A quick update or two. First, I just received a draft of the Conflict of Interest cover, once again produced by Razzle Dazzle Designs.
Any feedback would be welcome.
Also Fire Season will be up on Indie Spotlight today. Read the feature and article here.
And finally a slightly unexpected effect of D.A.Boulter's Indie/BBoS project was a sudden boost to The Docks, which briefly jumped to 37K in sales rank yesterday for the first time. The details can be found here: Kindleboards.
Of course, an endorsement like that gives me a lot to live up to with the next book. Better get back to work on "Conflict".
If you pick an indie author's book up, what are the chances it will be good?
A few weeks back I took part in an experiment on the Kindleboards. D.A. Boulter volunteered to purchase up to 20 books with only one criteria: that the title hadn't sold anything on Amazon that month. I volunteered The Docks. The results are now in (full results here).
In total he picked up 15 books, and has read the first seven. In summary all were enjoyable reads, and only one was marked down for proofing and editing issues. He comments that
"‘Mountains of dreck’ may exist out there but, within this small sample of non-selling books, I didn’t find it."
It is a good point. I've heard people refer to self-publishing as "putting the slushpile online" but I have also encountered raw unedited slush. There are significant differences e.g. a surprising number of slushpile manuscripts are submitted with typos or gramatical errors (probably about 10% going by this post) because new authors assume - and sometimes state outright - that it is the job of the agent or editor to correct these errors. Most self-published authors I've encountered either self-edit or get a freelancer in to edit or proofread and acknowledge it is their responsibility. Authors who submit handwritten manuscripts to the slushpile are unlikely to e-publish.
Also, as these are ebooks, authors can withdraw and republish them if there is a major issue. This "second chance" could be seen as a trade-off for the lack of the initial editing and support of a traditional publishing house.
Now, the sample is slightly skewed: it drew from the authors on Kindleboards who are serious about their writing and presumably want to develop it enough that they have looked up a community and started discussing technique and writing with other authors. Second it asked the authors to submit their books. This narrows it down to authors who are prepared to admit to low sales, but are still confident that their book is good. On the other hand, by only taking books which had no sales that month, it was selecting against the bestsellers or higher ranked books which would be expected to be higher quality.
It may not be a purely scientific study, but it does show that there are some gems out there and that the odds of getting a decent read from a fairly random sampling are quite high (six in seven so far). User reviews are another guide: of the seven books that had reviews none had an average lower than four at the time of writing. Given that readers can view samples online it should be fairly easy to eliminate books that don't appeal.
So is it worth taking a chance on an indie book? So far it seems this would indicate yes.
I will end this by admitting my own bias here: he liked The Docks.
This sample is from an unpublished piece: A short sheak preview sample from "Conflict of Interest". This is still being edited, so I don't guarantee it won't change before the book comes out.
I stowed the papers in my own safe and secured it, hiding it as best I could in the cramped room. There's no point in stealing something if someone else takes it off you before it can be safely passed on. Then, brushing myself down, I reminded myself the job was only half done.
The second part should be simpler. Shoving the gear, ropes and knife I'd used for the first stage under the bed, I pulled on a non-descript dark green fleece and flipped the hood up to hide my face from cameras.
I walked out of the building where I'd rented the office – cash. no questions, they were desperate – and down to the end of the street. Turning left, five minutes walk led me to the little back alley down the side of my target. Wide enough for delivery vans, they even had an entrance door down there with a reception. They had added a camera since the last time I'd been here, and I walked passed the entrance sizing it up. Clumsily built in on the period building, it jutted out from the wall, leaving a nice blindspot underneath it as it scanned. Satisfied it was no going to be a problem I turned back and casually walked down the side of the alley, pausing underneath the camera to let it pan safely the other way.
Two more quick steps and I was by the little window that lead into the men's room. The janitor always opened it to hide his illicit smoke breaks, quite convinced no one could get in through it. Unfortunately for him, while a twelve by eighteen inch space wasn't my favourite method of entry, it was quite possible.
Gripping the corners, I forced it further open and pulled myself up and in. Kicking out with my legs, I got a bit of extra purchase and scraped through, twisting awkwardly to brace myself against the narrow walls. Gingerly I felt around until my foot rested on the cistern, and then pulled my other leg in and through, pushing the window closed-to. If the camera saw it, it should only have caught the window moving, but that would be supicious enough. Time to move.
I left the cubicle, knowing they wouldn't have cameras in the toilets themselves, and checked the cleaning supply cupboard. I was in luck. Cleaning supplies, and also new overalls. I pulled a set on as extra cover, the cap hiding my face. Unless someone was counting janitors, or at least monitoring them through the building on camera an extra one should go unnoticed. If they were that good, I wouldn't be here.
"Conflict of Interest" is the sequel to "The Docks", a crime novella available from Smashwords or on Amazon for Kindle (Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) for $0.99.
Things are rather busy at the moment, but so this is just going to be a status update.
Conflict of Interest, the sequel to The Docks, is undergoing a lot of editing. The first round of editing added extra plot and tightened up the action. Now it's back for a second re-read and I'm hoping the editor likes it.
I'm working on replacing the Googlesite with a decent website, hopefully something which looks a bit better and is more likely to sell books.
