Episode 049 - Ruminations on Book Launches with James McCrone
October 20 , 2020
James McCrone and I talk about our respective October book launches—Jamie’s for his third Imogen Trager thriller, EMERGENCY POWERS, and me for my third Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel, THE FALCON AND THE OWL. We talk about the pros and cons of in-person versus virtual events, the need for indy authors to be willing to blow their own horn to get out word of their books (and ways to make this a more comfortable experience for introverted authors), the role industry reviews from sources such as Kirkus Reviews plays, and the differences between an emphasis on print versus on ebook editions.
James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager novels FAITHLESS ELECTOR, DARK NETWORK, and the recently released EMERGENCY POWERS. His work also recently appeared in the short-story anthology LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE. He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Association of Crime Writers, International Thriller Writers, and Philadelphia Dramatists Center and has an MFA from the University of Washington.
He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s the former Business Manager for the South 9th Street / Italian Market in Philadelphia, and is now writing full time.
He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s the former Business Manager for the South 9th Street / Italian Market in Philadelphia, and is now writing full time.
"As a writer, I think that part of why you do what you do is because you actually take a step back and you listen to people rather than sort of press them with, 'Well, I, I, I!' You're like, 'What about you? Let me hear about you.'" --James McCrone
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is James McCrone. Hey, Jamie, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] James: Good. How are you?
[00:00:07] Matty: I am doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you. James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager novels—FAITHLESS ELECTOR, DARK NETWORK, and the recently released EMERGENCY POWERS. His work also recently appeared in the short-story anthology LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE. He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Association of Crime Writers, International Thriller Writers, and Philadelphia Dramatists Center and has an MFA from the University of Washington.
He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s the former Business Manager for the South 9th Street / Italian Market in Philadelphia and is now writing full time.
[00:00:51] So I had invited Jamie on the podcast because we are both working through book launches. So--
[00:00:59] James: Yay! I mean, I guess, right? Is it yay or is it argh?
[00:01:02] Matty: Well, I think we're going to find out by the end of this conversation -- we're going to find out probably that it's a little bit of both, but we're going to be ruminating on book launches. And I wanted to just start out, so that our listeners have some context for the books we're launching, Jamie, can you just tell the listeners a little bit about your most recent book?
[00:01:21] James: The most recent book is called EMERGENCY POWERS. it came out October 1st, not quite two weeks ago. The tagline is the accidental president is no accident. When the president dies in office -- and that's not a spoiler, because it happens on page one -- FBI agent Imogen Trager, my protagonist, knows that the conspiracy she chased down, madly, down a blind alley, still has life in it and she has to get back in the hunt. It's about dark forces trying to undermine democracy, and one woman's challenge to unmask them and stop them before something even worse happens.
[00:02:00] Matty: Nice pitch. I just have to say. Nicely honed pitch. So I'm also going to be talking about the book that is launching for me, which is --
[00:02:09] James: Yay!
[00:02:10] Matty: Yay! It's still coming up as of the 12th, it's going to be launching on October 15th, but it will have launched by the time this episode goes live and it is the third Ann Kinnear book, it is called THE FALCON AND THE OWL and it is about an air racing and aerobatic pilot, Gwen Burridge. And again, as you say, a murder happens -- that happens right up front so that's not a spoiler -- and Ann as she is wont to do gets involved and nefarious things ensue.
[00:02:39] And so I think it's interesting that we're both writing in a series and we're both on the third, so that's going to be a kind of commonality. So I think as we talk, we're going to find what we did the same and what we did different. And hopefully people can ponder on those and see which ones seemed like a best fit for them.
[00:02:55] So I wanted to start right out because, Jamie, I know you started planning this launch in January, pre-COVID, and we don't want this to be a launching a book in the time of COVID discussion because I hope people will be able to get value from it if they're listening to it when we're way past all this goofiness. But I am interested to find out what your original plan was and then how you had to change it when the social distancing hit. ...
[00:00:06] James: Good. How are you?
[00:00:07] Matty: I am doing great, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you. James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager novels—FAITHLESS ELECTOR, DARK NETWORK, and the recently released EMERGENCY POWERS. His work also recently appeared in the short-story anthology LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE. He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Association of Crime Writers, International Thriller Writers, and Philadelphia Dramatists Center and has an MFA from the University of Washington.
He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s the former Business Manager for the South 9th Street / Italian Market in Philadelphia and is now writing full time.
[00:00:51] So I had invited Jamie on the podcast because we are both working through book launches. So--
[00:00:59] James: Yay! I mean, I guess, right? Is it yay or is it argh?
[00:01:02] Matty: Well, I think we're going to find out by the end of this conversation -- we're going to find out probably that it's a little bit of both, but we're going to be ruminating on book launches. And I wanted to just start out, so that our listeners have some context for the books we're launching, Jamie, can you just tell the listeners a little bit about your most recent book?
[00:01:21] James: The most recent book is called EMERGENCY POWERS. it came out October 1st, not quite two weeks ago. The tagline is the accidental president is no accident. When the president dies in office -- and that's not a spoiler, because it happens on page one -- FBI agent Imogen Trager, my protagonist, knows that the conspiracy she chased down, madly, down a blind alley, still has life in it and she has to get back in the hunt. It's about dark forces trying to undermine democracy, and one woman's challenge to unmask them and stop them before something even worse happens.
[00:02:00] Matty: Nice pitch. I just have to say. Nicely honed pitch. So I'm also going to be talking about the book that is launching for me, which is --
[00:02:09] James: Yay!
[00:02:10] Matty: Yay! It's still coming up as of the 12th, it's going to be launching on October 15th, but it will have launched by the time this episode goes live and it is the third Ann Kinnear book, it is called THE FALCON AND THE OWL and it is about an air racing and aerobatic pilot, Gwen Burridge. And again, as you say, a murder happens -- that happens right up front so that's not a spoiler -- and Ann as she is wont to do gets involved and nefarious things ensue.
[00:02:39] And so I think it's interesting that we're both writing in a series and we're both on the third, so that's going to be a kind of commonality. So I think as we talk, we're going to find what we did the same and what we did different. And hopefully people can ponder on those and see which ones seemed like a best fit for them.
[00:02:55] So I wanted to start right out because, Jamie, I know you started planning this launch in January, pre-COVID, and we don't want this to be a launching a book in the time of COVID discussion because I hope people will be able to get value from it if they're listening to it when we're way past all this goofiness. But I am interested to find out what your original plan was and then how you had to change it when the social distancing hit. ...
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[00:03:20] James: Yeah. I began planning it as you said, in January. I'd actually even been making some calculations, back in December and November of last year. I created a timeline in Excel of sending the book out for review at Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Independent Book Review, and a bunch of others. I was also putting it up on NetGalley -- all of this to get early reviews. And I also began reaching out to authors I knew who write in the sort of genre who I thought, would say yes to reading it and potentially writing a blurb.
[00:03:58] Matty: Can I just stop you for a second, ask you to describe what NetGalley is?
[00:04:03] James: NetGalley is a service that you pay for, but you put an ereader version of your book up on NetGalley and then people who have signed up for NetGalley can access it and, you hope, write a review. I don't know if you ever noticed that your book will go live on a particular date in Amazon and there will already be reviews from readers. Often those are NetGalley readers who've already posted.
[00:04:34] But it's also an industry enterprise, so that when you're reaching out to people, you can say, I could send you a copy of the book, an advanced reader copy, or it's available on NetGalley. Quite a few people use NetGalley and so they would say, Oh great, I'll just access it there. And it's free. You the author or you the publisher pay to put your book up there. I was able to get a slightly better deal because I belong to the Independent Book Publishers Association, so through IBPA, I was able to get a slightly better price, which was nice. So as part of my timeline, I know that it can take 16 weeks, 18 weeks for places like Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus to even get around to reviewing it, if indeed they would. Sometimes they say we're not going to, we pass, we're not going to do it.
[00:05:34] So starting in January, you're already into April, and I wanted to leave a buffer of, say, May to start marketing the book and start talking to bookstores and looking at taglines for the book and trying to do pull quotes and things like that. And so looking through all of the things that needed to happen and needed to happen in a particular order and how long they would take, I decided on October 1st as a date.
