HUNTER soars!

Pilot Mike Stephenson, a fan of HUNTER, had a copy of my novel with him on the flight deck on a flight between El Paso and Denver two summers ago. And he sent along the photographic proof.

“I eagerly await the next installment,” he reports. “Keep up the good work.”

If you have an unusual photo of yourself with HUNTER, email it to me and I’ll be happy to run it here.

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR READERS AND WRITERS NEAR ANNAPOLIS AND MARYLAND’S EASTERN SHORE:

I’ll speak next week on “How You Can Succeed as a Self-Published Author,” on Thursday, May 30, 7-9 p.m., at Queen Anne’s County Free Library, 121 South Commerce Street, Centreville, Maryland. My informal presentation is free and open to the public.

I’ll outline the main publishing options available to writers, compare their relative advantages and disadvantages, explain why I chose self-publishing, and explain how that works. I also plan to chat a bit about my debut thriller, HUNTER, explain what I did to propel up the bestseller lists, answer questions about why and how I write what I do…and also about why BAD DEEDS has taken so long!

I look forward to meeting any of you who attend. Copies of HUNTER will be available for purchase, and I’ll be happy to sign and personalize copies for you or any gift recipient.

I hope to see you there!

Dylan, I appreciate your enthusiasm and your generous Amazon review!

If you’re a fan of the novel, and would like to show up here displaying your copy — especially if you’re in some exotic locale with it — send me your photo by email attachment to:  RobertTheWriter [at] gmail [dot] com. I’ll post the most interesting photos.

Another milestone for HUNTER: It has just received its 350th Amazon customer review. And I’m delighted to report that it’s yet another 5-star rave (the 259th, as of this writing):

I loved how this author mixed in thriller, intrigue and just a little romance to keep you guessing! I am looking forward to more adventures with Dylan Hunter and I hope Annie and Luna as well. This character is a captivating warrior and I really loved his wickedly crafty skills.

I’m also amused to report that the previous customer review — also rating my thriller 5 stars — came from (are you ready?) Dylan Hunter. No, not that Dylan Hunter, the fictional one. I mean a real-life Dylan Hunter, living in Denver, Colorado. He was Googling his name not long ago and discovered my novel. Curious, he bought it, read it…and loved it, posting his own enthusiastic review. Dylan and I have since corresponded a few times, and I’ve sent him a signed complimentary copy.

Now to wait and see if Annie Woods posts a review….

Folks, even if you aren’t interested in self-publishing, you’ll want to read “Self-Publishing Is the Future — and Great for Writers,” by self-publishing superstar Hugh Howey, writing in Salon.

This terrific piece of persuasive writing is a wonderful tribute to struggling artists of all kinds…musicians, painters, whatever. For writers, however, it may be the most compelling article yet on why self-publishing is a far superior option to traditional publishing — and why it offers you the best odds to make enough money to pay some bills, even if you don’t ever get rich. It is loaded with examples of “ordinary,” unknown writers who are doing just that.

Take a few moments to savor this brilliantly written essay. If this doesn’t convince you about the merits of “going indie,” nothing will.

Amazon has just announced the purchase of Goodreads, the premiere book discussion site on the internet. This has sent into a tizzy many who see Amazon as a monopolistic Goliath bent on world domination — and also those Goodreads users who fear a loss of the site’s independence.

Rather than write about this at length, let me simply link to an interview with representatives of Amazon and Goodreads, who anticipate and try to allay such fears by describing their reasons and plans. I also want to link to two excellent blog posts, by bestselling indie author Hugh Howey and self-publishing author and advocate David Gaughran, which offer reassuring perspective.

In my own dealings with Amazon, I have experienced from them nothing but stellar service, fair play, and an authentic desire to help me become successful. That kind of behavior and “win/win” attitude is why Amazon has grown so rapidly to dominate its competitors in the book world. If those rivals spent more time striving for excellence in customer service, and less bashing Amazon for its well-earned success, they would have much less to worry about, and the book world would be a far better place.

Does the prospect of marketing your book intimidate you?

Some time ago, I published a piece telling aspiring authors “Ten Reasons You Should Skip Traditional Publishers and Self-Publish Ebooks Instead.” Yet despite the clear advantages of “indie” over “traditional” publishing, the prospect of “DIY” publishing still scares the hell out of many writers. Their most common worry?

“But…how would I market my book on my own?”

That fear is the main reason why so many hold out forever for a traditional contract, then accept lousy ones. They want a publisher to take the burden of marketing off their backs.

Well, let me share a dirty little secret that publishers don’t want newbie authors to know. Despite all their advance promises to give you lots of promotional support, they mostly will leave the marketing of your book up to you.

