might be cool, but I’ve seen comments from users who deactivated the option once the novelty wore off. Smartphones already do most things that smartphone users think they need them to do. Coming up with features that stand out is difficult. Dozens of companies have been iterating these devices for a decade. But there are ways Amazon could have gone to win immediate market share. Several ways. And they missed all of them.

The most obvious is price. Amazon appeals to price-sensitive customers, but they went with a phone that has top-notch specs and specialty in-house features. They could have built a phone with slightly lesser specs, off-the-shelf parts, and subsidized the entire cost of the phone with Prime memberships. Two years of prime ($199), and you get a smartphone for free. Or if they’d rather: A $199 smartphone, and two years of Prime membership thrown in. (I like the first one much better. Everyone can understand the allure of a free smartphone. Not everyone knows they need two years of Prime for free.)

And then they could highlight all the benefits of Prime integration: Film and TV streaming, the Prime music program, automatic and unlimited cloud photo storage, and the Kindle ebook store.

The 3D feature was a distraction for how the phone plus Amazon Prime could change daily use through their tight integration. If you are a regular Amazon shopper, Prime is a must. But if you are a Prime member, you might not be using all the free digital content you have access to. Amazon should have focused on this content and the tight integration. Why not have access to all of that content all the time? That’s how I would have run the campaign. I would have taken the same $170 million dollar loss and chalked it up to customer acquisition by practically giving the phone away and hooking people on the free 2-day shipping.

That would have been the safest and most logical path, but there are riskier and I think sexier ones. The first of these would have been to concentrate on something other smartphone manufacturers are doing wrong, and that’s slimming phones down while sacrificing battery life. Amazon Prime is all about consuming digital content (music, videos, books), which stresses battery life. I’ve been dying for a manufacturer to release a phone twice as thick that lasts three times as long. The phone should know when to go “offline” for digital consumption sessions and better control data-hungry and battery-sapping apps (Android and iOS are a hog with these). One way to sell this thickening device is to integrate a small rubber edge on the top and bottom of the phone, so it can be dropped hundreds of times without shattering. Show a commercial with an iPhone and Android saddled up with those bulky and ugly cases we have to put on our devices, then show a Fire phone right beside them, with the protection integrated, the battery three times as powerful, all at the same thickness but better looking.

That sells phones. You could even combine the two ideas above, but would probably have to increase the cost a little.

The wildest idea would be to create a phone with two screens: OLED on the front for all the smartphone features, and then e-ink on the back for reading sessions. These sessions could be used for more than ebooks. They could be for web browsing and long-form content as well. It’s a natural fit for the Washington Post and other periodicals. Every LED-ink phone would come with a year’s subscription to the Post. Reading on the back of the phone lasts over a week. You can read all day and not run your phone down for other uses. You could also use the e-ink screen to check scores for your favorite teams, control your music player, and other features that are largely static without having to wake the OLED screen. Maybe the phone comes with a year of Kindle Unlimited as well, or pre-loaded with a handful of books.

Any of these launches could have made Amazon an immediate player. They have the largest online mall on which to sell the device, they just needed a compelling reason for people to buy one. Price and Prime integration are the top points. Battery and bumper integration could have set them apart. A dual display with e-ink could have created a new product category while greatly expanding battery performance.

It’ll be interesting to see what they try next. It’ll have to be something. This is too important to do as some are suggesting, which is to give up.

The most important things to understand about the digital transition aren’t going to come from writers, publishers, or pundits. They’re going to come from readers. How are ebooks and digital reading devices affecting their habits, their purchasing decisions, their intake?

I’ve asked hundreds of people over the years. I bug strangers in airports and restaurants to find out what they’re reading, how they do most of their reading, and why. I was curious as an avid reader, then as a bookseller, and now as an author.

So I thought it might be useful to come clean about my reading habits. I’ve made the transition to all-digital reading. That might be hard to admit, but I’ve never been happier as a reader. I read a lot more, and it costs me quite a bit less.

What follows is an incredibly boring video. It’s me talking about my reading habits. But I wish, as an author and book lover, that I had access to hundreds of videos like this. It would help me understand the data on digital adoption, and it would help me plan for the future of publishing.

This is my confession as a digital immigrant.