[00:06:02] One of the things I had also decided on, I wanted to do a bunch of book launches at different bookstores. There are quite a few bookstores that I really like, ones that are within driving distance of here where I live in Philadelphia, and I was going to drive out to every one of them I could get to and pitch them. Bookstores like to know, is there any local interest in the book, in terms of is it set there. Secondarily, is it friends and family in the area, people who are likely to actually attend your book opening and one hopes buy the book and things like that.
[00:06:35] And so I had probably 10 or 12 bookstores that I was going to be reaching out to, right at the beginning there. And then COVID happened. When it started in March, I thought, probably doing it for October was a good idea.
[00:06:49] Matty: We'll be golden.
[00:06:51] James: It'll almost be over, and we'll be getting back to something like normal and obviously we're not. So, when that became very clear that it wasn't going away in June, I started scrambling and trying to think differently about how to do this. I know a number of publishers held publication of their books and I briefly considered doing that, but I felt like it was a good book. Even though it's not about Trump or about the administration at all, it does speak to this moment, this political moment, in our country's history and I thought it was important and that it would resonate. And so I wanted it out.
[00:07:33] Matty: I have a bunch of questions based on that overview, but one thing I want to talk about that is I think is really independent of COVID or not is the whole question of in-person or virtual events. And obviously in person events was sort of a centerpiece of a lot of your planning for your launch. And I always think that the tricky point is that, if you're going to a bookstore, let's say you're going to drive to Pittsburgh. You've made a visit in Philadelphia and you've tapped into your Philadelphia contacts. Now you're going to do an appearance in Pittsburgh. And I think there's an understanding on both the author and the bookstore's part that your friends and family aren't probably going to drive out to Pittsburgh to see you again. As opposed to a virtual event where everybody can attend every event.
[00:08:23] When you switched from an in-person event, where there was an understanding that the audiences would be segmented geographically, versus a virtual event, where there are no geographic considerations, how did that impact how you approached those events?
[00:08:38] James: In a very big way. There's a story about the old borscht belt comedians from the early 20th century. They had a sort of circuit that they would do, the borscht belt they would often call it, so that you would have your routine and you would deliver it to an audience of 500 or a thousand, whatever the venue held. And the next night you'd be somewhere else, and you'd actually give exactly the same performance. But these people never saw it, so that's great. And the next night and the next night, and you just move on, you're doing the same performance and you're honing it probably, but it's still essentially the same performance.
[00:09:18] And then television happened. So now you put a comedian on, well, he's just done his act, and everybody saw it. So if he now goes to some venue on the borscht belt and does his act, most of the people in the audience have already seen it. And they're kind of like, "Wait, what? No, do something new!" And I'm not a comedian, but I think the same kinds of issues hold.
[00:09:45] Matty: That's a great analogy.
[00:09:47] James: You hit the nail on the head when you said that the audience was sort of segmented. What I found was that bookstores very quickly would say, when was your last one, the one that went before this? They wanted at least two, maybe three weeks in between each virtual appearance, because they knew you'd be getting a good size audience for the one, and if it happens the next night, nobody's going to show up for the second one. So I ended up not having anywhere near the number of appearances than I had hoped for.
[00:10:23] And secondarily, they're spaced out a lot more than I had intended. I'm not against it. It's just the way it ended up being.
[00:10:30] Matty: Right. I think that for all these things, we're probably not going to be recommending that there's the right way and the wrong way. It's just a couple of approaches and assess them as you will. I saw a really interesting take on this and I hadn't thought of it in this way until we were talking, but Craig Johnson just launched a new book, a new Longmire book, and he was at a couple of bookstores that I follow on social media and in some cases follow in person and I signed up for all of them, because I figured, why not?
And then I realized that at each event he had as a guest somebody from the Longmire TV show, which was brilliant, because, he was giving more or less the same spiel, the same borscht belt spiel that you talked about, and yet it was different because, well, it was different in part because his bookstore host was asking him slightly different questions, but also because he had this whole angle that if he had Lou Diamond Phillips on, then they were talking about the Henry Standing Bear character more in that, and then if he had somebody else, one of the other actors, they were talking more about that character. And I thought that was really brilliant because it did mean that I virtually attended like three Craig Johnson book launch events, and I enjoyed them all, even though parts of it were similar.
[00:11:52] I also think that the idea that the bookstores are sort of requiring you to spread it out is actually a good thing, because I think that one of the true strengths of indy publishing is that unlike traditional publishing, where you have this big blast of publicity, you're getting into Publisher's Weekly, you're getting into all the big names because the traditional publishers have that entree. And then, I don't know, a month, two months goes by and you never really hear about that again, unless the author is making an effort to do that.
[00:12:21] Whereas as indy publishers, we can spread out the excitement, just as you're saying, with maybe you're doing a virtual event every two weeks, but you're doing it over the next four months as opposed to a hundred Zoom interviews in the publication week.
[00:12:37] James: Right, right. That's a very good point. You've talked about this, I think, on the podcast before. I mean that having to be an advocate for yourself as the writer is often difficult for a writer because that's not necessarily who we are. We like to sit in our little rooms, doing what we do. If that were it, it would be great, it would all be perfect. But, it's not.
[00:12:58] Being an independent author, you do have to really get out there and bang the drum for yourself. I struggled with that. I'm not necessarily a gregarious person. I don't like doing, "Hey, let's talk about me now!" As a writer, I think that part of why you do what you do is because you actually take a step back and you listen to people rather than sort of press them with, "Well, I, I, I!" You're like, "What about you? Let me hear about you," and you're watching and listening. And so this is a complete about face, which I'm still learning.
[00:13:33] Matty: That brings up another good point. Actually, it brings up two other points I wanted to talk about. One is sort of tied into what you had said earlier about pursuing Publisher's Weekly reviews or placements and those kinds of publications and the long lead time you needed to factor in in order to do that. I know that you also have a very extensive author network, and I know that a bunch of authors have given you really nice blurbs for your book, one assumes for free.
[00:13:58] And I'm wondering if now, in retrospect, do you feel like the time and the money -- because you have to pay for those bigger name reviews, correct? Kirkus I know is expensive.
[00:14:12] James: Well, yeah. And Publisher's Weekly may do it for free or they may not.
[00:14:16] Matty: In retrospect, now that you know all the nice things that other authors said about your books that you can put on the cover, do you think it's still worth it to get those paid ones?
[00:14:25] James: I think it's important to get the industry ones. I have Independence Press, I have, Midwest Book Review, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Pen and Ink, some paid, some have a reading fee or something like that. I think having a blend of author praise and the reviews helps a lot because even though, I mean, yes, they're paid, but that's no guarantee they're going to give you a good review.
[00:14:53] Matty: Yeah. Especially Kirkus I know is known for being tough. So you pay your money and then you live with what you get. And if you don't like it, they'll agree not to publish it. I mean, if they've written a bad review, you can say, okay, I've paid my 400 bucks, but I never want to see that in print.
[00:15:10] James: You do have that option as a publisher, you can be like, "Okay, yeah, never mind." But even if it's sort of okay, if they've found something that is going to resonate, then you can pull that out.
[00:15:22] I've heard, and this makes so much sense but I wouldn't have thought of it until I read it, and I wish I could remember who it was who said it, it was about bad reviews for your book that when you look on Amazon and all you see are five star reviews, you're like, "Really?" But if it's mostly fives and fours, but there are a couple of threes and one or two, and then some crank who didn't even really review it -- "One star!" -- well, that looks legitimate.
[00:15:50] Obviously if there are 10 or 20 one-star reviews, you as the author need to take a look at the work. But, one or two, actually legitimates the process and probably makes people feel more comfortable with the five stars. That, well, okay, people really did like it and real people are reading it and obviously there's some breadth of opinion.
[00:16:14] Matty: Yeah. If someone has like 20 five-star reviews, I just assume that they have a large family ...
[00:16:19] James: Yeah, exactly.
[00:16:20] Matty: ... and they got them all a copy for Christmas. Plus I always say, if people are feeling bummed about their one-star reviews, then go look up your favorite author and see how many one-star reviews they have. I guarantee you that Stephen King and JK Rowling and James Patterson have thousands of one-star reviews and hundreds of thousands of five star reviews.