That’s right: They save their promotional budgets for King, Evanovich, and Grisham—not for struggling beginners or “mid-listers.” So, if you’ll have to promote your book all by yourself anyway, then why surrender most of your royalties and rights to a publisher?

Still, the question remains: How do you market a self-published book?

I spent a long time studying the promotional methods of successful self-published authors before I released my debut thriller, HUNTER. And, as I have described here, their tips helped HUNTER to become a big bestseller in December 2011.

I learned that becoming a successful “indie” author requires two basic things. First, you must craft a book that appeals to an identified target audience. Second, you must make your book “discoverable” to that target audience.

Let me explain what that means, in ten steps:

1. Write the best book you can—then, write your next one.

How “50 Shades of Grey” Became a Bestseller

Crafting an appealing book is 90% of the marketing battle. No amount of marketing ingenuity will help an unappealing book succeed. On the other hand, I’ve seen great books succeed with little or no marketing push. (Hugh Howey’s Wool is an outstanding example.)

Bottom line: Good “word-of-mouth” is the best advertising.

In addition to writing a good book, the next best marketing tactic is to write more good books. Each new title will broaden your name recognition and generate more sales for all your previous ones. That’s because many readers are “binge readers.” They find an author they like, and they then seek out and scoop up every single title that the author has written previously.

Even better, write a series. Books linked together by some connecting theme (think of John Gray’s “Mars and Venus” books), or by some appealing character (think: Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Stephanie Plum, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Mitch Rapp, Mike Hammer, Scot Harvath, Sean Dillon, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, etc., etc.), will foster a virtual addiction in your fans, who will then eagerly await the publication date for every new installment in the series. Better yet, each new book released will attract new fans, prompting them to go back and buy all the prior books in the series. That’s how bestselling authors expand their audience over time, often geometrically.

Every successful author I know agrees: The single best “marketing tactic” that you can employ, by far, is to write and publish your next book. In fact, many of them counsel that you shouldn’t even bother to begin doing any promotions until you’ve written and published at least three books. Success in indie publishing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Still, stories of books—especially self-published books—succeeding without any marketing, are rare. Most books, even good ones, will languish, invisible among millions of available titles, unless you do something to make them stand out and become visible—discoverable—to some target audience.

So, let’s assume that you have written a good book. Now, your pre-publication job is to enhance its “discoverability.” Here’s some key stuff to take care of before you publish:

2.  Identify your target reader, find out where he is, and think like that reader in every aspect of your marketing.

No book appeals to everyone. So, don’t even try to market broadly and generically; that’s a waste of your time and money. Instead…

1. Narrowly define your target reader audience. Do they share a demographic profile (age, sex, ethnicity, background, etc.)? What are their values and interests? Who are their heroes? Write a profile of your “ideal reader.”

2. Next, find out where they hang out. What books and magazines do they read? What movies do they like? What online sites do they frequent? What groups to they belong to? Compile lists of these things; you’ll want to target them later.

3. Now, think like that reader in all aspects of your marketing. No, this doesn’t mean pandering to readers as a writer. But in every marketing decision and action, ask yourself: How would this be perceived by my target reader? Never view marketing decisions as aspects of your artistic self-expression. Marketing is simply the effective communication of values. It means connecting your work with the values and interests of your targeted customer.

3.  Don’t be amateurish. Be totally professional in all aspects of your writing, editing, and production values.

Face it: Your book is competing with millions of other titles—many by Big Name authors from major publishers—for the attention, consideration, and purchasing dollars of your target reader. That’s why you must give that reader every impression of being as professional as your competitors—and never amateurish or “self-published.” So…

• Aim for craftsmanship in your writing. Always strive to learn and improve.

• Be patient: Take your time to do things right rather than rush to publish.

• Test your final manuscript on “beta readers”: people with writing and editing skills, but especially members of your audience of target readers.
  

• After their input, carefully edit, proofread, format, lay out, and design your book—and preferably, have those tasks done by hired, objective pros. What you may think are “little things”—typos, misspellings, bad punctuation—will be tell-tale signs of “amateur” to many browsing customers, and you’ll lose them. Those “little things” count in a big way, if you wish to establish a professional image and reputation. (Here’s one place where you can find the good contract help you’ll need.)

• Make sure your cover looks professional—like a major publisher’s. First, it must suggest the right genre to your target reader. Second, it must consist of simple, bold images, and use big, colorful, contemporary fonts for the title and author name. All of this should be visible and legible when reduced to thumbnail size, which is how customers will probably first see it online. And third, test potential cover designs on some members of your target audience before you decide which to use. Remember: A cover is not about what you like; it’s about what your target reader likes. Don’t just grab some images off the Internet, use PhotoShop on them, then select Times Roman fonts for the title and your name. That all-too-common approach simply screams “self-published amateur,” and it will turn off many prospective readers. If you’re not a graphic designer, spend a couple of hundred bucks and hire one. (You can find good ones at the preceding link.) It will be one of the best investments you’ll ever make.