One of the things I left out that I should have mentioned: Kindle Unlimited gets a lot of press on the writing side, but how does it affect my reading? When I finish a book and get several recommendations from Amazon, if one of those books is in KU (and one often is), I end up reading that book next. All else being equal, the free book wins out. (Not really free, because I pay a monthly subscription, but you know what I mean.) I read a lot of non-fiction, and I’m always surprised at how many quality books from major publishers are in KU. One of my current reads, The Joy of X, was picked up for this reason. It definitely influences my “purchasing” decisions.

Yeah, I don’t do toy reviews. But you’ve got to try this thing. It was the thing everyone wanted to get their hands on this Christmas. Inexpensive, with hours of entertainment, and just as much fun to watch someone else play with it as it is to get your turn.

Here’s the link to grab one at Amazon. You’ll curse me and thank me.

Brent crude has dropped below $50 a barrel.

For decades, we’ve heard warnings about “Peak Oil.” This is the idea that production levels of fossil fuels will hit their apex, that we won’t find enough new reserves to meet growing demand, and that the machine of capitalism will implode as it can no longer power itself.

We are certainly seeing the peak of something, but it isn’t oil supply. It’s oil demand.

Energy consumption per capita in the US is on the decline (albeit from pretty ridiculous highs). Growth in China is slowing way down—they had a great leap forward, but such growth simply isn’t sustainable. Or even healthy. And supply is expanding with new techniques (mostly fracking and horizontal drilling).

The global recession contributed to the decrease in demand, but it doesn’t account for all of it. Small things like more efficient appliances and the end of the incandescent light bulb have gone a long way to decreasing our energy load, offsetting the explosion in the number of devices and gizmos that now seem necessary for our survival (or at least: entertainment).I’m a bright-eyed optimist, so my hope is that our dependence on fossil fuels will lessen as we learn to lean on cleaner energy like solar and nuclear. One of the problems with declining oil prices is that alternative sources of energy become less competitive. Solar recently hit parity with some fossil fuel power plants, as the cost per kwh has plummeted due to massive leaps in solar panel efficiency and plummeting costs of production.

With gas dipping below $2, will American drivers turn back to massive SUVs and trucks? There’s already been a call in recent weeks to tax gas at the pump even further, levying a carbon cost to cover the externalities of burning fuel. It doesn’t take long for lessons learned to be forgotten. Or for us to take highly variable things for granted.

All of this comes on the heels of more bad environmental news. 2014 was now officially the hottest year on record. Global warming is happening, whether that makes you comfortable or not. We’re contributing, whether that aligns with your worldview or not. Sea levels are going to creep up, and we’ll have to deal with that coastal city by coastal city.

Again, I’m an optimist. I think we’ll engineer a way through this mess. New York City is working on plans for parks that will ring Manhattan, providing levies to guard against the next major storm, but also to cope with rising sea levels. Advances in nuclear energy continue to make this the cleanest of the always-on energy sources. (I toured a natural gas power plant a few weeks ago, and the entire plant was built because of a nearby wind farm. Always-on power generation has to be built to accompany wind and solar, which is a massive problem. Nuclear will have to play a greater role going forward).

 Me and my dad at a natural gas power plant outside Pueblo, CO.

Now let’s talk distant projections. Where will we be in 50 years? I have a few hopes, and I think they have a greater chance of being right than the constant predictions of peak oil. I think in the near future, energy production will come through innovations that we build rather than something we pump from the ground. This will have an incredible impact on global economies and result in an even further decline in world violence and the incidences of war.

Right now, energy is a natural resource, tempting nations like Iraq and Russia to annex neighbors. And tempting Americans and others to drill in some of our most beautiful habitats. When wealth is as simple as running pumps, the industry can be commandeered by bandits with guns, as we are seeing with ISIS. And Russia, to some degree. When energy is instead met through solar and nuclear, it will have the same effect that Silicon Valley had in turning factory and rote jobs into jobs that pay more, require more education, are safer, and better for the environment. Oh, and generate fewer wars.

