Episode 097 - Taking the Long View for Publishing Success with JK Ellem
September 14, 2021
Author JK Ellem shares why he chose to start indy and go exclusive on Amazon, and his strategy for pursuing traditional publishing deals and wider distribution. He discusses how he found the sweet spot in his release schedule and his pricing model. And he emphasizes why it should be your readers who should be driving the direction of your writing, including whether or not a standalone novel becomes a series.
JK Ellem is an Amazon Charts US and UK #1 Bestselling thriller author. In 2020, his independently published crime thriller, MILL POINT ROAD, climbed to #1 globally in the Amazon Kindle Store in the categories of Crime Fiction, Thriller Fiction, Financial Thrillers, Heist Crime, Kidnapping Crime Fiction, and Noir. This was achieved with no agent, no publicist, and no publishing company behind him. Just him and his wife Jennifer, who looks after his marketing and social media.Jack splits his time between the US, the UK and Australia.
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[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is JK Ellem.
[00:00:05] Hey, Jack, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] JK: How are you doing, Matty? Thanks for having me on the show.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, JK Ellem is an Amazon charts U.S and U.K number one best-selling thriller author. In 2020 his independently published crime thriller MILL POINT ROAD climbed to number one globally in the Amazon Kindle store in the categories of crime fiction, thriller fiction, financial thrillers, heist crime, kidnapping, crime fiction, and noir. This was achieved with no agent, no publicist and no publishing company behind him. Just him and his wife, Jennifer, who looks after his marketing and social media. And Jack splits his time between the U.S, the U.K, and Australia.
[00:00:48] As you can tell from the bio, a good topic to talk to Jack about is strategy for indy success on Amazon. And so I thought a fun way to start our conversation, Jack, would be for you to tell us how your indy publishing strategy evolved? Is it the same as when you started out? Different? What determined what route you took for your indy publishing efforts?
[00:01:10] JK: I think, Matty, at the beginning it was because of failure. I thought like a lot of people who independently publish on Amazon or whichever platform, that I can write a really good book, I can put a really good cover on it and write a really great blurb and it will just take off, it will sell, and I'll retire.
[00:01:27] So when that didn’t, for the first couple of books, it was only one I wrote MILL POINT ROAD, where I basically changed everything. And that's the book behind me there. And I'm writing the second, the sequel to it there. And this is probably one of the things you can debunk with the success on Amazon. You can have the greatest book, greatest cover, greatest blurb. And if you just set and forget it and hope that sales take off, it won't happen. ...
[00:00:05] Hey, Jack, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] JK: How are you doing, Matty? Thanks for having me on the show.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, JK Ellem is an Amazon charts U.S and U.K number one best-selling thriller author. In 2020 his independently published crime thriller MILL POINT ROAD climbed to number one globally in the Amazon Kindle store in the categories of crime fiction, thriller fiction, financial thrillers, heist crime, kidnapping, crime fiction, and noir. This was achieved with no agent, no publicist and no publishing company behind him. Just him and his wife, Jennifer, who looks after his marketing and social media. And Jack splits his time between the U.S, the U.K, and Australia.
[00:00:48] As you can tell from the bio, a good topic to talk to Jack about is strategy for indy success on Amazon. And so I thought a fun way to start our conversation, Jack, would be for you to tell us how your indy publishing strategy evolved? Is it the same as when you started out? Different? What determined what route you took for your indy publishing efforts?
[00:01:10] JK: I think, Matty, at the beginning it was because of failure. I thought like a lot of people who independently publish on Amazon or whichever platform, that I can write a really good book, I can put a really good cover on it and write a really great blurb and it will just take off, it will sell, and I'll retire.
[00:01:27] So when that didn’t, for the first couple of books, it was only one I wrote MILL POINT ROAD, where I basically changed everything. And that's the book behind me there. And I'm writing the second, the sequel to it there. And this is probably one of the things you can debunk with the success on Amazon. You can have the greatest book, greatest cover, greatest blurb. And if you just set and forget it and hope that sales take off, it won't happen. ...