Before I published HUNTER, I knew a “noir” look would capture the mood for my vigilante crime thriller. But I needed a cover that would really “pop” and grab the eyes of my target audience from amid the sea of other book covers displayed on sites such as Amazon. My talented young cover designer, Allen Chiu, understood exactly what I was looking for and simply knocked it out of the park.

Here is another fundamental consideration for your marketing tactics:

4.  Carve out a distinctive market niche, and “brand” yourself and your work.

Years ago, I encountered the invaluable little marketing classic by Al Ries and Jack Trout titled Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. Its subtitle is “How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace.”

Well, that’s what successful indie authors now call “discoverability.” And here are a couple of key points about how to enhance it:

First, “brand” yourself and your book. Carve out a narrow, distinctive “niche” in the book marketplace based on some catchy concept, theme, or image that will appeal to your target readers, but simultaneously distinguish your work from all others in your genre.

Since my novel is about a mysterious vigilante hero, I decided that my brand would be “The Vigilante Author.”  I use the vigilante concept to distinguish my book from other types of thrillers. But my hero is also distinctive from other fictional vigilante characters, because he’s unusually self-reflective and philosophical about what he’s doing. In fact, you might describe him as a kind of “philosophical Zorro.” So that even more tightly defines my market “niche,” setting my work apart.

Bottom line: Find some catchy, distinctive concept that works for you.

Second, use your “brand” in everything you do to promote your work: book covers, author photos, blog designs, promotional copy, business cards, etc. That kind of focus and integration will guarantee that your “brand” will become uniquely identified with you, making you and your work memorable for your target readers.

You can see by this blog how I employed my “Vigilante Author” brand as its title, then tied the blog’s visual theme to my book cover. I even selected an author photo that would reinforce my brand. (And yeah, I wear that “Indiana Jones” hat in public a lot. Besides good branding, I think it just looks cool. And I’m old enough not to care if anyone thinks otherwise.)

5. Don’t price your book either too low or too high. Price it strategically to be competitive.

Some indie authors have achieved a lot of success by running temporary sales on their ebooks—even setting the price at “free” for a few days. This tactic can generate a lot of visibility and build your fan base quickly. Applied to one book in an ongoing series, low or free pricing also can attract many readers who’ll then go and buy all the others.

But obviously, it’s not a great tactic to give away your work permanently, not if your long-term goal is to make writing books a paying proposition.

So again: “Think like your target reader.” If you price your ebook too low—say, 99 cents—he may think: “Cheap—probably self-published—probably lousy quality.” On the other hand, if you price it too high, you’ll lose a lot of sales because you aren’t a household name like King or Clancy or Evanovich.

You also should know that ebook pricing affects royalties. On Amazon, for example, you get 35% royalties on ebooks priced from 99 cents up to $2.98, 70% on ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and then back down to 35% on books priced at $10 or higher. Clearly, you make the most money per sale by pricing between $2.99 and $9.99.

Personally, I think the pricing “sweet spot” for ebooks by a newbie, self-published author lies between $2.99 – $4.99 for a full-length ebook, around $1.99 for an e-published novella, and 99 cents to $1.99 for an e-edition of a short story. (FYI: I priced HUNTER at $3.99 from the outset and I’ve never regretted that decision.)

After you’ve earned a Big Name, you can and probably should raise your prices. But I wouldn’t try doing that until I had an established following and multiple titles.

For print editions, I think you should try to price your book just a bit lower than comparable hardcovers or paperbacks issued by major publishers—again, until you acquire a good fan base.

Now, I want to mention one of the most important, yet neglected things that an author can do to generate sales:

6.  Don’t be dull! Carefully craft compelling promotional copy on your Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online product pages.

This is one of the biggest failings of most self-published authors. They knock themselves out parsing every sentence inside their book—yet they treat what they say about their book, in its product descriptions and marketing materials, as an afterthought. Many of their book blurbs are about as exciting as cooking recipes. And then they wonder why their books don’t sell.

…but don’t get carried away, okay?

You must craft compelling product descriptions, with endorsement blurbs (if you have them), for your product pages on Amazon and elsewhere. Because most prospective buyers eventually will wind up on online product sales pages, your product description will be your book’s final sales pitch. Its only purpose is to “close the sale.” So, make sure it is as colorful and persuasive as possible.

Study the dust-jacket copy of books issued by major publishers in your genre, just to get a feel for the style, cadence, and layout of riveting promotional copy. That is what you’re looking to emulate.

