Mit Sandru's Blog

I am a Renaissance man. In other words, I write books, fiction and nonfiction, paint in oils or illustrate on Photoshop, compose music, and write songs. I composed a tune for the book Vampire Vlad V. Listen to it on YouTube or other outlets. "Vampire Vlad V by Mit Sandru."
If you listen to the music, you'll agree that it matches the book's mood. A song with lyrics is coming soon."

Coronavirus cabin fever? I did my contribution and offered everyone on my email list one free e-book of their choosing from the books I authored.
https://www.amazon.com/Mit-Sandru/e/B...

This year, but especially this summer, my writing took a back seat to advertise my books on AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) and although the marketing campaign was somewhat successful but expensive, it is still a work in progress to master this crazy marketing system.
One thing I decided to do was to aid my book blurbs with videos about the book content, like a book trailer. It is “like” a book trailer because it cannot have any sales promos in it to be accepted by the reviewers-in-power at Amazon. The videos can be uploaded by anyone in the “Related Video Shorts” under “Product Details” including the author, moi.
One book that has considerable success since I started advertising with AMS is “Abstract Dreams: Coloring Book 1 (Sandru's Art)” I’m an artist as well, and a few years ago I decided to release a coloring book with the sketches of my abstract art. It didn’t sell well until I started advertising it and it sold even better after I released a video showing how to color some of my sketches.
Actually, I improved that video and released it on YouTube as a book trailer: https://bit.ly/2Ulc9RT if you want to see it. It has nice music as well composed by truly yours.

If you want to watch other videos for other of my books on Amazon check out:

https://www.amazon.com/Lorn-Tree-Arbo...
about how the Arboregal Tree was constructed
or
https://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Vlad-V...
about Lucy the Vampire Dog licking blood drops (actually ketchup) from the covers of the Vlad V series books.

I found a quote saying, “We live in an era of smart phones and stupid people.” Maybe ignorant I'd say.
However there is a point to this. I don’t know about you but when I was a kid I learned my multiplication table by heart. And I still remember how much is 2 x 2. Along the way in the seventies the electronic calculators became affordable and everyone began using them. Why learn multiplications? It is easier to push buttons, on a smart phone today.
So, back to reading. By far, most of the information is written and most people need to know how to read to function. And thanks to texting, people still know how to read, although it may say: WTF DGMW IMNSHO THIS IS NYOB. 4 which u’ll need a dictionary.
The reading transformations happened because of technology, which will continue to advance and affect how we read. In my opinion we'll go back to the pre-written era in history. Our ancestors communicated well without knowing how to write, but only over short distances. For long distances the written word was necessary. But what will happen when you can speak into the smart phone and it’s converted into text (text is simpler to transmit) and the recipient receives text, which is converted back to spoken words. This technology exists already. I wrote books by dictating to my computer. And listened to emails read by the computer.
However what will happen when the technology will be so good that you’ll not be able to distinguish between machine voice and human voice. Or the machine will understand languages easily, regardless of idioms, slang, or accent. My Amazon Alexa understands me well, after a little training. As a matter of fact it understood my wife when she yelled at me to lower the volume when I was listening to Pink Floyd too loud. Alexa shut down. Even Alexa obeys my wife.
Writing and reading will not go away soon, but reading may fall in disuse, and the technology will replace the reading skill. In that case all books may become audio books, and we’ll return to the telling of stories, again. No cave, no fire, just smart phone and ear buds.
But why stop here? What if the technology assisted by A.I. could transform a written book into a movie? YouTube civilization I'd say.

Reading helps you become more informed, knowledgeable, smarter, and improves your communication skills, verbal or written. But with so many demands in your life when do you find the time to read a book? Most of us work, and it usual takes half of the 24 hours day; wake up at 6 AM come home at 6 PM, on average. All of us have to sleep, which should be 8 hours, if you’re lucky. Four precious hours left for chores, family, friends and TV. For a reading person TV is of questionable value, but when you’re exhausted TV is the “entertainment” of last resort. Then, when can anyone find time to read?
How about listening to audio books? Now, for the literati elite, listening to a book is sacrilege, almost in the same category as watching a movie instead of reading the book. A book is meant to be read, savored, and fantasied in your mind. True, but seeing is not the only sensory/input channel we posses. We all talk and we remember, most of the time, what was said, even on Radio or TV. Listening to an audio book is the same.
When I was employed I had no time to read. Until I realized that there was a time in the day when I did things automatically, like commuting to work. Living in Southern California I had no choice but drive to work, and during that time I listened to news or music; same news, same music over and over everyday. What a waste of time, until I found audio books. At first it was awkward to listen intently and drive, but in a few days I could listen and drive without any problems. My round trip commute took two hours, and besides listening to hundreds of books over the years the traffic never bothered me again. I looked forward to my one hour to go to work and one hour to come back home in the company of a good story. And I remember all the books I listened to. One time I looked for Steven Kings’ book 11/22/63 to lend to my sister and couldn’t find it. I didn’t read the book, I listened to it, but I thought I read it. To me it made no difference between reading or listening, the absorption was the same.
An audio book can cost more than a paper book. But you can subscribe to an audio-books club, such as "Audible" and listen to your heart’s desire. Put your time to good use, read or listen to a book, be that if you drive, or ride the subway or bus.
Reading is good for you.