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[00:01:49] You've got to put a lot of work into marketing. But it's basically, there's millions of books on the Amazon Kindle store. And I'm invisible. I don't exist and you've got to put a lot of marketing into that because everyone's looking at millions of books and millions of ebooks to read. So, I had to change when my sales were flagging. I basically had to change my strategy. I couldn't just put a book up there and hope that it would sell from that side of it.
[00:02:14] So it evolved, and what I did with MILL POINT ROAD, and that was part of the success of how it climbed, was that I got a cover done like everyone else. And I thought it was great. It's a domestic thriller but I wanted to do something different. I just didn't want it to get lost with all the other books in the Amazon store.
[00:02:29] So I got a different cover, something that was a bit different, for the domestic thriller for a crime book. Put it up there and it died. We had average pre-sales and two months, three months in it just wasn't getting the traction. And that was me. That was me saying maybe a bit of selfishness. I like the cover. That's what we're going with.
[00:02:45] So then we got a second cover done and I adopted this strategy of I'm not going to make the decision on which cover. We got two or three concepts done. And I put it up on my Facebook page and I let the readers decide, hey, here's three covers. We're doing a cover refresh. What would you prefer? And they voted, I think it was 70% for a particular cover. And that's what we put up. And everything changed and the book just took off from there. So I guess the strategy was that, put your readers in the book, let them decide on the cover.
[00:03:16] And it's a hard thing to let go of, but that was one of the strategies and that really has changed everything. So going forward now I always get two or three concepts of covers done, and I don't make that decision no matter how much I hold onto the cover of a book and say I really liked that cover, you really have to take yourself out of the equation and let your readers decide because they're purchasing the books. You've only got a split second to catch someone's eye and now they decide what cover design goes up from there.
[00:03:44] Matty: Can you describe what your original cover for MILL POINT ROAD was, and then what it evolved to based on the reader input?
[00:03:50] JK: Yeah. It was a domestic thriller and it had five women living in a gated community. So, the original cover had just a set of heels, a woman walking along a corridor with a set of heels, with a scorpion snapping at her ankles. And it was about how these five women interact, and how there's a murder involved from there. And you go back to cover convention and think, some people look at that cover and think, is this crime thriller? Is it erotic romance? Is it erotic thriller? And that's probably where the confusion came in from that side of it.
[00:04:19] So the strategy now is that whilst you must have a cover that's a bit different and stands out from the crowd, the strategy now for me, for trying to adopt success on Amazon, is to still stick to convention to a certain degree. So then we swapped out the cover and we had the traditional cover that a domestic thriller would have. There's a house, there's gates in a gated community. And it was a good cover, but I think it identified with people who are looking for domestic thrillers and crime books. So there was a bit of maybe of a mixed messaging with the original cover, from that side of it.
[00:04:52] It's like, when you go into a bookstore, as an indy author, as your audience will probably know, if you took the name and the title, the author, the title of the book, you should be able to look at a book cover, browse along a bookshelf and go, okay, that's the crime thriller, that's sci-fi, that's sweet romance, and maybe that's a vampire thriller. So you've got to take that strategy into account. So my strategy has evolved tremendously since then.
[00:05:14] Matty: So we're recording this on August 9th, 2021. And on August 10th, the episode that goes up is going to be Ricardo Fayet from Reedsy. And one of the things we talked about in that episode, which will be Episode 92, is the idea of getting a cover concept from your cover designer, and then superimposing it on a page of Amazon thumbnails from your own genre, which I thought was a brilliant idea, because I think everybody just looks at the cover and they think, that's great or it's not, or it's gorgeous, or I love it. But rarely if I heard the advice to look at it among the other books that you want to be displayed with. And of course you want it to stand out, but you don't want it to stand out because it looks unlike the others. You want it to jump out as affiliated with these things, but the one you want to pick, not one of these things is not like the others. So that understanding of what the expectations are among readers of that genre I think is really important.
[00:06:12] JK: Exactly.
[00:06:13] Matty: If you go back even further, when you were first finishing your first book and you were deciding whether to go indy or traditional, let's address that first. Was there ever any consideration for pursuing a traditional deal?