Then test some drafts of your blurbs on members of your target audience and see what language grabs them. If your description arouses just enough interest and intrigue to prompt a purchase, that’s good enough.

And remember: Promotional copy is supposed to be only a teaser—not an exhaustive presentation of the story. Its job is to build curiosity, not to satisfy it. You build intense curiosity not by revealing everything, but by what you don’t reveal.

Ask any successful stripper.

Sally Rand knew how to build curiosity by what she did NOT show.

Then, there are tactics you can employ specifically on Amazon to attract readers:

7.  Make it easy for your target readers to find your book by categorizing it strategically on Amazon.

Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla of online book marketing. To help readers find the books they like, Amazon provides a host of book categories and subcategories, distinguished by genres and subgenres, each with its own bestseller list.

This will help your target reader find your title—but only if you’ve categorized it in the places where he most likely will be searching for your kind of book. In addition, if you can get your book to show up prominently on some Amazon subcategory bestseller list, it will further boost its visibility to readers.

So, how do you do this? When you first publish your book, Amazon allows you to list it in two separate categories or subcategories. But to make it easier to discover, don’t just list it in the broadest, most generic categories, like “Romance” or “Mysteries” or “Thrillers.” Dig down into the less-populated subcategories with fewer titles (e.g., “Romantic Suspense,” “Technothrillers,” “British Mysteries”), where your book will stand out better.

You want to choose subcategories that, first of all, are most likely to be searched by your target reader. But then, to make it easier for your book to get onto some subcategory bestseller lists, pick appropriate subgenres with the fewest competing titles. You can find out exactly how many books are listed in each genre category and subcategory by searching the category “tree” on the left side of many Amazon book listing pages. And if you have trouble listing your book in the subcategories you want, just email Amazon. Their staff will be more than willing to help you.

There are also some things that you should (and shouldn’t) do in order to build a loyal readership.

8.  Don’t become a “book-spammer.” Instead, establish personal, helpful, mutually rewarding relationships with your readers.

Many successful self-publishing authors are convinced that paid ads are usually a waste of money. I agree. (Though there are exceptions; see below.)

I also think that many self-publishing authors are inept when it comes to using social media. They send out constant email blasts and Tweets about their books, becoming pests. That’s because they approach social relationships as “takers” rather than “traders.”

A trader knows that if you want to get something from someone, you have to give back something in return.

The most cost-effective promotion and marketing strategy is to befriend your readers via online social networking. Don’t run yourself ragged doing this. I recommend that you pick a single online networking or discussion site, either Facebook, Google +, Goodreads, or Twitter. Become a valuable contributor there. Also, you might occasionally join in on blogs and discussion forums in your book’s genre or topical area(s) of interest. That’s where your target readers are likely to be. Hang out in those places mainly to make friends and learn, and you’ll occasionally find natural, unobtrusive ways to mention your book(s) and generate curiosity. Again, just don’t overdo the self-promotion.

Other methods to explore:

Establish an author’s blog/website. Write about interesting stuff related to your book’s subject matter—but not about the book itself all the time. You might interview other indie authors in your genre; some will return the favor. You also can ask book bloggers and fellow authors to review your books.  Some will. Here are a few  highly regarded blogs hosted by several super-successful indie authors. Study what they do and ask yourself why it works.

Contact groups and publications that share your interests and/or an interest in your book’s subject matter, and look for opportunities for cross-promotion.

Approach your local newspaper(s), both in your current area and where you grew up; they love to publish “local boy/girl makes good” features. Libraries, book clubs, and civic groups also like to host local authors.

Buy and use business cards that feature your book. You can design your own high-quality business cards and get them dirt cheap on sites like GotPrint.com. As for how to design and use them effectively, check out publisher Robin Sullivan’s excellent advice.

Answer all email and blog comments from your readers, and compile an email contact list of fans. This is very important: You can use that list to announce and promote your subsequent books to them, and that will give your next title a good crack at the bestseller lists on its publication date.

As you build authentic relationships and friendships with your readers, you can engage with them further in order to help you succeed:

9.  Encourage satisfied readers to leave reviews of your book on Amazon.

The best advertising is “word of mouth” from satisfied customers. When enthusiastic fans contact you, ask them to consider posting “reader reviews” at your book’s product pages on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Goodreads, etc. Their affirmation of your book’s worth will reassure browsing customers and persuade many to give it a chance.

However, don’t go out and actively solicit reviews from friends and relatives, and never post fake reviews or use any deceptive methods to try to “game the system.” Don’t try to artificially inflate your book’s ratings by conspiring with fellow indie authors to post mutually flattering “customer reviews.” These tactics only devalue the worth of reviews and hurt you and all indie authors in the long run.