I also think in the next 50 years (hopefully on the sooner side) we’ll see Africa explode with the same perceived problems we saw in Asia. China’s rapid growth has brought a lot of people out of poverty in a very short time. While some were denouncing the offshoring of our least desirable jobs, those jobs were increasing wealth and freedoms elsewhere (especially for women). We should celebrate this. And we should hope that Africa has a chance to build factories, consume cheap energy even if it’s coal and oil, and go through the same growing pains that we went through and that the rest of the developed world has gone through. Pulling the ladder up behind us is wrong on so many levels.

The craziest thing I think we might see in the next 50 years is a drop in ppm of atmospheric CO2 levels. Once we stop pumping so much of it into the air—as we move to electric vehicles powered more by solar, wind, and nuclear—nature will absorb a lot of what’s out there. This will be the big stunner. We’ve seen this with catastrophic oil spills. Predictions of the decades of environmental ruin are followed by shock when environments return to order in far less time. I believe the resiliency of our planet will surprise us once again. As will the ingenuity that spills from our noggins.

These sorts of pronouncements are often seen as reasons to slack off or do nothing, but I disagree. Stoking fear should not be our way to inspire action. Truth is always better than clever agendas. We can inspire people to be better stewards of our environment, to use less energy in dozens of little ways, to pay more for an electric car or solar panels, to make a positive difference through positivity. The fear mongering has done real harm, I think. It has bred mistrust. It has turned us away from useful solutions like nuclear power (if you haven’t seen Pandora’s Promise, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Seriously. Grab a copy right now. You’ll thank me).

The best outcome of cheap oil will of course be the end of the incredible violence in the Middle East. For those who think this is impossible, consider the violence in Ireland just a few decades ago. Consider the record low murder rates in American cities recently announced. Consider the violence in myriad places throughout history that has now declined. At some point, the Middle East will generate wealth through trade, tourism, and innovation. It’ll be harder work than pumping liquid money out of the ground, but a lot safer, more rewarding, and less violent.

The people who predict bright futures are always mocked, and those who predict collapse are treated as sages, even as the former get it right and the latter are almost always wrong. This speaks more to our fears than it does to their wisdom. Here’s looking to a brighter tomorrow, powered by something clean, and visible through a lifting smog.

My newest release, THE SHELL COLLECTOR was inspired by my obsession with the world’s oceans and many of these environmental concerns. The work is dedicated to my good friends Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan, who have done much to make the world and our environment a better place. If you haven’t read Stewart’s excellent Whole Earth Discipline, you should. It’s a brilliant book.

2014 was a watershed year for the book biz. It was the year self-publishing finally stopped being about the outliers and was recognized by media outlets and the general public as a viable enterprise for thousands of writers. It was the year one major publisher renewed its fight with Amazon over the price of ebooks. And it was the year subscription models exploded onto the scene. A lot to look back on, and not an easy place to see where we go next. But I have a few bad ideas that will most likely be dead wrong. First, a long-winded retrospective.

The Year of AuthorEarnings.com

For me, the year 2014 began with an email from someone who created a software spider that could crawl and aggregate data on hundreds of thousands of Amazon ebooks. The end result of that email was AuthorEarnings.com, which revealed the startling fact that self-published authors were making as much as a cohort every single day as all the Big 5 authors combined. By the end of 2014, quarterly looks at this data showed that self-published authors had overtaken the Big 5 authors.

Not that it was a competition, but it showed that the success of self-publishing was more than a handful of lucky saps like me. The real story of self-publishing (as many of us have been saying for years) is the ability for people with a small and loyal readership to make a career with their craft without being a household name.

I don’t know how much AuthorEarnings.com contributed to this, but 2014 ended up being the year the stigma of self-publishing died. Prior to last January, you had people deriding self-publishing as the last resort of those rejected by agents and publishers. You had indie authors likened to third-rate cattle by some publishing executives. There were calls by other publishing executives to segregate ebooks on retail outlets based on the method of publication. And traditionally published authors not keen on the sudden increase in competition moaned about the flood of content while publishers who priced their digital books higher than their paperbacks agonized over the devaluing of literature.

Much of that dissipated this past year. What had been a sprinkling of anecdotes piled up into real data. Authors like Brenna Aubrey turned down lucrative publishing contracts and out-earned those offers within months of self-publishing. And a steady flow of unknown authors with no publishing history or established following climbed to the top of their categories and had success out of the gate based primarily on the strength of their storytelling.