Just like movies a book can have a Book Trailer. But unlike movies a book does not have ready images to use in the trailer. That should not discourage an author to create a trailer for his/her book.
Creating a book trailer can cost from nothing to as much as your purse can afford. I prefer the no cost variety. Not because I’m cheap, or have an empty purse, which also has a hole in it, but the ROI is very slim or even zero when it comes to this form of marketing books. The time to create a trailer can be consuming too. In essence a book trailer is a marketing tool, using the most appealing synopsis for that book.
Why create a book trailer? There can be all kind of reasons, but I make them for fun and ego. It is fun –for me at least– to show in pictures and words the story of my book. And ego? Well, would you like to be just an author or an Author with Book Trailers?
In the do-it yourself book trailer the narrator can be you, as the author, presenting your book, or a friend with a suave voice and TV-looks giving the spiel, or words and pictures describing your book. Or anything you can imagine to delight the readers and convince them to buy your book.
The book trailer should follow the three –SSS– rule: Simple, Surprising, Short.
When I created my first book trailer for Arboregal the Lorn Tree I had so much material that it took 4 Min and 17 Sec. Too long, but it has nice pictures and nice music, if I can say so myself since it was all my work.
An out of the box book trailer is Lucy the Vampire Dog This is just 1 Min 1 Sec long. Lucy is my dog, leaking blood (Ketchup) from the covers of my vampire Vlad V book covers. Although Lucy seems to be a puppy, she is 17 years old. She doesn’t age, just like a vampire.
A month ago I released the first audio book for “Vampire Vlad V.” It’s nice if an audio book starts and ends with music, personal opinion. Therefore I used one of my early compositions from 1985 and orchestrated it for the audio book. Well since I had the music, why not make another book trailer for Vampire Vlad V. This Book Trailer lasts 1 Min 52 sec, just right.
In as far as making book trailers I use PowerPoint, and then convert them to MP4. Lucy was a video.
Happy trailer(ing.)

I wrote "Escape from Communism" under the name Dumitru Sandru 4 years ago, and I made predictions of what is ahead of us in our country, like the polarization of the left and the right political believes of our electorate. Not surprisingly, omitting the character traits of the candidates, the political reality is shaping as I described it in my book. And we just began.

Recently I published a coloring book. It is for all ages, but because it contains abstract drawings it is better suited for grown ups. Why a coloring book? The simple answer is: Because they’re popular. The real reason is more complicated than that. Although I’m an artist, besides an author, I wouldn’t sit down and draw new contents for a coloring book. There are far better artists out there who can do that, and the subjects can range from flowers, birds and butterflies, mandala and geometric shapes, animals and scenery, bugs and even obscene language. Everything you can imagine is available.
In my case I already had all the material I needed. Over the years I sketched hundreds of abstract drawings. I painted very few of them, because of time constraints, although I love what I drew. So when the light bulb came on in my head about a coloring book, why not publish one with samples of my abstract sketches? And that’s what I used in “Abstract Dreams- Coloring Book 1, from Sandru’s art collection.” This book contains only 30 sketches from the 100 of similar sketches I drew in sketchbook 1. And I have five more sketchbooks like this one.
You may wonder about the “abstract” part of my drawings. Usually “abstract” is associated with modern art, represented by splashes and splatters and mixtures of colors and other mediums, having very little resemblance to anything you and I may recognize. But then abstract paintings are not intended to be recognizable. They intend to provoke feelings, which sometimes are pleasing and sometimes not so much. Well, my abstract art is pleasing, composed of line drawings that may evoke certain feelings when viewed. Coloring them will produce different outcomes than the original sketches might have shown.
And that’s the story behind my first coloring book for adults. Will it be a second one? It depends on how popular the first one will be. So far I’m giving away two copies of Abstract Dreams here on Goodreads and there was a phenomenal response from the readers/coloring artists.