There’s a final thing I recommend, again based on personal experience:

10.  Utilize Amazon’s marketing tools.

For the foreseeable future, Amazon remains your best bet for attaining self-publishing success. And it provides a host of tools for indie authors to maximize their visibility and reach. Here are a few specific ways to utilize those tools to your advantage:

Participate in special promotions, if invited. I speak from experience. Based on my book’s good reviews and steady sales, Amazon invited me to participate in one such week-long promotion late last November. Over the next 35 days, I sold over 50,000 copies of HUNTER.

Exploit your ranking on category bestseller lists in your promotions. If you’ve hit some subcategory bestseller list, use that fact in your marketing blurbs and product descriptions. Don’t be modest. Remember what the early baseball great “Dizzy” Dean said: “Ya ain’t braggin’ if ya can back it up.”

Consider opportunities to run short-term “free” giveaways and promotions for your ebook. I’ve mentioned this earlier. I should add that I haven’t yet done this myself, but it does work for some authors. So do promotional and advertising efforts through certain online sites such as Bookbub.

Don’t panic if your book doesn’t sell right away.

These tips barely scratch the surface of the many methods you can employ to market your books effectively. But they’re a good beginning.

However, don’t panic if they don’t work to produce stellar sales immediately.

Remember: Ebooks are forever. Once available online, your ebook (or print-on-demand book) isn’t going to go away. It can sit there on a server indefinitely while you continue to experiment with its cover, your promotional blurbs, your marketing campaign…even its content. Yes, unlike a book released by a traditional publisher, you can go back and fix things you don’t like. Eventually, if it’s an appealing book, it will find its audience.

Meanwhile, as you wait for that to happen, let me repeat that the smartest marketing move you can make, bar none, is to start writing your next book.

And if you’re still not convinced that self-publishing is the right route for you, read or reread my earlier post on that topic.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Here is an inspiring story of one man’s courage to stick by his guns against an entrenched establishment and decades of stale traditions; to refuse sell his soul and his long-term rational self-interest, even for over a million bucks; and in the process, to become an innovator in a foundering industry. I’ve mentioned him here before, but this is a part of the story you haven’t heard. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy “the rest of the story” of superstar fantasy author Hugh Howey: self-publishing’s new champion.

And, if you are a writer, I exhort you to read his “My Advice to Aspiring Writers.” It is perhaps the best condensation of sound suggestions for writers — aspiring or veteran — that I’ve read anywhere. It is worth reading regularly, as a reminder of what this career is all about, and how to manage it successfully and happily.

Whenever I hear someone denigrating the self-publishing option, I think of the many tales of woe that I read and heard over the years from traditionally published authors — stories that discouraged me, for a long time, from writing fiction. Pursuing the tortuous path of finding an agent, then waiting for him or her to find a publisher, then to surrender many of one’s valuable rights in exchange for a paltry advance and pathetic royalties — that seemed to be a futile exercise in masochism. Why bother throwing myself into that meatgrinder?

So for a long time, I tried to forget my dream of writing novels. Only after I learned, around 2010, of the exciting option of self-publishing ebooks, did I dare to dust off old notes and story outlines about a unique vigilante character with a mysterious past and an ambiguous identity…

The state of traditional publishing has only been getting worse with each passing year. Just this week I’ve run across a number of fresh horror stories by authors who are sharing their shocking experiences in the publishing industry.

With eight highly praised thrillers that have flirted with the bestseller lists, British author Matt Hilton is the kind of model author most writers aspire to be — the kind we think is living the good life, with his publisher and bookstores eagerly partnering with him to soar to new heights of success. That’s why you will probably be shocked by this long blog that he’s just posted about his nightmarish experiences with publishers and booksellers.

Nor is Hilton alone. The next day, another prolific author,  Stephen A. Hunt, blogged about similar experiences of authors that most outsiders would think are rolling in riches — but who are throwing in the towel and abandoning writing.

No, it’s not just publishers and bookstores across The Pond mistreating authors. It’s happening everywhere, certainly in the States. Famous mystery and suspense author Lawrence Block has been plying the trade for half a century. This month, he weighed in with another story of shocking publisher stupidity, which he ended on this sarcastic note:

“Just a sweet little story on a charming aspect of contemporary publishing. Hard to imagine that some writers actually toy with the notion of doing it all themselves. How can they possibly make a go of it without the benefit of top professionals in their corner?”