[00:16:42] James: I was listening to a comedian and he was talking about that. For some reason he was watching Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or something on YouTube and there were like 800 thumbs down.
[00:16:54] Matty: Yeah. "This isn't that good."
[00:16:57] James: Yeah. Or, "I liked his early work," or something.
[00:17:00] Matty: "I was bored by this."
[00:17:02] James: Yeah.
[00:17:04] Matty: Before we move off that topic, I wanted to offer as an alternative, because we're saying there's probably not rights or wrongs, there are probably just different things to consider ... I got Kirkus reviews for my first three books, which were the first two Ann Kinnear books, THE SENSE OF DEATH and THE SENSE OF RECKONING, and the first Lizzy Ballard book, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS. And fortunately, they were all very good and I was able to use them for promotional purposes. And then when Lizzy Ballard 2 came along, I thought, do I really want to risk another $400 or however much it is to maybe not get another good one.
[00:17:39] And I decided that for the series, one quotable Kirkus review for the first one is sufficient. It would be fun to be able to do it for all of them, but I just don't have the bucks to do that right now. And so even if I'm advertising THE FALCON AND THE OWL, for example, which is Book 3, I'm emphasizing driving people to Book 1 because I want them to read through the series, and so the quote comes up naturally if I'm promoting THE SENSE OF DEATH, and I can quote the Kirkus review for THE SENSE OF DEATH. But even for THE FALCON AND THE OWL, I can say, "Kirkus Review said of Book 1 of the series ..." I'm very obvious I'm talking about a different book, but it still gives legitimacy to that.
[00:18:22] So that's another thing people can consider, especially if you're writing a series. Hopefully get that good one for the first one and then find ways to see that through the promotions for your following ones.
[00:18:32] James: It's a totally good idea, as long as, obviously, it's clear that it is referring to the one that it's referring to.
[00:18:41] Matty: Yes, exactly. And another tip I'll share is that, this doesn't work if you're doing industry type professional reviewers, but if you're asking for reviews from fellow authors, then you can ask them to comment on your writing, not on the book. And so if they say, you know, "James McCrone's stories of political intrigue tap into the deepest, darkest secrets of our halls of power," or whatever --
[00:19:09] James: Can I put that down? Let me get a pen.
[00:19:13] Matty: -- you can use that for everything, because it's not book specific, it's writing style and topic specific. It's great to get the comments on the specific book, but if you can also pull out quotes that are related to your writing, then similarly you can use those in different scenarios as well and across different books.
[00:19:31] James:
[00:19:31] Matty: I also wanted to talk about the idea of on-air events and hosted or solo. And so I know this is one that we've talked about before, that you've had some great co-hosts like Dick Belsky -- R.G. Belsky -- was your host for your launch event, which was great fun. And you've had bookstore managers who have posed questions for you, which is all very nice and sort of takes that pressure off of "now I have to just talk about myself."
[00:20:03] And I had originally planned to do something like that for THE FALCON AND THE OWL and I had talked to a couple of people, there was some crossed wires in communication, and so I was getting to the launch date and I thought, I really can't wait anymore, I have to make a decision. So I decided to do a solo Facebook Live and that's coming up. I'll be able to in an upcoming episode comment on how that works.
[00:20:28] So I am actually feeling pretty excited about it. It's going to be, I think, fairly short, it's going to be me doing readings. It's me answering questions that hopefully fans and followers submit in advance. So I feel like this is trading off the comfort that you get from a cohost and the nice interaction you can have with a cohost versus the indy complete control over the product. I could do it when I want, how I want, on the platform I want.
[00:21:00] What are your thoughts about that, about where that balance comes between the enjoyable nature of the co-hosted event versus a solo event?
[00:21:09] James: I'm not sure. I like when you were talking about Craig Johnson, the, Longmire ones, wouldn't it be brilliant to have your books already be films, I mean, that would be optimal. Failing that, Dick Belsky very graciously agreed to be the interviewer, if you will. I liked that quite a bit because again, I'm talking about myself, which is not something I like to do. And so being able to respond to questions was really good.
[00:21:38] At the moment I don't have any Facebook live events planned, not because I don't like them but because I think my brain was already in the bookstore category, if you will. So this was just sort of a slight pivot rather than, a wholesale shift.
[00:21:56] Matty: Yeah, I've been trying to bake in a little bit of that bookstore vibe, because I had approached Wellington Square Books, which is my local bookstore -- you know, like people have local pubs -- that's my local bookstore in Exton, Pennsylvania. And at this point I had decided to do it as a solo event, but I said, I would love to tell people in the area
[00:22:16] that if they want to go purchase a book at a bookstore, that they could go to Wellington Square, and I'd like to be able to mention during the Facebook live that this is the bookstore I'm partnering with and you can go to their site and purchase the book. I mean, they could purchase the book all sorts of places, but this is one of the places they can go to.
[00:22:34] And Wellington is doing some promotion for me. So they posted my Facebook live invitation on their Facebook page. And so it's not the total partnership that you would get certainly with an in-person event and even with the bookstore hosted events that you've been doing. But it's a way of introducing that connection with a bookstore, because I think readers love it when there's an indy bookstore affiliated with the event.
[00:23:03] James: Absolutely. I remember you mentioning that, I thought it was brilliant. For your local bookstore, it's a win / win. It's essentially no effort for them, and if they get, you know, 50, a hundred, I'm sure it will be 200 book sales --
[00:23:18] Matty: Hundreds of books.
[00:23:19] James: -- hundreds of books, and whatever they get is gravy. And it's got their name out there and people are, "Oh, right, that bookstore." And they're going to buy something else as well. I think that was very wise on your part. That makes a lot of sense.
[00:23:32] Matty: There's also a nice pro of an online event because I did one infamous in person event years ago, before I knew better, and they ordered books from Ingram and they ordered a lot of books from Ingram and a small audience appeared and most of those books went back and that event cost me about $150, because the author gets dinged for all the returns. And so one thing you can do when we get back to in person events is set an expectation with the bookstore about how many they should order.
[00:24:07] And one thing that I've heard as a great piece of advice -- this is from Mark Leslie Lefebvre -- is even if you set the expectation, like let's say you think 20 people might show up so you advise that they should order 20 copies, have an agreement with them in advance that any unsold copies you'll purchase from them for the same amount that they would receive as a credit if they returned them. That way, they're not just being trashed. You're not hit with a giant return fee. And at a minimum you can sell them at price or over time you could sell them via your website or whatever.
[00:24:43] And so that's a way to lessen that, but it's nice in a virtual event because you can point listeners and readers to a platform like bookstore.org, where they can easily buy the books and the bookstore gets credit. Or many bookstores obviously have order information on their website that links to whatever source they have for fulfilling on demand, not having warehoused items that they have to take care of. So that's a nice plus of the virtual events.
[00:25:12] James: Yeah.
[00:25:14] Matty: But one of the downsides of virtual event is signed books. So describe how you're handling providing interested readers with signed books.
[00:25:23] James: It's book plates, which I had to learn about. I'm 56 years old and I'm still astonished by things I just don't know. You'll learn something and you think, how did I not know that? How did I not already know that?
[00:25:36] Shakespeare & Co. here in Philly and in New York sponsored and hosted my launch back on October 1st, and they asked me for book plates so that they could offer signed copies and I'm like, okay, send me some and I'll sign them. And they were like, no, no, you do that. And I was like, Okay. I scrambled and figured it out and I've been getting notes from people who attended the virtual event, and that their books have been arriving and it's signed too. So people really liked that.
[00:26:05] Matty: I think that there is an unmet need for author book plates that don't say Ex Libris on it, because I ended up getting some very attractive book plates that had an owl on it, which was good for THE FALCON AND THE OWL, and what I'm going to do is during any event or on my web site, I'm just going to say, if you've purchased a print copy and you would like it signed, then drop me a note at my website contact form and let me know what your address is, and I'll sign a book plate and send it to you. It would be better if it didn't say Ex Libris, because the effect is "from the library of," and then it's going to have my name on it, which is kind of goofy.