[00:06:27] JK: No, because being honest and I think as an indy author, you've got to be honest with yourself, I wasn't good enough. It was my first book. You never stop learning the craft. The plan always was to take that first book, the first book, second book, and third book, and forget about submitting it.
[00:06:44] I knew what was going to happen if I submitted those first few books. So the plan, the strategy always was to let's test, let's improve my craft, that gets better with each book. Let's test things like covers, marketing, book blurb, platforms. We originally went wide on every platform, Apple, Kobo, the whole lot. And then we pulled back just to Amazon.
[00:07:04] So the plan, Matty, at the beginning was never to initially submit any of the manuscripts. But the plan always was when I got to a certain point where I had some successes and some wins and some credibility under my belt, then I could go down the traditional path or to an agent and say, hey, look, this is what I've achieved to this point. Maybe you should have a look at my fourth book or my fifth manuscript. And I think that's, if I give one piece of advice to indy authors starting out or just partway through their first book or are they thinking about writing their first book is don't submit it. Let the market test it. Let your readers test it, give you valuable feedback. You're not going to be the rare unicorn, and it's great if you can, hats off to you if you can. It's super great if you can land a publishing deal on your first manuscript, on your debut.
[00:07:54] But my view is get your craft together, build up an audience and listen to the readers, listen to the people who are buying your books. Look at every positive and especially, I read my negative reviews more than I read my positive reviews, because I'm trying to improve that book. And then when I get to a certain point. I feel comfortable to say yes, I can submit because I know I'll get an avalanche of rejections if I went down the other path.
[00:08:17] So I made a very clear decision. No, I'm going to learn. I'm going to do as best as I can, hone my craft to get my stories right, develop a reader base, and then I'll have something tangible to go to the agents with. Because they're getting thousands and thousands of submissions every week. And for you to stand out and put your hand up and say, hey, I've done some hard work. I've had some success on a fourth book or a third book. It just gets you out of that initial slush pile, maybe closer to the surface, the top of the slush pile, where they will consider you.
[00:08:50] Matty: So are you now being published, you have some indy published books and you're also traditionally published?
[00:08:55] JK: I've got all my books are indy published books still, but now after what happened with MILL POINT ROAD, people have approached me, which is great. So I've got publishers approaching me, and saying, let's have a look at the next manuscript. What else have you got in development? And which is great, and this is one of the strategies that I guess authors or agents look at. Everyone is watching what is ranking on the Amazon store, what's in various genres. So now I've got people looking at me, wanting me to submit. I had the audio book, worldwide rights for MILL POINT ROAD were sold in the UK and the US, so I had someone approach me straight on that, that the publisher straight from that. And now I'm submitting to various agents, but I'm also submitting directly to publishers.
[00:09:37] I've got to that point now where, and I guess this is some strategy that you need to look at as an indy author is, it's not about selling books. Don't go into it initially thinking I want to sell a heap of books. Those first couple of years, you're developing relationships in the industry. You're meeting people, agents, possible future agents, publishers, editors, cover artists, and so on. So that's the strategy that I initially adopted. I never was going to go down that path, but now it's just opened up doors. It simply has unlocked the doors, Matty, that wouldn't have been unlocked. I would have been embarrassed if I had submitted, going back now, my first, second or third manuscript. I've now got to go back and rewrite them. I feel comfortable in myself now that yes, I'm going to go back and rewrite them.
[00:10:26] Matty: When you rewrite them, how are you going to handle that from the reader point of view? Are you going to advertise it as a revamped story?
[00:10:34] JK: Yeah, I guess being indy published, you've got ultimate flexibility. If there's one spelling mistake, I found on page 43 in a book, I will change it and I will upload a new one, paperback and ebook. So you've got that ultimate flexibility. It'll just be a new edition. It's not nonfiction, so I wouldn't go down the path of saying, oh, updated version of it.