The real problem right now is promotion. Due to contract restrictions from my work, I am very limited in what I can do to "promote or endorse" a product - one reason why I use a penname. However, it has been confirmed this does mean I can't use my real name for things like Facebook and setting up a fanpage, or even admin my own fanpage, because it would be held as endorsement. Huge sections of existing promotion are having to be split off (e.g. Squidoo lenses).
I need to find ways round this, but aside from sending out a lot of review copies, there isn't actually much I can do. Right now, I'm just getting my head down and back to writing.
The title is taken from the feature that lovethyauthor have just done on The Docks. Reviews and comments like this make writing worthwhile, or at least let you know some readers like what you're writing.
"Great short story that I highly recommend and I look forward to reading more from this author!" Read It, Review It
The Docks just got its first review, a solid 4 stars from Read It, Reviewed It. I'm delighted and rather relieved since I'd heard that novellas did not do well online. It was a nice piece of news to end a Friday with!
The Docks is available on Smashwords and Amazon, with samples available free on both. Alternatively, it was last week's SampleSunday, and the first chapter can be read here.
It has been commented on recently that many covers are very similar. With the rise in e-books, self-publishers, small press, vanity presses and reverse vanity, the number of these covers also appears to be rising. (*Many of the images on this entry are served by Amazon. Adblocker users may find them hidden.)
It isn't just small press that is affected. A particularly high profile example just happened to Stephenie Meyer, whose cover for the Host is very similar to an earlier book: De Beproeving by Tess Franke (spotted by IcanhazCheeseburger).
This isn't a new thing. In high turnover markets like pulp it's been going on since the fifties. (The Rap Sheet documents various examples). It isn't just that it is happening more now, due to more commercial stock image catalogues, but that with the rise of online book catalogues it is becoming more obvious and easier to find.
The driver, as always, is cost. Reusing original artwork in the 50's to 70's allowed the cost of an entire painting to be saved. Today, stock images are substantially cheaper than original artwork. Unfortunately the hidden cost of stock images is that they are not exclusive, and may be reused. With good typography and layout, this should not be a problem. A good designer can combine stock elements into something unique, even if individual elements can be recognised.
The other issue is time - amending painted or original artwork if revisions are needed takes longer than amending something on the computer. For a high-volume high-turnover house or an author mill this is an unwanted overhead.
This is a hot topic at the moment, among both indie and mainstream authors. There is a discussion on Kindleboards. A thread on AbsoluteWrite recently had an index of a lot of stock covers being reused, many 9 times or so. (Here, for members only). Classic art isn't immune: Caustic Cover Critic's blog entry shows 5 paintings, used for 24 book covers. Authors in larger publishing houses often have little or no say over their cover art, while indies may not have the funds for original artwork. (Thanks to the History of Kindle blog for the example on the left).
If it's so common, and has so many advantages for the publishers, why is it a problem? Partly because a book like this won't stand out. It may be the best cover in the world, but if you are one of twelve books using it how do you draw readers? Also, where the same cover is used for books in widely different genres (literary and sci-fi, or Christian fiction and romance) how well can it really reflect the book's content? The question has to be: could you pick this book out of a lineup? In greyscale. And thumbnailed.
Covers don't have to be outright bad to deter readers. When a single stock image is used whole, it may not just be recogniseable, but can also put readers off because of the lack of effort it signifies. Today, with programs like Photoshop and Gimp available, almost anyone can take a piece of artwork and throw text on it to produce a decent result. As a result, a lot of indies use this technique. Covers easily recognisable as a stock image with a few words can actually deter readers. After all, the effort put into the cover - a book's first impression - can be taken to reflect the effort put into a book. Rightly or wrongly, some readers have become used to a poor quality cover indicating poor editing, spelling errors and even poor writing.
Where a company outputs a lot of books, their default covers can also become recognisable. For example, Lulu.com's basic templates can be spotted by bookstore owners easily, and can immediately make them wary. The cover tells them they are getting something the author self-published and, without a gatekeeper, quality varies so widely.
So, since duplicate covers have always been an issue, and with the rise of stock libraries is likely to remain one, how can an author be certain their book's cover is unique – or at least stands out? If stock image use is unavoidable, hire a designer or someone who knows how to combine the elements in a unique fashion. The use of stock images does not mean the covers have to be identical. An old but good example is Gail Carriger's Blameless, where Orbit released the video of how the cover was made:
Stock images in themselves aren't bad. There are even examples where books may want to be very similar or use the same image e.g. series. Like every tool, it is how it is used. As long as the cover fits the book, is there really an issue? Many designers come from the same background or schools of design and therefore naturally gravitate towards the same images and looks.
Just to close with some hard numbers: With over half a million books published this year alone, it shouldn't be too surprising that a few of them look similar. Googlebooks calculates the number of books ever written at about 130 Million. The rise of ebooks brings more and more of those back into circulation, and many get new covers from stock photos.
There are three main stock image libraries: the largest is iStockPhoto with over six million files. That isn't even one per book.
Given this, it isn't the fact that duplication happens that bothers me. What does is when there isn't any attempt to tweak the cover to fit the book; when the cover clearly does not fit the work, but is added because it is quick. I might believe a cover can fit two romances, but it is stretching it to believe someone thought it would appeal equally to romance, sci-fi, Christian fic, historical non-fiction and true crime fans.
A quick update or two. First, I just received a draft of the Conflict of Interest cover, once again produced by Razzle Dazzle Designs.