[00:26:43] The other thing I like about the ones I got in addition to the owl design is that they have the peel-off back so I can easily sign them, put it in an envelope, when the person receives it, they can peel the backing off and stick it in their book and that's just a nice logistical consideration for people who are thinking about doing that themselves.
[00:27:04] So the last thing I wanted to talk about is sort of a strategic perspective, and I think it's underlying a lot of what we've been talking about up until this point, and that is the idea of is one focusing on print or is one focusing on ebook. And over the last year -- so I left my corporate job last year, and when I first did that, I thought, I'm going to have all this time where I can go to all these author events or bookstore signings or readings or whatever.
[00:27:39] And I found that I actually attend a lot fewer of those than I used to, independent of COVID. Even if it weren't for COVID, I would still be doing fewer of those things, because I just found that the cost benefit for me, I couldn't justify. You do a signing event at a bookstore an hour away, it's not just the hour you spend getting there and back. It's the time you spend there, it's loading up your car. It's a logistical challenge.
[00:28:06] And every time I thought about it, I thought, is it going to be better for me to sell, honestly, like five books, right? Because I won't speak for anyone else -- I hardly ever go to those and sell more than just a couple of books. It's more like community outreach than it is a sales opportunity. And it is certainly not a money-making opportunity because almost without exception, I can say that I always spend more in gas and certainly more in time than I make from the sale of those books. And so the whole idea of the live event became less attractive to me anyway, even before COVID.
[00:28:40] James: I understand, some of what you've, said about the, the cost benefit ratio of in-person kinds of things and I agree. But there's also no question in my mind that they are an official and regenerative, what I mean that I always come away feeling good about the conversations I've had with other writers and particularly with readers.
[00:29:03] you and I are both in Sisters in Crime and you belong to Mystery Writers of America is one, right? and those and other groups will often rent a table on behalf of the organization. And then, if you're quick enough, you can usually sign up for half an hour or an hour or whatever. I don't know that it's particularly lucrative, but it's a great way and low impact, low cost to get yourself out there in front of people.
[00:29:26] Matty: It is definitely not a one answer thing. And it's a question that I just wrestle with every time one of those opportunities comes up and it's the such and such book fair and I have an opportunity to get a table or part of a table and I really wrestle every time. It's just at this point, my business plan is saying, no, just stay home and write, but I would not doubt at all that in a year, two years, my answer to that might be different.
[00:29:52] And when I have done those events, my deciding factor has always been, if I don't sell any books, is this going to be worth it? And it is exactly for what you're talking about. If I'm going to be sitting at a table for the day with a couple of authors that I know and like, or that I don't know yet and want to get to know, if I know I'll be chatting with readers, absolutely that's something that needs to be factored in as well.
[00:30:16] Ideally you have a strategic idea of what you want to achieve, and you hold the plan that you have up to that strategic plan and see if it matches or doesn't match. If it doesn't match, make an intentional decision either to tweak your strategic plan or to acknowledge that this is an exception. Like, I just want to do this event because I think it would be fun. That's perfectly legitimate. Just know that going in. And then reassess that as you come to each subsequent book launch and say, don't just automatically repeat what you did before, because circumstances change, your goals, change. The world's situation changes. You have to be willing to accommodate.
[00:30:56] And then the other thing I think is key is, is the focus ebook or print? And so for me, it's been ebook, because I feel as if I look at my own behavior -- and I know it's dangerous to judge other people's behavior on one's own behavior -- but the books that I buy in print more and more are books that it's going to be an event for me to read. I just got Robert Galbraith's TROUBLED BLOOD, all 975 pages of it or whatever. It was like an event, working through that book was an event for me. A lot of books, if I were buying my book, I would buy it as an ebook because it's a fast read. It's more casual. It's not great literature.
[00:31:44] James: I think you're selling yourself short, but okay.
[00:31:48] Matty: I see nothing wrong with a fun read. And I'm gratified that many of my fans are waiting to buy print books because they want that event experience, so I'm not discounting that at all. But if I look at my sales, my sales are way more in ebook than they are in print book. And I'm good with that. And I'm happy to keep propagating that in future sales.
[00:32:13] So I think early on, at least, you were more focused on print sales, and I'm wondering if you can comment if that's true and, either way, how is that evolving for you?
[00:32:25] James: It's been interesting. It is a problem to only go by what you yourself like, because who knows what readers like. I have a Kindle, but I really do like a physical book. What I have found is that when the book is new, for that first year, it's probably 60, maybe 70% of sales are paperback, and then it's 35, 40%, in, ebook. And that in subsequent years, it pretty much flips and people are reading the ebook more than the physical book.
[00:32:59] What's been really gratifying and interesting, is how with the launch of EMERGENCY POWERS, I've had a really nice run on the first two books, FAITHLESS ELECTOR and DARK NETWORK, and that that's particularly in eBooks. People are like, "Oh, I've heard about this. I'm interested in that." They get the paperback, but then they also order the ebook, which has been great.
[00:33:25] FAITHLESS ELECTOR is four years old, four and a half years old, which isn't old for a book obviously, but the day EMERGENCY POWERS came out, I sold 10 or 12 ebook copies of FAITHLESS ELECTOR. I honestly hadn't sold 10 or 12 in a day in I don't know how long. So that was really surprising and gratifying.
[00:33:44] I make the ebook is as good as possible, I spend as much time on the formatting and making it an attractive thing for a reader, as I do the paperback itself. Because I prefer paperback myself, I probably tend to talk more about that.
[00:34:02] Matty: One of the nice things about eBooks is that there are many more promotional options for eBooks than for print books, I believe. So for example, I've been heavily promoting THE SENSE OF DEATH. It has actually coincidentally worked out well because I always have THE SENSE OF DEATH, which is the first Ann Kinnear book, at $2.99. And then the second Ann Kinnear book, THE SENSE OF RECKONING, takes place in October. It has as its backstory a fire that took place in 1947 in Maine that happened in October. And so in October I tend to heavily promote and discount THE SENSE OF RECKONING. And so it's currently 99 cents. I'm advertising it on BookBub ads, I'm posting it on a lot of what I think of as the baby BookBubs like eReader News Today or Bargain Booksy and things like that.
[00:34:53] And so you can't do that with a print book. You can only do that with an ebook. So there are more promotional opportunities, I think, for eBooks, certainly online, than there are for print books, which is nice. Definitely if someone is writing in a series, then they should factor in the entire series when they're promoting their book, not just the latest one, because you want to make sure that people are caught up and you do get that bump in the previous books if you have a series that you can point them to.
[00:35:21] James: Absolutely. Yeah. When the second book, DARK NETWORK, came out, I hoped that there would be a bump for FAITHLESS ELECTOR and it just didn't really happen. And I thought, okay, I don't know why not. It sold, but it wasn't amazing. And what's been really, really gratifying is that with this third book, it's generated a ton of interest for the first two. There it is primarily the ereaders, and some paperbacks too.
[00:35:48] Matty: Yeah. I think that the value of a series, in terms of making fiction as moneymaking a venture as possible can't be overstated because if you like one, you want to see that there's more than one more to go through. And so I think the more and more that one has in a series, the more likely you are to catch those people who are specifically looking for a series because they don't want to read one book, fall in love with the characters, and then not be able to move on to the others.
[00:36:17] I also just wanted to put in a plug for Vellum for those of you out there who are Mac users in terms of formatting. So I use Vellum to format all my books and it's great because, honestly, it is pretty much you load up your file and you press Give me an ebook and out pops in ebook. And you say, Give me a print book and out pops a print book in terms of nicely formatted for the trim size you pick. I like it so much, I'm an affiliate. So you can go to theindyauthor.com if you're interested in looking into Vellum and find more information there, and also my affiliate link, if anyone wants to use that.
[00:36:51] So I'm going to be curious, Jamie, maybe over time as your book launch continues to progress, you can go to the show notes for this episode and update us on how things are going. It would be fun for both of us to do that, so people can be getting the latest and greatest on book launches.
[00:37:09] I appreciate you so much being willing to have this chat with me about book launches, because I think we've offered some some similar information and then some different thoughts on how people can go about it.