[00:10:53] But Kindle do that automatically. They'll if there's an update version or on any platform, you'll get a notification that, hey, a new version of this book, which tends to fix all the spelling mistakes, but I'll just call it a fourth edition or a fifth edition or a second edition. And it may be expanded, but it will certainly be an improvement on the first go at them.
[00:11:11] Matty: As you're considering traditional deals now coming in, potential deals with people approaching you, how are you weighing the pros and cons of taking a traditional deal versus sticking to an indy route?
[00:11:26] JK: Great question. I guess initially I was all about control. And I think one of your previous guests, Jason Kasper, he spoke about it's, I want to control, I'm happy to pass away the social media on the marketing side, but I want control about what my next book will be and so on.
[00:11:43] I used to be like I was very strong with control, but then I realized I want a team around me. I'm not the smartest person in the room. And I do want to look at what publishers can offer. I don't care relinquishing control or portion of the royalty. I think if you're playing the long game and that's a strategy you've got to adopt as an indy author, there's no immediate gratification, you've got to play the long game, you know, three or 4, 5, 6, 10 years, then there's enough of the pot to split with anyone because they'll bring things to the table that I can't. Distribution, the sheer reach of what some of these publishers can achieve. I can't do that.
[00:12:22] So when I'm considering a contract, I'll certainly have a look at the royalty and I'll have a look at more importantly, who I get to work with, which editors I want to work with, what input I can have.
[00:12:34] I've looked at a TV shopping agreement. I've got a shopping agreement in place, which expires at the end of October for MILL POINT ROAD, with a production company based in the UK who has affiliates in the US and through Scandinavia. TV rights and film rights are totally different. One of their first questions to me is that, can you relinquish all creative control on the final product? And I said, sure, if you can put Ridley Scott on board, I would. But yeah, it's a different kettle of fish when you're talking about TV rights. You don't have the name, unless Stephen King or John Grisham or James Patterson, you don't have that ability to still retain creative control. I'm still new to the game. I've got a long way to go. So it's a case of, okay, what do I give up, but what do I get in return?
[00:13:17] And I think as an indy author on your third, fourth, fifth book, there's a lot more that you can gain from having a team of really clever people who are experts in their industry. It's why I want to collaborate. So I'm willing to sacrifice. And it's not about the money at the end of the day. It can be later, but the money is just a byproduct.
[00:13:36] Matty: So what kind of team do you surround yourself with now as an indy author?
[00:13:41] JK: It's just my wife. I do all the production and my wife, Jennifer, I'm very glad to have her as the person that takes care of my social media. I have some input in social media, Facebook, Instagram. And then I farm out to contractors the production of covers and formatting and some of the social media side of all the design and graphics side of it and the websites.
[00:14:02] I'm trying to focus more now on the production process of the books. And I just have Jennifer, my wife, who takes care of social media, and she does a great job with that. I don't have anyone else.
[00:14:13] Matty: When you were deciding on putting our first books out, and you were making the recommendation to not take your first book to a publisher and you were sort of market testing, is what I gathered, kind of market testing with your early books, how did you make the decision when you felt that it was good enough to share with an audience, knowing that books two through N we're going to be better and you didn't want to sully your reputation with a subpar first one, but that it was good enough. Like, how did you define good enough when you were working on your first book and deciding when to put it out?
[00:14:46] JK: It goes down to developmental editors. It goes out to proofreaders. And all I could do was fix up what they came back with and say, it was good enough. It wasn't perfect. No book is. But you're not aiming for perfection. I just got to a point, well, hey look, it went out to an advanced reader group as well. And I think that's key, a key strategy to have as an indy author. Go back and get some feedback from your readers and look at the suggestions that they make. And once I'd covered off all of them, there was nothing else I could have done at that point in my ability. It was good enough for the advanced readers and I'd fixed up what everything the developmental editors had said, then you have to hit publish and move on to the next one and move on to the next one.
[00:15:24] Matty: How did you find your group of advanced readers?
[00:15:28] JK: Through Facebook. I simply posted up there and we still do it, we've got a couple of hundred in the ARG at the moment. And I just put the call up that I wanted readers. Anyone you may know, just DM me. And we give them a certain list of criteria, which they have to try and follow in terms of they'll get a book they'll have 28 days or four weeks to read it, to give us back some comments.