But surely those authors hitting the bestseller lists, like the New York Times, have hit the big time — right? Guess again. “Bestselling” author Soren Kaplan has just posted a remarkably candid blog titled “Debunking the Bestseller,” revealing how he and many other savvy authors are hiring professional p.r. consultants to help them “game” the bestseller lists, largely through phony, well-timed bulk purchases of their own books. Yes, many of the “bestsellers” you see are fakes, pushed there through the artifices and manipulations (“bestseller campaigns”) of companies such as ResultSource. Says Kaplan:

There’s good reason why most industry insiders would prefer that the wider book-buying public didn’t learn about these campaigns. Put bluntly, they allow people with enough money, contacts, and know-how to buy their way onto bestseller lists. And they benefit all the key players of the book world. Publishers profit on them. Authors gain credibility from bestseller status, which can launch consulting or speaking careers and give a big boost to keynote presentation fees. And the marketing firms that run the campaigns don’t do so bad either.

Kaplan explains how it worked in his case to manufacture his “Wall Street Journal bestseller”:

I too contracted with ResultSource. The strategy the firm laid out for me was relatively straightforward. I would contact my Fortune 500 clients and others and ask them to preorder copies of my book. If I could obtain bulk orders before Leapfrogging [his book] was released, ResultSource would purchase the books on my behalf using their tried-and-true formula. Three thousand books sold would get me on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Eleven thousand would secure a spot on the biggest prize of them all, The New York Times list.

Why would Kaplan do this? This is where it gets interesting, because he argues that, these days, such methods have become about the only way for an author to succeed through traditional publishing:

When I first approached my publisher, Berrett-Koehler, they insisted I read an article they give to every prospective author called The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing. The number of books being published has exploded to 3 million titles a year, including self-published works. Despite this tsunami of growth, industry sales have been declining every year since 2007. To make matters worse, the average book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in a bookstore. These are painful realities for the aspiring author who wants to get his or her message out to a mass audience with the intent of changing the world.

Despite these frightening facts and figures, I was thrilled when I received Berrett-Koehler’s book contract. They receive over 1500 book proposals a year and only accept and about 30-40. If I could beat these odds, I told myself, surely I could parlay my good luck into getting my book stocked on at least one bookseller’s shelf.

What I hadn’t fully internalized was that I would be almost entirely responsible for the marketing and promotion of my book. Publisher’s [sic] produce and distribute books, but that’s about all they do these days. It was my job to create the real market demand.  [emphasis added]

Kaplan reports that before he launched his book, he had been “introduced to someone who had just left her role as an executive at Harvard Business School Publishing. She was the first to mention ‘bestseller campaigns’ to me. According to her, ‘everyone’ was doing it, especially for non-fiction business books like mine.” His excitement over having found the keys to the publishing kingdom “was tempered with the recognition that the trust I had placed in the very lists endorsed by reputable publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and others, might not represent the institution I had assumed it was.”

He sums it all up with this: “It’s no wonder few people in the industry want to talk about bestseller campaigns. Bestseller lists are revered, longstanding, and – of course – incredibly influential. The fact that it has become standard practice to work the system that determines which titles wind up on these lists is not exactly good PR for an industry that’s already in turmoil.”

For sure.

Kaplan has given me a new reason to appreciate my decision to self-publish: I can look into the mirror and know that whatever sales and recognition I realize, I achieve through my own honest efforts. Like Kaplan’s book, HUNTER also hit the “Top 10″ of the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and it also soared to near the very pinnacle of the Kindle bestseller list. But unlike his purchasers, HUNTER’s tens of thousands of buyers were retail customers — not bulk purchasers coordinated by some hired consulting firm.

That such devious practices have become S.O.P. in publishing circles is only one more measure of its pervasive sickness. But the true measure of that sickness lies in endless stories of stupidity, manipulation, and betrayal, by a once proud and noble industry, and related by its many victims: the struggling authors who sustain it.

Amid the never-ending anti-Amazon rants, one occasionally finds a piece that aspires to be grounded in facts and statistics. Well, this new one, by Suw Charman-Anderson in Forbes, is a classic example of how to misread (and misreport) statistics in order to come to dumb conclusions.

The writer discusses a May 2012 survey of Amazon book purchasers, which tried to determine how the customers made their purchasing decisions. She reports the…

…statistics show that only a piddling 10 percent of Amazon book choices are made because of its ‘bought this/also bought’ recommendation engine. Bestseller and top 100 lists influence 17 percent of book choices, with 12 percent down to promotions, deals, or low prices. Only 3 percent came through browsing categories. Planned search by author or topic, however, makes up a whopping 48 percent of all book choices.

Her first conclusion from these statistics? “Amazon is a destination for purchase, the place you funnel your fans to, not a discovery mechanism in and of itself. People are simply not browsing for books based on Amazon’s recommendations, not in any significant numbers.”