[00:37:20] James: It was nice too, that as I think you pointed out at the outset that there aren't only right answers or only wrong answers. There are lots of different things to try.
[00:37:29] Matty: Tell people where they can go to find out more about you and your books online.
[00:37:34] James: The central point would be my author site, Jamesmccrone.com -- where the books are sold, which is everywhere, a list of virtual appearances, and even one in person. In November, I'm going to my local farmer's market. I was talking with the manager of it, and I was mentioning about the book and he said, "You know, you could sell here," and I said, "Really? I would love to!" We're going to figure that out, all masked up.
[00:38:03] Matty: Yeah. I will definitely be interested in having you come back and leave us a note about how that went when that has occurred.
[00:38:10] James: Okay.
[00:38:10] Matty: Well, thank you, Jamie. This was so helpful.
[00:38:12] James: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:38:16] Matty: My pleasure, and best of luck with the remainder of your launch.
[00:03:58] Matty: Can I just stop you for a second, ask you to describe what NetGalley is?
[00:04:03] James: NetGalley is a service that you pay for, but you put an ereader version of your book up on NetGalley and then people who have signed up for NetGalley can access it and, you hope, write a review. I don't know if you ever noticed that your book will go live on a particular date in Amazon and there will already be reviews from readers. Often those are NetGalley readers who've already posted.
[00:04:34] But it's also an industry enterprise, so that when you're reaching out to people, you can say, I could send you a copy of the book, an advanced reader copy, or it's available on NetGalley. Quite a few people use NetGalley and so they would say, Oh great, I'll just access it there. And it's free. You the author or you the publisher pay to put your book up there. I was able to get a slightly better deal because I belong to the Independent Book Publishers Association, so through IBPA, I was able to get a slightly better price, which was nice. So as part of my timeline, I know that it can take 16 weeks, 18 weeks for places like Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus to even get around to reviewing it, if indeed they would. Sometimes they say we're not going to, we pass, we're not going to do it.
[00:05:34] So starting in January, you're already into April, and I wanted to leave a buffer of, say, May to start marketing the book and start talking to bookstores and looking at taglines for the book and trying to do pull quotes and things like that. And so looking through all of the things that needed to happen and needed to happen in a particular order and how long they would take, I decided on October 1st as a date.
[00:06:02] One of the things I had also decided on, I wanted to do a bunch of book launches at different bookstores. There are quite a few bookstores that I really like, ones that are within driving distance of here where I live in Philadelphia, and I was going to drive out to every one of them I could get to and pitch them. Bookstores like to know, is there any local interest in the book, in terms of is it set there. Secondarily, is it friends and family in the area, people who are likely to actually attend your book opening and one hopes buy the book and things like that.
[00:06:35] And so I had probably 10 or 12 bookstores that I was going to be reaching out to, right at the beginning there. And then COVID happened. When it started in March, I thought, probably doing it for October was a good idea.
[00:06:49] Matty: We'll be golden.
[00:06:51] James: It'll almost be over, and we'll be getting back to something like normal and obviously we're not. So, when that became very clear that it wasn't going away in June, I started scrambling and trying to think differently about how to do this. I know a number of publishers held publication of their books and I briefly considered doing that, but I felt like it was a good book. Even though it's not about Trump or about the administration at all, it does speak to this moment, this political moment, in our country's history and I thought it was important and that it would resonate. And so I wanted it out.
[00:07:33] Matty: I have a bunch of questions based on that overview, but one thing I want to talk about that is I think is really independent of COVID or not is the whole question of in-person or virtual events. And obviously in person events was sort of a centerpiece of a lot of your planning for your launch. And I always think that the tricky point is that, if you're going to a bookstore, let's say you're going to drive to Pittsburgh. You've made a visit in Philadelphia and you've tapped into your Philadelphia contacts. Now you're going to do an appearance in Pittsburgh. And I think there's an understanding on both the author and the bookstore's part that your friends and family aren't probably going to drive out to Pittsburgh to see you again. As opposed to a virtual event where everybody can attend every event.
[00:08:23] When you switched from an in-person event, where there was an understanding that the audiences would be segmented geographically, versus a virtual event, where there are no geographic considerations, how did that impact how you approached those events?
[00:08:38] James: In a very big way. There's a story about the old borscht belt comedians from the early 20th century. They had a sort of circuit that they would do, the borscht belt they would often call it, so that you would have your routine and you would deliver it to an audience of 500 or a thousand, whatever the venue held. And the next night you'd be somewhere else, and you'd actually give exactly the same performance. But these people never saw it, so that's great. And the next night and the next night, and you just move on, you're doing the same performance and you're honing it probably, but it's still essentially the same performance.
[00:09:18] And then television happened. So now you put a comedian on, well, he's just done his act, and everybody saw it. So if he now goes to some venue on the borscht belt and does his act, most of the people in the audience have already seen it. And they're kind of like, "Wait, what? No, do something new!" And I'm not a comedian, but I think the same kinds of issues hold.
[00:09:45] Matty: That's a great analogy.
[00:09:47] James: You hit the nail on the head when you said that the audience was sort of segmented. What I found was that bookstores very quickly would say, when was your last one, the one that went before this? They wanted at least two, maybe three weeks in between each virtual appearance, because they knew you'd be getting a good size audience for the one, and if it happens the next night, nobody's going to show up for the second one. So I ended up not having anywhere near the number of appearances than I had hoped for.
[00:10:23] And secondarily, they're spaced out a lot more than I had intended. I'm not against it. It's just the way it ended up being.
[00:10:30] Matty: Right. I think that for all these things, we're probably not going to be recommending that there's the right way and the wrong way. It's just a couple of approaches and assess them as you will. I saw a really interesting take on this and I hadn't thought of it in this way until we were talking, but Craig Johnson just launched a new book, a new Longmire book, and he was at a couple of bookstores that I follow on social media and in some cases follow in person and I signed up for all of them, because I figured, why not?
And then I realized that at each event he had as a guest somebody from the Longmire TV show, which was brilliant, because, he was giving more or less the same spiel, the same borscht belt spiel that you talked about, and yet it was different because, well, it was different in part because his bookstore host was asking him slightly different questions, but also because he had this whole angle that if he had Lou Diamond Phillips on, then they were talking about the Henry Standing Bear character more in that, and then if he had somebody else, one of the other actors, they were talking more about that character. And I thought that was really brilliant because it did mean that I virtually attended like three Craig Johnson book launch events, and I enjoyed them all, even though parts of it were similar.
[00:11:52] I also think that the idea that the bookstores are sort of requiring you to spread it out is actually a good thing, because I think that one of the true strengths of indy publishing is that unlike traditional publishing, where you have this big blast of publicity, you're getting into Publisher's Weekly, you're getting into all the big names because the traditional publishers have that entree. And then, I don't know, a month, two months goes by and you never really hear about that again, unless the author is making an effort to do that.
[00:12:21] Whereas as indy publishers, we can spread out the excitement, just as you're saying, with maybe you're doing a virtual event every two weeks, but you're doing it over the next four months as opposed to a hundred Zoom interviews in the publication week.
[00:12:37] James: Right, right. That's a very good point. You've talked about this, I think, on the podcast before. I mean that having to be an advocate for yourself as the writer is often difficult for a writer because that's not necessarily who we are. We like to sit in our little rooms, doing what we do. If that were it, it would be great, it would all be perfect. But, it's not.
[00:12:58] Being an independent author, you do have to really get out there and bang the drum for yourself. I struggled with that. I'm not necessarily a gregarious person. I don't like doing, "Hey, let's talk about me now!" As a writer, I think that part of why you do what you do is because you actually take a step back and you listen to people rather than sort of press them with, "Well, I, I, I!" You're like, "What about you? Let me hear about you," and you're watching and listening. And so this is a complete about face, which I'm still learning.
[00:13:33] Matty: That brings up another good point. Actually, it brings up two other points I wanted to talk about. One is sort of tied into what you had said earlier about pursuing Publisher's Weekly reviews or placements and those kinds of publications and the long lead time you needed to factor in in order to do that. I know that you also have a very extensive author network, and I know that a bunch of authors have given you really nice blurbs for your book, one assumes for free.