[00:15:48] And we're very specific. We want them to be brutal. I don't want praise. I want what's wrong with the story. What's wrong with the characters? It's not vanity. I want to know what's wrong with it. I want to fix it and have a better reader experience on that side of it. And we're constantly putting more people into the ARG and people are dropping out. They'll send me an email and say, look I'm busy the next couple of months or I'm on traveling, but I'd love to come back in. So yeah, you just put the call out there. You'll be surprised at how many people from nearly every part of the world want to read your books.
[00:16:22] Matty: And how did you create that pool of people on social media from which you're drawing your advanced readers?
[00:16:29] JK: From having no one on social media, just getting one person and getting two people, then getting five people. And this was another thing too, and this is probably a strategy as well for your audience, if you want to build a social media presence. And this is what Jennifer does really well for me. I gave the idea, the strategy to her that, go and find on social media on Facebook or Instagram, authors that are in your genre, but authors that are indy authors, not necessarily traditionally published, big hitting authors. Not the Lee Childs or the James Pattersons or the Nora Roberts of the world. Find authors that are where you want to be in the next two or three years, but they're doing really well, and they've got thousands and thousands of followers and likes and so on. And they're in the genre. I wouldn't say that they are competitors, but they're in the same genres that you are.
[00:17:19] And then just go and invite their friends. Just invite them and say, hey, come and follow what I'm doing on my page. And the basis of that was that these people have voracious readers. They're going to say I'm going to wait, except with the exception maybe of James Patterson, they have to wait 12 months typically for another book to come out from their favorite authors. So they're willing to read and willing to follow other authors until that happens. So the strategy always was, is go and find on social media. And it's simple to do, go to their webpage and then look at inviting their followers and that really grew exponentially. And we're still doing that now.
[00:17:52] Matty: Do you have to get any kind of informal okay from an author if you're planning on inviting their followers to your page? Is there any etiquette around that that writers should be aware of?
[00:18:06] JK: No, I guess look, it's what you're trying to do is build the community and we all get notifications. I'm sure you do, where you get invited to someone's page, and that's all it is. It's an invite to someone's page. And it's up to the follower or the fan or the person to say, I'll have a look at this page and, oh, it's interesting. I like to see what they're doing.
[00:18:24] And from that side of it, it's not a case I'm taking someone else's database. The whole idea of social media is that you're trying to build a community. And they can make the ultimate decision. Yes or no. Yep. I'm going to have a look at Jack Ellem or no, I'm not going to accept the invitation. It's similar to LinkedIn, it's where you send an invitation to connection. You put some blurb in there and they either accept it or reject it from there.
[00:18:48] Matty: That's an interesting comparison because having come from the corporate world, I have many, many LinkedIn connections. And I didn't care. I would accept anyone as a LinkedIn connection because there was seemingly no responsibility attached to it. Whereas in something like Facebook, it seems as if you're accepting a little bit more of a relationship by accepting an invite. It just seems more engaged, and not necessarily engaged in the way we're all aiming for, but just somehow you're committing more on Facebook. Do you get any sense of that?
[00:19:22] JK: I've got people that have started LinkedIn pages and they haven't posted once in 12 months. And I've got people that have set up Facebook pages, friends that have got it, and they haven't posted anything in six months. But I also have a separate business page for my Facebook. And I think that's where the comparison to LinkedIn is. It's the JK Ellem page, which is my business page, is about me as an author. Jack Ellem, which is my profile, I will post a lot less into there, but it's more personal things about where I'm traveling to and my process and so on.
[00:19:52] So I'm not asking, I'm not revealing to people and it's up to you, whatever you want to reveal. But on my personal page, by Jack Ellem page, it's still author based, but I'm not asking for a connection. What I'm committing to, and this is something that you self-assess, is if you're going to put a Facebook page up, you've got to stick to it. Any part of social media, you've got to stick to it for 12 months. Don't post once a month.