Let’s leave aside the facts that (1) the survey data represent only a freeze-frame snapshot of Amazon book purchasers in May 2012, and (2) that if 48% of book choices came from customers’ planned searches, then 52% — more than half — did not; yet the writer calls the 48% “whopping,” while dismissing the 52% as “not…significant numbers.” She later even states that these figures show that “the majority of Amazon’s sales come from planned search.”

Forty-eight percent is a “majority”?

Based on her first conclusion, plus these dubious characterizations of the data upon which it is based, the writer then goes on to make a broader case:

Self-published authors have limited resources for promotion and these figures show that you should focus not on trying to woo Amazon’s algorithm, but on building awareness outside of Amazon. Rather than hoping to gain traction within that 10 percent of people who pay attention to Amazon’s recommendations, or trying to crowbar your title into bestseller or top 100 lists, you should be focusing on building an independent fan base. No one can search for your books if they don’t know you exist.

I read this and realized at once that these conclusions, which are being echoed elsewhere, don’t conform to my direct personal experience — or to common sense. Please bear with me while I elaborate:

When I published my debut thriller, HUNTER, in June 2011, I already had something of a “brand,” having been a nonfiction writer for decades. I also tried to enhance my brand by expanding my online “platforms.” I launched this blog, “The Vigilante Author,” to position me in the minds of thriller readers who like and are looking for that kind of fiction. I did a lot of social media: Facebook, interviews with other bloggers, etc. HUNTER received several nice, if temporary, sales surges when a few big blogs mentioned it.

I also tried to promote the book via the online retailers and their internal promotional methods. By means of links, I directed readers to where they could then buy the book: not just links to Amazon, but equally to Barnes & Noble (for the Nook) and Smashwords (for iTunes, the iPad and iPhone, Kobo, and other ereading devices). I encouraged happy readers to leave customer reviews on those various online sales sites. And I worked to craft a compelling product description that I posted on all of them, so that once the curious went to those product pages, they’d get a strong pitch to close the sale.

Overall, the novel did pretty well for the first five months, selling 4,000 copies at an ebook price of $3.99. Yet almost all of those sales were on Amazon, not on any of the other sites. All my external promotional efforts, and the publicity they generated, resulted in utterly paltry sales — a combined total of only 132 books — on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, on Smashwords, and on iTunes.

So, if my “external promotions” were the factor most critical to sales, then why weren’t my sales spread more evenly among all online retailers? Why did Amazon sell thirty times more copies of my book than did all of their competitors combined?

You see, it wasn’t only my external efforts bringing attention to the book. For one thing, HUNTER had soared to near the top of the “customer rating” lists on Amazon. It also quickly garnered a lot of highly positive “customer reviews.” And Amazon recommended it in promotional emails and online to readers of similar books. Soon, it creeped up several Amazon subcategory bestseller lists, adding to its visibility.

By contrast, it did not get that kind of visibility and attention from the other retailers. I’m absolutely convinced that Amazon’s internal promotions explain why the book was selling so well there, but nowhere else.

Then, five months after its publication, Amazon invited me to enter HUNTER into a week-long, post-Thanksgiving sales promotion, along with scores of other books, lowering its price temporarily from $3.99 to $1.99. Simultaneously, from among those scores of promoted titles, they also selected HUNTER as one of eighteen top “Editors’ Picks.”

As a result, the book was showcased prominently at the very top of about a half-dozen different pages of the Amazon Kindle website. You simply could not go to the Kindle home page, its “Editors’ Pick” page, its special sales promotional page, its “Movers and Shakers” page, or its various category “recommendation” pages, without HUNTER’s eye-catching cover staring you in the face. It began appearing on a lot of “also bought” recommendation lists for other bestselling books in its categories, too.

Literally overnight, sales exploded, from a few dozen per day to thousands per day. By the last day of the sale, HUNTER was the #4 bestselling product on Kindle, and it hit #1 in the “Mysteries and Thrillers” category (and several subcategories), as well as #1 in “Romantic Suspense.” That prominent positioning further enhanced its visibility to Amazon customers.

It’s interesting to note what happened in the days, weeks, and months afterward. Once the price went back up to $3.99 and HUNTER was no longer featured prominently on those various promotional pages, its sales began to decline. However, it took a month for the book to fall out of the overall Kindle “Top 100” list. During those four weeks, it was still highly positioned on multiple category bestseller lists, and thus “discoverable” to millions of customers browsing those lists, and so it continued to sell hundreds of copies per day.

In the months following — despite all my efforts to keep the book in the public eye — the novel’s sales continued to slide slowly back down to its pre-promotional levels, levels similar to what it had been selling right after I published it. By then, it had become far less visible — thus discoverable — to customers browsing Amazon…even though my outside promotions, publicity, and name-recognition had never been better.