[00:13:58] And I'm wondering if now, in retrospect, do you feel like the time and the money -- because you have to pay for those bigger name reviews, correct? Kirkus I know is expensive.
[00:14:12] James: Well, yeah. And Publisher's Weekly may do it for free or they may not.
[00:14:16] Matty: In retrospect, now that you know all the nice things that other authors said about your books that you can put on the cover, do you think it's still worth it to get those paid ones?
[00:14:25] James: I think it's important to get the industry ones. I have Independence Press, I have, Midwest Book Review, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Pen and Ink, some paid, some have a reading fee or something like that. I think having a blend of author praise and the reviews helps a lot because even though, I mean, yes, they're paid, but that's no guarantee they're going to give you a good review.
[00:14:53] Matty: Yeah. Especially Kirkus I know is known for being tough. So you pay your money and then you live with what you get. And if you don't like it, they'll agree not to publish it. I mean, if they've written a bad review, you can say, okay, I've paid my 400 bucks, but I never want to see that in print.
[00:15:10] James: You do have that option as a publisher, you can be like, "Okay, yeah, never mind." But even if it's sort of okay, if they've found something that is going to resonate, then you can pull that out.
[00:15:22] I've heard, and this makes so much sense but I wouldn't have thought of it until I read it, and I wish I could remember who it was who said it, it was about bad reviews for your book that when you look on Amazon and all you see are five star reviews, you're like, "Really?" But if it's mostly fives and fours, but there are a couple of threes and one or two, and then some crank who didn't even really review it -- "One star!" -- well, that looks legitimate.
[00:15:50] Obviously if there are 10 or 20 one-star reviews, you as the author need to take a look at the work. But, one or two, actually legitimates the process and probably makes people feel more comfortable with the five stars. That, well, okay, people really did like it and real people are reading it and obviously there's some breadth of opinion.
[00:16:14] Matty: Yeah. If someone has like 20 five-star reviews, I just assume that they have a large family ...
[00:16:19] James: Yeah, exactly.
[00:16:20] Matty: ... and they got them all a copy for Christmas. Plus I always say, if people are feeling bummed about their one-star reviews, then go look up your favorite author and see how many one-star reviews they have. I guarantee you that Stephen King and JK Rowling and James Patterson have thousands of one-star reviews and hundreds of thousands of five star reviews.
[00:16:42] James: I was listening to a comedian and he was talking about that. For some reason he was watching Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or something on YouTube and there were like 800 thumbs down.
[00:16:54] Matty: Yeah. "This isn't that good."
[00:16:57] James: Yeah. Or, "I liked his early work," or something.
[00:17:00] Matty: "I was bored by this."
[00:17:02] James: Yeah.
[00:17:04] Matty: Before we move off that topic, I wanted to offer as an alternative, because we're saying there's probably not rights or wrongs, there are probably just different things to consider ... I got Kirkus reviews for my first three books, which were the first two Ann Kinnear books, THE SENSE OF DEATH and THE SENSE OF RECKONING, and the first Lizzy Ballard book, ROCK PAPER SCISSORS. And fortunately, they were all very good and I was able to use them for promotional purposes. And then when Lizzy Ballard 2 came along, I thought, do I really want to risk another $400 or however much it is to maybe not get another good one.
[00:17:39] And I decided that for the series, one quotable Kirkus review for the first one is sufficient. It would be fun to be able to do it for all of them, but I just don't have the bucks to do that right now. And so even if I'm advertising THE FALCON AND THE OWL, for example, which is Book 3, I'm emphasizing driving people to Book 1 because I want them to read through the series, and so the quote comes up naturally if I'm promoting THE SENSE OF DEATH, and I can quote the Kirkus review for THE SENSE OF DEATH. But even for THE FALCON AND THE OWL, I can say, "Kirkus Review said of Book 1 of the series ..." I'm very obvious I'm talking about a different book, but it still gives legitimacy to that.
[00:18:22] So that's another thing people can consider, especially if you're writing a series. Hopefully get that good one for the first one and then find ways to see that through the promotions for your following ones.
[00:18:32] James: It's a totally good idea, as long as, obviously, it's clear that it is referring to the one that it's referring to.
[00:18:41] Matty: Yes, exactly. And another tip I'll share is that, this doesn't work if you're doing industry type professional reviewers, but if you're asking for reviews from fellow authors, then you can ask them to comment on your writing, not on the book. And so if they say, you know, "James McCrone's stories of political intrigue tap into the deepest, darkest secrets of our halls of power," or whatever --
[00:19:09] James: Can I put that down? Let me get a pen.
[00:19:13] Matty: -- you can use that for everything, because it's not book specific, it's writing style and topic specific. It's great to get the comments on the specific book, but if you can also pull out quotes that are related to your writing, then similarly you can use those in different scenarios as well and across different books.
[00:19:31] James:
[00:19:31] Matty: I also wanted to talk about the idea of on-air events and hosted or solo. And so I know this is one that we've talked about before, that you've had some great co-hosts like Dick Belsky -- R.G. Belsky -- was your host for your launch event, which was great fun. And you've had bookstore managers who have posed questions for you, which is all very nice and sort of takes that pressure off of "now I have to just talk about myself."
[00:20:03] And I had originally planned to do something like that for THE FALCON AND THE OWL and I had talked to a couple of people, there was some crossed wires in communication, and so I was getting to the launch date and I thought, I really can't wait anymore, I have to make a decision. So I decided to do a solo Facebook Live and that's coming up. I'll be able to in an upcoming episode comment on how that works.
[00:20:28] So I am actually feeling pretty excited about it. It's going to be, I think, fairly short, it's going to be me doing readings. It's me answering questions that hopefully fans and followers submit in advance. So I feel like this is trading off the comfort that you get from a cohost and the nice interaction you can have with a cohost versus the indy complete control over the product. I could do it when I want, how I want, on the platform I want.
[00:21:00] What are your thoughts about that, about where that balance comes between the enjoyable nature of the co-hosted event versus a solo event?
[00:21:09] James: I'm not sure. I like when you were talking about Craig Johnson, the, Longmire ones, wouldn't it be brilliant to have your books already be films, I mean, that would be optimal. Failing that, Dick Belsky very graciously agreed to be the interviewer, if you will. I liked that quite a bit because again, I'm talking about myself, which is not something I like to do. And so being able to respond to questions was really good.
[00:21:38] At the moment I don't have any Facebook live events planned, not because I don't like them but because I think my brain was already in the bookstore category, if you will. So this was just sort of a slight pivot rather than, a wholesale shift.
[00:21:56] Matty: Yeah, I've been trying to bake in a little bit of that bookstore vibe, because I had approached Wellington Square Books, which is my local bookstore -- you know, like people have local pubs -- that's my local bookstore in Exton, Pennsylvania. And at this point I had decided to do it as a solo event, but I said, I would love to tell people in the area
[00:22:16] that if they want to go purchase a book at a bookstore, that they could go to Wellington Square, and I'd like to be able to mention during the Facebook live that this is the bookstore I'm partnering with and you can go to their site and purchase the book. I mean, they could purchase the book all sorts of places, but this is one of the places they can go to.
[00:22:34] And Wellington is doing some promotion for me. So they posted my Facebook live invitation on their Facebook page. And so it's not the total partnership that you would get certainly with an in-person event and even with the bookstore hosted events that you've been doing. But it's a way of introducing that connection with a bookstore, because I think readers love it when there's an indy bookstore affiliated with the event.
[00:23:03] James: Absolutely. I remember you mentioning that, I thought it was brilliant. For your local bookstore, it's a win / win. It's essentially no effort for them, and if they get, you know, 50, a hundred, I'm sure it will be 200 book sales --
[00:23:18] Matty: Hundreds of books.
[00:23:19] James: -- hundreds of books, and whatever they get is gravy. And it's got their name out there and people are, "Oh, right, that bookstore." And they're going to buy something else as well. I think that was very wise on your part. That makes a lot of sense.
[00:23:32] Matty: There's also a nice pro of an online event because I did one infamous in person event years ago, before I knew better, and they ordered books from Ingram and they ordered a lot of books from Ingram and a small audience appeared and most of those books went back and that event cost me about $150, because the author gets dinged for all the returns. And so one thing you can do when we get back to in person events is set an expectation with the bookstore about how many they should order.