[00:20:14] The commitment I'm making to the followers and fans that every two or three days, I'm going to post something interesting for you. Not for me. It's not, hey, look, I'm at a restaurant or I've just bought a speedboat or a Porsche or something. You know, I'm in the Bahamas. I hate those type of Facebook posts where it's all about me, me, me, me, me.
[00:20:36] I make it a rule, and I guess your point about making a commitment, you've got to make a commitment of posting information and something that's entertaining for the followers, not for you to show off what you've done. Certainly you've got to celebrate your wins. And if your book hits high on a certain shop, I will post it up there. But I tell my wife, Jenny, can we post something else apart from that Something a bit more personal? So you're committing to posting interesting content that your followers need. You have to have them, same as your readers, you've got to have them, your followers, in mind, not yourself.
[00:21:09] Matty: I wanted to go back to another important strategic decision you've made, which is Amazon exclusive versus wide. Can you talk a little bit about what led you to the decision you made in that area?
[00:21:19] JK: I guess the strategy initially was to go wide because everyone said, oh, you've got to go wide, you know, spread your books on multiple platforms. And the long and the short of it, it was taking up a lot of time to have to upload in different formats for iBooks, for Kobo, for the other platforms. And once again, it was an experiment. We tracked that for 12 months, looked at the royalties that were coming across all platforms and the reach. And the royalties just weren't there for the effort that was going in. Amazon, being exclusive with Amazon KU, was miles in front.
[00:21:53] So once again, I'm very much into testing. I guess part of my background, I love the analytics. And if the facts are there that saying, it's not working for the effort to go wide, we made decision 12 months in to pull everything back and go 100% in with Amazon.
[00:22:08] It's got nothing to do with how big Amazon and people say that they're the biggest book seller in the world, which they are. It was to do with how the numbers work for you as an indy author.
[00:22:17] I know indy authors that will sell a lot more on Kobo than Amazon, and they'll sell a lot more on iBooks than Amazon. So it comes down to your personal choice. Don't just go on my record, my strategy. My advice to your listeners is, test it. Test it. What works for you. If you're selling more on Kobo, then stick with Kobo. If you're selling equally across and stick equally across. But for me personally, the jury was in within six months that's we were killing it on Amazon.
[00:22:42] Matty: Do you feel as if the decision to go wide or to go exclusive impacts your appeal to traditional publishers?
[00:22:52] JK: Gee, that's a good question. I've never really thought about that. In terms of traditional publishers, perhaps coming back to me with an offer and saying, or not coming back to me with an offer and saying, your books and all in with Amazon. Are you comfortable going wide? It's a commercial decision. I'm comfortable going wide. I just didn't have the scale or the reach to effectively go wide on all the other platforms, whereas a traditional publisher will. Bookstores, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, WH Smith in the UK, Dymocks in Australia, they've got that ability.
[00:23:23] Look, is it a concern that they may look at me and said, well, you're all there. There's a lot of authors that have been all in with Amazon, a lot of indy authors, and they've got publishing deals and they've gone wide. As I said, I can relinquish anything. It doesn't worry me. I've said in my submission letters that, look, I will go wide with any platform. I always looked from day one, as KDP giving you that opportunity indy authors never had five, 10 years ago to be able to put your work up, publish it, get some feedback and develop an audience. And I'm very grateful for that, but it always was a testbed, Matty, at the end of the day.
[00:24:31] Matty: One of the things that I think people often bring up, if a goal is to make a living at writing, is the rapid release schedule. Can you describe what your release schedule is and how much of that is driven by your creative process and how much of it is driven by your strategic goals for your books?
[00:24:50] JK: I used to have a 53-day first draft cycle, which meant that if I was writing 1500 words a day, in 53 days I'd have a first draft roughly of an 80,000-word book. And that was fine, I was happy with that. Then add third, fourth redraft, rewrite on onto them. And the only issue that I had, and this was the strategy that we changed, was that with an 80,000-word book plus in paperback, we weren't maximizing the royalty through Amazon, through their paperback function. So I was aiming for a 20% royalty.