Congratulations! You are an Indie Author. And you wrote the best book ever published. But it does not sell. You escalated your marketing and advertising efforts and expected those hungry readers to buy your e-book by the dozens, hundreds, let’s dare say thousands?
Not.
What’s going on? You’ve read blogs saying that many Indie Authors quit their day jobs and can live on their published books. But then many other sources say that if you sell 100 e-books ever, consider yourself lucky. Lucky? You feel like quitting.
Let’s look at this from a more down to earth point of view. You’ve never run a marathon, but decide to run in one. Do you think you’d win? How about finish? Would you be disappointed if you quit by mile five? Your stamina and the task at hand are obvious. You don’t win a marathon on the first try.
Yes, but running the marathon has to do with physical conditioning. Writing is different. You should be able to succeed the first time. Oh, really? Remember the “good-old” days, as far back as ten years ago? Back then for you to become a writer you had to write the book, polish it, and submit the manuscript to publishers and agents. And then to your shock, after months of waiting you received “NO” or not even a response. Some considered themselves lucky to get a personalized rejection. Yeah, somehow a sugar coated “NO” is easier to swallow. What would you do? By the time you got your first rejection years would pass. Would you quit or write another book and submit again?
If your dream was to become an author you kept writing and submitting until the publishers said, “YES,” or you gave up, or died (sadly that happened.) In the old days not everyone who submitted one manuscript, two, three, or more became a traditional published author. To succeed you had to write a lot and submit a lot until one day, and only if you kept at it, you might get published.
Today you can become a published author on your own, without the approval from those ‘despicable’ gatekeepers, and Amazon will validate you. Except today the readers, not the gatekeepers are saying “NO,” by not buying your book(s.)
In the past the key to success was: Write, Polish, Submit, and do it over again until you were successful. Today the key to success is: Write, Edit and Publish, and do it over again until your books sell. Nothing has changed.
In the old days chances were slim that you’d ever get published, and didn’t make any money while trying. Today at least you get published, although sales/money are not there. At first.
Eventually the readers will say “YES,” but only if you Write, Edit and Publish repetitively. It will take time and only the determined will succeed. And the more you write the more your skills will improve, making you a better writer. There were no quick results then, there are no quick results now. This is a long haul effort, not a get rich quick scheme.
So what will you do? Keep Writing or Quit?

In a free economy the market, meaning the suppliers and the buyers, establish the prices of goods. Suppliers want to sell high, the buyers want to pay low, the competition heats up, and in the end the prices settle at the optimum level based on supply and demand. What should the right price be for eBooks then?

To understand better what an eBook price should be let’s decompose the book costs. But what is the book in the first place? We think of a book as its content, but in reality the book is the content-delivery-device, CDD. It can be in the form of a paper book, a CD for Audio, iTunes download, or an electronic device like Kindle. From this point of view the book is made of two components: content and the content-delivery-device, CDD.
1 – The writer creates the content, then it is taken over by editors, designers and other specialists and they polish it for insertion in a CDD, be that for print on paper, audio, or e-ware. The writer gets paid, along with everyone else, and that is the fixed cost for the content, which is paid in full for before a book becomes a book. The content is software.
2 - For hundreds of years the CDD was the paper book, the hardware. The p-Books cost is made of paper, print, binding, packaging, transportation, warehousing, and eventually the destruction of the unsold p-books. Bottom line, the p-Book without content has a price determined by the pound(s) of paper it uses. Imagine what the cost would be for clay tablets.
3 - The third cost element of a book’s cost is the marketing and advertising. Without them who will know if the book even exists?
4 - The retailing, the actual selling to readers, is the fourth element of the cost. The bookstores get as much as 50% off the list price.
5 - The last cost added to the book is the publisher’s profit, which is necessary to continue in business. An accountant my say that I forgot other expenses like overhead, burden, taxes and many others. I considered all these extra costs as part of each element mentioned above.
Therefore, a book’s price is made of five cost elements: content, delivery-device, marketing, retailing, and profit.

The p-Book uses all five cost elements, and therefore has the highest price. Audio has a high price as well because of the additional production costs. The eBook makes use of an e-Reader, the CDD, but this device is paid for only once as a Kindle reader, or tablets and smart phones to read eBooks on them. In theory the price difference between a p-Book and eBook is the cost of producing the CDD, the p-Book. Only the publishers know exactly the cost of CDD. As an educated guess I would say it is 25% of the retail price. In this case a $20 p-Book would cost $15 as an eBook.

However, the eBook price should be lower still. When a publisher sets up to publish a new book, the process is to produce a paper book and price it accordingly, as if eBook doesn’t even exist. (They say otherwise, but I don’t believe that.) In other words the cost of the content and marketing is already accounted for under the cost of p-Books. The e-Book’s cost is really zero, if we ignore more royalty for the author in case of higher unit sales. But the publisher needs to make a profit and the retailer as well. Amazon takes 30% off the listed prices for eBooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99. Based on these prices the profits would be between $2.09 and $6.99, give or take a few pennies. Considering that the publishers make about $3 from a $20 p-Book, an eBook priced at $4.29 would bring in the same profit. Above that price the profits would be pure gravy.