[00:24:07] And one thing that I've heard as a great piece of advice -- this is from Mark Leslie Lefebvre -- is even if you set the expectation, like let's say you think 20 people might show up so you advise that they should order 20 copies, have an agreement with them in advance that any unsold copies you'll purchase from them for the same amount that they would receive as a credit if they returned them. That way, they're not just being trashed. You're not hit with a giant return fee. And at a minimum you can sell them at price or over time you could sell them via your website or whatever.
[00:24:43] And so that's a way to lessen that, but it's nice in a virtual event because you can point listeners and readers to a platform like bookstore.org, where they can easily buy the books and the bookstore gets credit. Or many bookstores obviously have order information on their website that links to whatever source they have for fulfilling on demand, not having warehoused items that they have to take care of. So that's a nice plus of the virtual events.
[00:25:12] James: Yeah.
[00:25:14] Matty: But one of the downsides of virtual event is signed books. So describe how you're handling providing interested readers with signed books.
[00:25:23] James: It's book plates, which I had to learn about. I'm 56 years old and I'm still astonished by things I just don't know. You'll learn something and you think, how did I not know that? How did I not already know that?
[00:25:36] Shakespeare & Co. here in Philly and in New York sponsored and hosted my launch back on October 1st, and they asked me for book plates so that they could offer signed copies and I'm like, okay, send me some and I'll sign them. And they were like, no, no, you do that. And I was like, Okay. I scrambled and figured it out and I've been getting notes from people who attended the virtual event, and that their books have been arriving and it's signed too. So people really liked that.
[00:26:05] Matty: I think that there is an unmet need for author book plates that don't say Ex Libris on it, because I ended up getting some very attractive book plates that had an owl on it, which was good for THE FALCON AND THE OWL, and what I'm going to do is during any event or on my web site, I'm just going to say, if you've purchased a print copy and you would like it signed, then drop me a note at my website contact form and let me know what your address is, and I'll sign a book plate and send it to you. It would be better if it didn't say Ex Libris, because the effect is "from the library of," and then it's going to have my name on it, which is kind of goofy.
[00:26:43] The other thing I like about the ones I got in addition to the owl design is that they have the peel-off back so I can easily sign them, put it in an envelope, when the person receives it, they can peel the backing off and stick it in their book and that's just a nice logistical consideration for people who are thinking about doing that themselves.
[00:27:04] So the last thing I wanted to talk about is sort of a strategic perspective, and I think it's underlying a lot of what we've been talking about up until this point, and that is the idea of is one focusing on print or is one focusing on ebook. And over the last year -- so I left my corporate job last year, and when I first did that, I thought, I'm going to have all this time where I can go to all these author events or bookstore signings or readings or whatever.
[00:27:39] And I found that I actually attend a lot fewer of those than I used to, independent of COVID. Even if it weren't for COVID, I would still be doing fewer of those things, because I just found that the cost benefit for me, I couldn't justify. You do a signing event at a bookstore an hour away, it's not just the hour you spend getting there and back. It's the time you spend there, it's loading up your car. It's a logistical challenge.
[00:28:06] And every time I thought about it, I thought, is it going to be better for me to sell, honestly, like five books, right? Because I won't speak for anyone else -- I hardly ever go to those and sell more than just a couple of books. It's more like community outreach than it is a sales opportunity. And it is certainly not a money-making opportunity because almost without exception, I can say that I always spend more in gas and certainly more in time than I make from the sale of those books. And so the whole idea of the live event became less attractive to me anyway, even before COVID.
[00:28:40] James: I understand, some of what you've, said about the, the cost benefit ratio of in-person kinds of things and I agree. But there's also no question in my mind that they are an official and regenerative, what I mean that I always come away feeling good about the conversations I've had with other writers and particularly with readers.
[00:29:03] you and I are both in Sisters in Crime and you belong to Mystery Writers of America is one, right? and those and other groups will often rent a table on behalf of the organization. And then, if you're quick enough, you can usually sign up for half an hour or an hour or whatever. I don't know that it's particularly lucrative, but it's a great way and low impact, low cost to get yourself out there in front of people.
[00:29:26] Matty: It is definitely not a one answer thing. And it's a question that I just wrestle with every time one of those opportunities comes up and it's the such and such book fair and I have an opportunity to get a table or part of a table and I really wrestle every time. It's just at this point, my business plan is saying, no, just stay home and write, but I would not doubt at all that in a year, two years, my answer to that might be different.
[00:29:52] And when I have done those events, my deciding factor has always been, if I don't sell any books, is this going to be worth it? And it is exactly for what you're talking about. If I'm going to be sitting at a table for the day with a couple of authors that I know and like, or that I don't know yet and want to get to know, if I know I'll be chatting with readers, absolutely that's something that needs to be factored in as well.
[00:30:16] Ideally you have a strategic idea of what you want to achieve, and you hold the plan that you have up to that strategic plan and see if it matches or doesn't match. If it doesn't match, make an intentional decision either to tweak your strategic plan or to acknowledge that this is an exception. Like, I just want to do this event because I think it would be fun. That's perfectly legitimate. Just know that going in. And then reassess that as you come to each subsequent book launch and say, don't just automatically repeat what you did before, because circumstances change, your goals, change. The world's situation changes. You have to be willing to accommodate.
[00:30:56] And then the other thing I think is key is, is the focus ebook or print? And so for me, it's been ebook, because I feel as if I look at my own behavior -- and I know it's dangerous to judge other people's behavior on one's own behavior -- but the books that I buy in print more and more are books that it's going to be an event for me to read. I just got Robert Galbraith's TROUBLED BLOOD, all 975 pages of it or whatever. It was like an event, working through that book was an event for me. A lot of books, if I were buying my book, I would buy it as an ebook because it's a fast read. It's more casual. It's not great literature.
[00:31:44] James: I think you're selling yourself short, but okay.
[00:31:48] Matty: I see nothing wrong with a fun read. And I'm gratified that many of my fans are waiting to buy print books because they want that event experience, so I'm not discounting that at all. But if I look at my sales, my sales are way more in ebook than they are in print book. And I'm good with that. And I'm happy to keep propagating that in future sales.
[00:32:13] So I think early on, at least, you were more focused on print sales, and I'm wondering if you can comment if that's true and, either way, how is that evolving for you?
[00:32:25] James: It's been interesting. It is a problem to only go by what you yourself like, because who knows what readers like. I have a Kindle, but I really do like a physical book. What I have found is that when the book is new, for that first year, it's probably 60, maybe 70% of sales are paperback, and then it's 35, 40%, in, ebook. And that in subsequent years, it pretty much flips and people are reading the ebook more than the physical book.
[00:32:59] What's been really gratifying and interesting, is how with the launch of EMERGENCY POWERS, I've had a really nice run on the first two books, FAITHLESS ELECTOR and DARK NETWORK, and that that's particularly in eBooks. People are like, "Oh, I've heard about this. I'm interested in that." They get the paperback, but then they also order the ebook, which has been great.
[00:33:25] FAITHLESS ELECTOR is four years old, four and a half years old, which isn't old for a book obviously, but the day EMERGENCY POWERS came out, I sold 10 or 12 ebook copies of FAITHLESS ELECTOR. I honestly hadn't sold 10 or 12 in a day in I don't know how long. So that was really surprising and gratifying.
[00:33:44] I make the ebook is as good as possible, I spend as much time on the formatting and making it an attractive thing for a reader, as I do the paperback itself. Because I prefer paperback myself, I probably tend to talk more about that.
[00:34:02] Matty: One of the nice things about eBooks is that there are many more promotional options for eBooks than for print books, I believe. So for example, I've been heavily promoting THE SENSE OF DEATH. It has actually coincidentally worked out well because I always have THE SENSE OF DEATH, which is the first Ann Kinnear book, at $2.99. And then the second Ann Kinnear book, THE SENSE OF RECKONING, takes place in October. It has as its backstory a fire that took place in 1947 in Maine that happened in October. And so in October I tend to heavily promote and discount THE SENSE OF RECKONING. And so it's currently 99 cents. I'm advertising it on BookBub ads, I'm posting it on a lot of what I think of as the baby BookBubs like eReader News Today or Bargain Booksy and things like that.