The problem with this turn of events — if it can be thought of as a problem — is the idea that anyone could have this level of success. One thing not mentioned enough in 2014 is that making a career with writing requires working your tail off and a heaping dose of luck. I don’t think we give either of these facets enough credit. The people I see doing well with their writing are working incredible hours, often on top of their day jobs at first, and it isn’t reasonable to expect everyone to have the fortitude to do this for year after year until they develop a following.

Similarly, we don’t give the element of chance enough credit for those who do break out. Great books go ignored every single day. There’s nothing anyone can say to make that better for the authors who are watching their works not grab hold. Write more is the best advice, but it’s also the hardest to hear.

The Year of Hachette

2014 was the year the first of the major publishers was able to resume its squabble with Amazon over the price of ebooks. Hachette drew the short straw, and by the time they realized that ebook prices needed to come down, they’d already dug their trench and had little way to call a truce and save face. It took deals with other publishers and the looming holidays to end what was an ugly battle that caused needless harm.

While Hachette was fighting for expensive ebooks, other publishers were learning from self-published works and really competing with indies for the first time. Bestselling frontlist titles were discounted down to $4.99 and even lower and crowded indies off bestseller charts as a result. Backlist titles were given special promotions and pricing, allowing them to compete with publishers’ own frontlist works. Entire genres were discovered through self-publishing and embraced by major publishers. BookBub and other promotional tools were co-opted.

This made things more difficult for indie authors in some ways, but also legitimized the group and their decisions in other ways. We tend to forget that getting a BookBub slot was never a done deal. And lower prices from major publishers has helped indie titles blend in, which can be a great thing. With a nice cover and decent blurb an indie book is now, more than ever before, indistinguishable from any other work. The biggest difference between a $4.99 self-published title and a $4.99 ebook from Random House is that the author of the former gets 70% while the author of the latter gets 15%. The reader is none the wiser.

The Year of Subscriptions

2014 was the year subscription reading services finally gained attention. Two major publishers dabbled with Scribd and Oyster, with a third publisher recently announcing it would participate as well. Many of us have wondered how these companies make money, as they pay full tilt for every book read but charge less than $10 a month to their subscribers. The answer is some combination of gym membership and a steady inflow of venture capital. Scribd reports that the average subscriber reads just one book a month. So the plan here is to make money off people who forgot they joined a thing until they see a charge on their credit card sometime down the road and work up the energy to cancel.

If people do end up using subscriptions in a way that makes them cost-effective for the reader, it’ll either mean these companies will lose money or the payments to publishers and authors will have to go down. Just this week, news of another round of funding for Scribd.com comes in. $22 million more in venture capital raised. This, and a combination of low usage from subscribers, should keep them viable for quite some time without doing to authors what music subscription services have done to other artists, which is to severely reduce their pay.

Amazon was a relatively late entry into this sector, but of course when they move the ground trembles. Kindle Unlimited launched in 2014, and few programs have been so contentious. Those who are doing well by the program are doing it mostly quietly (though plenty have raised their hand and said KU has been great for them). More attention has been paid to those who have seen their income go down since the launch of KU. I blogged about KU several times, but the post that seems most apt is this one. It compares the disruptive force of subscription services to the disruptive force of self-publishing as a whole. Those who made out with the latter are now complaining about being disrupted themselves. Meanwhile, a new crop of authors are having success and using tools to gain market share. Personally, I applaud this, even as I have pointed out ways that I think KU can be improved for the reader.

One thing to understand about Amazon (and few seem to get how crucial this is) is that the customer comes first. This works to the advantage of indie authors, as Amazon has been thrilled to open its site to all comers. The freedom to publish alongside major New York houses comes from Amazon’s desire to provide as vast a selection as possible to its readers. The curation process has been democratized and crowdsourced. All books are welcome, and customers are the way by which they are discovered and promoted. We’ve already lost sight of how revolutionary customer reviews were as a leveling force. We take these things for granted now.

The same attitude that leveled the playing field for indies and allowed us to participate guides Amazon’s foray into subscription services. They are going to tinker, balancing the needs of the bottom line, publishers, authors, and readers. But the last of these comes first, make no mistake. I’ll have more to say about the effect this has on authors below.