It’s obvious that those sudden, massive sales (over 50,000 copies in just 35 days) did not occur because my independent marketing efforts were driving purchasers to Amazon to look specifically for my book. No, that huge, months-long sales spike came almost entirely from attention generated internally by Amazon alone, via its promotions, bestseller-list placements, and algorithm-governed recommendation system.

Fellow authors participating in that same post-Thanksgiving promotion also saw significant spikes in their sales, though not as great as mine. The only significant difference among us was that their works were not featured quite as prominently or on as many Amazon pages. We see this same phenomenon repeated every single day with “Kindle Daily Deals,” where a product or book is singled out for spotlight attention and invariably soars right to the top of the Kindle bestseller list — then sinks in the days that follow, despite every effort by the author to keep it up there.

What do I take away from all this?

Based on personal experience, I do believe that an author’s “outside” promotional efforts — if planned and conducted prudently, applying sound marketing principles — can help to generate solid, ongoing sales. For example, I think it’s  important for an author to distinguish himself from the pack, and thus become discoverable, by establishing a unique brand via marketing methods external to Amazon’s. And yes, I do believe that word-of-mouth recommendations from a loyal, steadily growing fan base are the most reliable long-term way to generate an enduring “long tail” of sales.

However, I think the wrong message to take away from the  statistics reported in Forbes is the one presented by the blog’s author: that Amazon’s promotions, bestseller lists, staff picks, “also bought” recommendations, and categories don’t really matter as much as an author’s own outside promotions. Or, to quote her own words again: “People are simply not browsing for books based on Amazon’s recommendations, not in any significant numbers.”

That’s wrong, mainly because the writer (whose bio gives little evidence of personal expertise in successful bookselling) misinterprets the reported customer purchase percentages. The fact that 48% of Amazon’s book customers went there in May 2012 with a specifically planned purchase in mind, does not mean that 48% of a given author’s buyers will go to Amazon specifically to buy his or her book. Nor (still citing statistics from the survey) does it mean that “only” 12% of a given author’s sales will come from special Amazon promotions, “only” 3% from people browsing through the various book categories, etc.

That’s a completely erroneous reading of the reported percentages — because Amazon’s aggregate customers are not the same statistical set as one’s own specific customers.

Suppose your book is selected for a special promotion to “only” the (supposed) 12% of Amazon’s book buyers who pay attention to such promotions. Well, 12% of Amazon’s tens of millions of book buyers is still an enormous audience. And if they notice it, you may then find that 95% of your own sales will come from that 12%.

Moreover, the Forbes writer — her thinking perhaps clouded by an anti-Amazon bias (note her closing sentence, and repeatedly critical articles) — also ignores statistics from the same study that should give her pause. As reported here,

Two years ago, 35% of book purchases were made because readers found out about a book in bricks-and-mortar bookstores, the single-largest site of discovery. This year, that figure has dropped to 17%…. In the same period, personal recommendations grew the most, to 22% from 14%. Some three-quarters of personal recommendations are made in person, while the rest come by e-mail (8%), phone (7%), Facebook (4%) and other social networks (3%).

So even now, just 22% of book customers buy them based on personal recommendations, and only 7% from recommendations on social media. Yet the Forbes writer stubbornly urges authors to go “outside of Amazon,” relying on such promotional things as “reviews, social media or word of mouth,” and to “refocus on direct sales…[from] your own shop” (presumably meaning one’s own online store).

As every bestselling Amazon author learns, a huge percentage of his or her sales come from Amazon’s internal promotional methods. Usually, one’s own external promotions merely kickstart the process of pushing the book under an Amazon spotlight. Once under that glaring spotlight, even an obscure author, with few prior sales and zero social media presence, can see his sales suddenly spike overnight, to the point where 99% of them are Amazon-generated. This sort of thing happens a lot.

Let me stress this point: I think it’s vitally important for any indie author to define and implement a marketing plan that includes promotions that don’t rely on Amazon’s (or those of any other online retailing outlet). It’s important to build your brand, to distinguish your work, to utilize a variety of platforms that grant it visibility, and to connect personally with readers in order to encourage long-term, word-of-mouth-driven sales. It also makes sense to try to sell directly to the consumer.

But these activities are not an either/or proposition, vis-a-vis Amazon. They should be done, not instead of, but in conjunction with efforts to exploit the Amazon platform. It’s just plain silly to believe that one’s own marketing alone can possibly equal or exceed the time-tested techniques and global reach of the world’s biggest online retailer.

So, if strong sales are part of his objectives, then the wise author will do what he can to take full advantage of those mechanisms and that unparalleled retailing power.