So, why don’t the Trad-Pubs sell eBooks for less than p-Books? The entire publishing industry, the Trad-Pubs, the distributors and the bookstores among others are in the business to make money, as they should. Commerce is based on demand and supply. If the demand for books is known, the supply should be equal. Too many books –higher supply– and competition forces the prices of p-Books to come down. This means lower profits for everyone in the publishing industry.
Contrary to their propaganda, the Trad-Pubs are not the gatekeepers of the high literature bastion. They are the Gatekeepers of p-Books Supply. Another factor to take into account is if eBooks are cheaper it will cannibalize the sales of p-Books. Trad-Pubs have control over p-Books, but not eBooks. Relinquishing that control will spell disaster for the Trad-Pubs and bookstores. Not a good thing for them.
All writers, without a paying job, write without pay, at least in the beginning or perhaps ever, and there are many people who want to become writers and they write a lot. The Indie Authors can publish their books without Trad-Pubs and more commonly the content is published as eBooks. Since the gatekeepers can be bypassed the Indie Authors publish a lot and flooded the book market. The carefully monitored supply of p-Books had been upset by plentiful supply of eBooks. Darn it. If this situation continues the Trad-Pubs could be put out of business, and already thousands of bookstores closed. The eBook technology is making the gatekeepers guard a gate without a fence. And that’s why the eBooks are priced as high as the p-Books to restore some order in the supply equation, discourage readers to buy eBooks, and prolong the p-Books as long as possible. The ultimate solution for them would be the disappearance of the cheap eBooks. Forever.

Knowing why the Trad-Pubs price eBooks artificially high, how much should be the eBook prices published by Indie Authors? Amazon takes the least commission for eBooks priced from $2.99 to $9.99. Right there is the optimum price range. It is well known that the lower the prices the higher the sales. The decision has to be made about what an Indie Author wants to achieve, maximize market share or profits. For example, as an Indie Author if I want market share, I’d price all my eBooks at $0.99. Amazon’s commission is 70% at this low price and I’d get only $0.30 per eBook. But, theoretically, I’ll sell more books and more readers will know about me. On the other hand I could set the prices at $9.99 and receive a maximum profit of $6.99 per eBook. Will I sell a lot of eBooks at this price? Not likely. The sweet spot between the optimum price, profits, and unit sales is claimed to be $2.99 to $3.99. Still these prices will not produce results if you are an unknown Indie Author. Not enough people will be looking for your books and buy them when they see lower prices, unless you advertise.

But how about pricing the eBook to recover your investment? I’ll use one of my eBooks as an example to price the eBook based on cost. I don’t rent an office in Manhattan, I don’t have shareholders, and I don’t pay myself for writing the novels. (If the Department of Labor finds out that I don’t get paid they’ll sue my employer, and that would be me.) However, it doesn’t mean that I publish my books for free. I may write and do the illustrations for free (I’m an artist as well,) but I pay for editing, and no book should be published without it. As an example: to publish a book of 50k words/200 pages it costs me $1,535. ($1,500 for editing, $35 for the copyright.) The time I invested – the equivalent labor cost – I consider it sunk cost. What then would the price be for this book? If I want to recover my cash investment and forecast to sell 100 eBooks, the price would be $22, list price. Even my mother wouldn’t pay that much for her son’s eBook. If I would sell 1,000 units the price would be $2.99. A better price, but would I sell 1,000 eBooks? My dilemma is, do I recover my cost or expand my market share. If I sell low and make no profit, my market will expand and more readers will know about me, and hopefully they’ll buy more of my books in the future. In time I may make a profit. Hopefully before I die.

Another way to look at pricing is matching the competition’s pricing. I do surveys and gage what other comparable books sell for and the quality level of those books. High sales always reflect the quality of those books, and not necessarily because of the lower prices. Then, when needed I adjust my prices accordingly.

How about zero pricing? Unlike p-Books zero pricing ($0.00) for eBooks is possible with no cost to the publisher. However, from what I found out the readers value them as much as they pay for them. Near zero. That doesn’t mean the zero pricing used strategically is not beneficial. Zero prices should be considered lost leaders to generate sales for other books. I have a series, Vlad V, which so far contains five novels. The first book, “Vampire Vlad V,” I offer it for free as an enticement to buy the rest of the books in the series. My advice as an Indie Author: don’t give anything away without the potential of receiving some future benefit.

In conclusion, what is the right price for the eBooks? Any price that sells your eBook and advances your career as a writer. And remember, the readers are smart and will not overpay.