[00:34:53] And so you can't do that with a print book. You can only do that with an ebook. So there are more promotional opportunities, I think, for eBooks, certainly online, than there are for print books, which is nice. Definitely if someone is writing in a series, then they should factor in the entire series when they're promoting their book, not just the latest one, because you want to make sure that people are caught up and you do get that bump in the previous books if you have a series that you can point them to.
[00:35:21] James: Absolutely. Yeah. When the second book, DARK NETWORK, came out, I hoped that there would be a bump for FAITHLESS ELECTOR and it just didn't really happen. And I thought, okay, I don't know why not. It sold, but it wasn't amazing. And what's been really, really gratifying is that with this third book, it's generated a ton of interest for the first two. There it is primarily the ereaders, and some paperbacks too.
[00:35:48] Matty: Yeah. I think that the value of a series, in terms of making fiction as moneymaking a venture as possible can't be overstated because if you like one, you want to see that there's more than one more to go through. And so I think the more and more that one has in a series, the more likely you are to catch those people who are specifically looking for a series because they don't want to read one book, fall in love with the characters, and then not be able to move on to the others.
[00:36:17] I also just wanted to put in a plug for Vellum for those of you out there who are Mac users in terms of formatting. So I use Vellum to format all my books and it's great because, honestly, it is pretty much you load up your file and you press Give me an ebook and out pops in ebook. And you say, Give me a print book and out pops a print book in terms of nicely formatted for the trim size you pick. I like it so much, I'm an affiliate. So you can go to theindyauthor.com if you're interested in looking into Vellum and find more information there, and also my affiliate link, if anyone wants to use that.
[00:36:51] So I'm going to be curious, Jamie, maybe over time as your book launch continues to progress, you can go to the show notes for this episode and update us on how things are going. It would be fun for both of us to do that, so people can be getting the latest and greatest on book launches.
[00:37:09] I appreciate you so much being willing to have this chat with me about book launches, because I think we've offered some some similar information and then some different thoughts on how people can go about it.
[00:37:20] James: It was nice too, that as I think you pointed out at the outset that there aren't only right answers or only wrong answers. There are lots of different things to try.
[00:37:29] Matty: Tell people where they can go to find out more about you and your books online.
[00:37:34] James: The central point would be my author site, Jamesmccrone.com -- where the books are sold, which is everywhere, a list of virtual appearances, and even one in person. In November, I'm going to my local farmer's market. I was talking with the manager of it, and I was mentioning about the book and he said, "You know, you could sell here," and I said, "Really? I would love to!" We're going to figure that out, all masked up.
[00:38:03] Matty: Yeah. I will definitely be interested in having you come back and leave us a note about how that went when that has occurred.
[00:38:10] James: Okay.
[00:38:10] Matty: Well, thank you, Jamie. This was so helpful.
[00:38:12] James: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:38:16] Matty: My pleasure, and best of luck with the remainder of your launch.
Post-recording Update
My Facebook Live launch event was on 10/16—you can go to my Matty Dalrymple Facebook page to check it out—and I was very pleased with how it went. As I explain in the replay, the event was scheduled for the 16th even though the book launched in the 15th, because as it turned out Jamie had a virtual event scheduled on the 15th, and because we have a number of author friends in common, I didn’t want to split either of our audiences. That difference in dates between the actual launch and the launch celebration caused a little bit of confusion, but having the celebration the following day turned out to be a good thing because as it turned out, I got a new vehicle on the 15th, and dealing with that, the launch, and the FB Live event on the same day would have been overwhelming. (I’m tricking out a Ford Transit Connect to be the perfect dog- and bookmobile, and if you want to follow its transformation, you can do that at my Matty Dalrymple Facebook page.)
Because I wasn’t very familiar with the mechanics of Facebook Live, I held a prep event two days before the launch celebration for which I read a couple of passages from Ann Kinnear Book 2: TSOR … which made sense because it’s on sale for $0.99 for the month of October. I posted the event on my MD FB page but didn’t promote it except to a few friends who were willing to act as my guinea pigs.
I’m really glad I did that because it was a good way to familiarize myself with the Facebook Live tools, and it also highlighted the need for a couple of changes, such as having my husband scan the comments for questions, and then texting me the questions so I wouldn’t offend an attendee by missing their question. He was also ready to pop links into the comments, such as my website page where attendees could learn more about the book and the website of the bookstore who was the unofficial co-host of the event.
I had already spent quite a bit of time staging by background for the video for a previous event, so that was ready to go, as was my audio set-up, but if I hadn’t already had a chance to test those out, that would have been a good use for the pre-launch “shakedown cruise” event.
By the time the launch event arrived, I had everything scripted out. I don’t mean by that that I read what I had to say, but I had notes to remind myself of what I wanted to cover and had also thought through the transitions from one topic to another.
As I said, I was very pleased with how the event went, but I realized that the people who attended were mainly people who were already fans and would likely have bought the new book whether or not I had an event. I believe that in terms of expanding reader reach, Jamie’s approach of partnering with bookstores, who will bring a certain number of their own fans to an event, is better for reaching new readers. However, it was a super fun community-building event for my existing fans. On the other hand, both Jamie and I can use recordings of our virtual events over time, so although the live event might not have attracted a lot of new followers for me, it may in the future.
For my next launch, I would focus more on events that are going to introduce my books to a new pool of readers—for TFATO, my major effort in that area was running promotions for AK Book 2: TSOR, which was discounted to $0.99, in “Baby Bookbubs” like Ereader News Today and Bargain Booksy and in BookBub *ads* (rather than as a featured deal, which I decided was too expensive). My US-targeted ads weren’t getting a lot of traction, and I ended up turning many of them off, but they proved to do well Amazon AU and CA, Kobo CA, and B&N US. I’m going to be looking for an expert in promoting to non-US markets to talk on an upcoming episode about how indy authors can take advantage of those markets.
Because I wasn’t very familiar with the mechanics of Facebook Live, I held a prep event two days before the launch celebration for which I read a couple of passages from Ann Kinnear Book 2: TSOR … which made sense because it’s on sale for $0.99 for the month of October. I posted the event on my MD FB page but didn’t promote it except to a few friends who were willing to act as my guinea pigs.
I’m really glad I did that because it was a good way to familiarize myself with the Facebook Live tools, and it also highlighted the need for a couple of changes, such as having my husband scan the comments for questions, and then texting me the questions so I wouldn’t offend an attendee by missing their question. He was also ready to pop links into the comments, such as my website page where attendees could learn more about the book and the website of the bookstore who was the unofficial co-host of the event.
I had already spent quite a bit of time staging by background for the video for a previous event, so that was ready to go, as was my audio set-up, but if I hadn’t already had a chance to test those out, that would have been a good use for the pre-launch “shakedown cruise” event.
By the time the launch event arrived, I had everything scripted out. I don’t mean by that that I read what I had to say, but I had notes to remind myself of what I wanted to cover and had also thought through the transitions from one topic to another.
As I said, I was very pleased with how the event went, but I realized that the people who attended were mainly people who were already fans and would likely have bought the new book whether or not I had an event. I believe that in terms of expanding reader reach, Jamie’s approach of partnering with bookstores, who will bring a certain number of their own fans to an event, is better for reaching new readers. However, it was a super fun community-building event for my existing fans. On the other hand, both Jamie and I can use recordings of our virtual events over time, so although the live event might not have attracted a lot of new followers for me, it may in the future.
For my next launch, I would focus more on events that are going to introduce my books to a new pool of readers—for TFATO, my major effort in that area was running promotions for AK Book 2: TSOR, which was discounted to $0.99, in “Baby Bookbubs” like Ereader News Today and Bargain Booksy and in BookBub *ads* (rather than as a featured deal, which I decided was too expensive). My US-targeted ads weren’t getting a lot of traction, and I ended up turning many of them off, but they proved to do well Amazon AU and CA, Kobo CA, and B&N US. I’m going to be looking for an expert in promoting to non-US markets to talk on an upcoming episode about how indy authors can take advantage of those markets.
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