The Year of Taking Things for Granted

2014 began with very little perceived legitimacy for the self-published author, and it ended with major media outlets shouting with glee over the consternation self-published authors are expressing over Amazon due to KU. To me, this is the great story of 2014. Two years ago, I couldn’t get anyone in the publishing world to listen or believe me when I relayed the stories I was hearing from the trenches, stories about unknown authors making thousands of dollars a month (and many making quite a bit more than that).

I spoke with reporters from Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post, the New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and dozens of regional papers and magazines, and they only wanted to write about the outliers. No one wanted to do the heavy lifting of investigating the larger and more interesting story of a publishing landscape that was now open to anyone with the dream of being a writer and the willingness to put in the hard work.

A year later, the viability of indie publishing is taken for granted, but in strange ways. Media outlets like the New York Times have covered the rise of YouTube stars, self-produced musicians, Netflix originals, and the sharing and crowdsourced economy, but practically never report on the disruption in publishing. In fact, the Times’ Sunday Book Review stopped printing the ebook bestseller list right as that list was being peppered with self-published titles. The first news we get about indie publishing is the outcry from indies over KU. So we’ve arrived just in time to bolster existing agendas. I call that progress. Maybe we’re being used, but it takes being recognized to be used. That’s something.

The viability of self-publishing has been dangerous in other ways. For me, the importance of getting this story out (and the motivation behind AuthorEarnings.com) has been to make sure writers understand their options. We aren’t going to pressure publishers to pay higher royalty rates and offer fairer contracts by pleading with them (and we have yet to see any organized attempt from writers’ groups to effect these changes).

The way things will change will be from individual authors making the choices that make the most sense to them, whatever that choice is. Which is why striking down untruths and zombie memes is so important. Self-publishing, now more than ever, is the best way for the vast majority of writers to launch their writing careers, even if their goal is to end up with a major publisher. Understanding this and acting on it will pressure publishers to step up their game, which I believe they’ll do.

So how has the viability of self-publishing become dangerous? The expectations of those who had early success and those just starting out run the risk of becoming unreasonable. Very few people make a living in any kind of entertainment sector, and even if they do, it’s rarely for long. I remember hoping I’d have one or two solid months with the kind of sales I saw in early 2012. I’ve maintained that feeling for the last three years, forever waiting for the other shoe to drop. This will be the last month I have meaningful income from publishing. I’ve said that for 36 months in a row. I’m delighted to be wrong every time, but it won’t last forever. Eventually, I’ll get it right. And I won’t agonize over the return to reality.

For centuries, the impermanence of success in the entertainment industry has been learned by each generation. It’s not an enjoyable lesson. Superstar athletes assume every year will be better than the previous, that they’ll never lose a step, they’ll always be in demand, until a top draft pick is eating up their minutes on the court. Every year, another entertainer can’t understand why album sales or theater tickets weren’t as strong as the year before. Much is blamed for this. Critics are blamed, management is blamed, agents are blamed, the gods are blamed.

The fickle nature of the market is rarely given its due. It’s this fickle nature that gave each of us a chance. It’ll be that fickle nature that takes it all away. Enjoy it while it lasts. Remember that you once did this simply because you loved it. Remember that there was a time when no matter how good you felt you were, there was no place for you to even offer your wares. We have to appreciate every moment we have, every opportunity given, and cherish these things even as we expect more and demand more.

There’s a fine balance there between appreciation and subjugation. To be appreciative doesn’t mean to give up or to become complacent, it simply requires that we remember how far we’ve come and how fast. Self-published authors are complaining that Amazon is offering unlimited reading on the best ereader devices ever built on the best online marketplace ever devised and paying more for each borrow than a traditionally published author makes on every paperback they well at Barnes & Noble, and many are outraged.

That’s awesome. It shows how far we’ve come, how much that seemed impossible five years ago is now taken for granted, and how far we hope to go in the future. But while we’re fighting for more progress, let’s not lose sight of the years that have passed and where we started. And if you see people losing hope, remember that we are a storytelling animal. We will always want to tell stories, and there will always be billions of people willing to pay to have great stories told to them. Nothing will change that. There will always be a viable market for this trade. It’s just that our opportunities for making a living at this will never be chiseled in stone. We will come and go. I not only expect this, I celebrate it.

Happy New Year. Tell awesome stories.