[00:25:22] Now I still wanted also to be competitive with the mass market paperbacks you see for 9.99, that anyone can pick up in Walmart or Target or Barnes and Noble. So I had to balance that competitiveness of how can I create a paperback for 9.99 and still be competitive with a mass market one. But also have a production cycle that was straightforward.
[00:25:42] So what I did was that I worked out a sweet spot on the production cycle where we then dropped down to 43 days of producing a first draft. And that gave me a 65,000-word manuscript, which is 250 pages at I think a 11-point font, which then I could price at 9.99. So that's the commercial decision, and sell that comfortably, and make 20% paperback royalty on Amazon. So that was the decision.
[00:26:10] And not many people tell you that. I had to price books that are 80,000, 90,000, a hundred thousand words, and my royalty was being eaten into because after production costs, I was only earning 12% or 10% through the process.
[00:26:26] I guess the commercial decision is to find out a sweet spot and no one tells you this it's a formula. I had to work out after much trial and error. And the formula is, and there's nothing wrong if you want to write a hundred thousand words, 150,000 words, if that's your genre, if that's what you're writing, but I find that people today want to read faster books. They don't have time. There are so many books out there. As you've got more books to read. I've got more books to read then I can read. And so I made a commercial decision to pull my word count back from 80,000 to 65,000. And that was a commercial decision so I could still hit that sweet spot of 20% maximum royalty. You can certainly price the book more and an 80 or 90 hundred-thousand-word book.
[00:27:06] But mine weren't selling for my crime thriller, psychological thriller, domestic thriller genre. I still have to keep in mind what the reader is also browsing on the bookshelf. They're browsing mass market paperbacks at 9.99. And if they look at mine for maybe 12.99, then it may be an economical, simple economical. I don't have the name, for them to want to spend 12.99 on a book. One day I will. But in this point where I'm in in my journey, it’s a commercial decision from there.
[00:27:37] But the other thing I'd like to touch on too with that, it's a win-win for you and the reader. It's a win-win for you as a writer because when I had to pull myself back to 65,000 words, it forced me to write tighter prose, keep the pacing high, remove all the padding and guff that I may have put in a book to get it to 80 to 85,000 words. And it's a better reader experience too, because they're reading a fast-paced thriller. I've read books, no doubt your audience have read books, where you've got to the end and you thought, oh, we could have still got to the same result maybe with a 15 or 20,000 less words or that chapter that went off at a different angle, which has nothing to do with the plot.
[00:28:17] So to answer the question: commercially it was the right decision. But also when I started doing that, I found the response from readers was, this was really fast paced. I couldn't put it down. What have you changed? And it was really nothing. I just cut out twenty-five percent of the word count to get in that maximum royalty. It allowed me to increase my production because I could then churn out more books, but it also was a better reader experience, because they want to read fast paced thrillers. They want to have something that's a page turner.
[00:28:47] Matty: How do you make the decision about what you price your ebook at?
[00:28:50] JK: My books were 4.99 and now they've gone up to 5.99. And once again, I look at comparative analysis. Once again, you cannot look at the big hitting authors in your genre. You've got to look at the second level authors that are maybe independent or are still traditionally published authors, but they're not of the scales of the handful that I've mentioned. And you've got to be competitive. You've got to check your ego at the door. You can't say, why wouldn't they pay 12.99 for one of my ebooks? They simply won't. Stephen King, his latest book that's just come out, yeah, I think it's 14.99 for the eBook. I'm not in that realm of charging that.
[00:29:24] So I capped my ebooks now probably at 5.99. Once again, based on the success that I had originally, they were priced at 2.99 in the first couple, but now they're up to 5.99. And I'll test that for the next 12 months. They are 70% royalties from Amazon. So I'm happy with that level.
[00:29:41] But what I found in the last 12 to 18 months when everything changed and there were lock downs and businesses were shut and bookstores were shut, my paperbacks took off. And if I hadn't made that strategic decision of dropping the word count and still being competitive at 9.99 in a paperback, they would have taken off, but I don't think I would have seen that spike in my paperbacks as much if I hadn't made that decision about maximizing the 20% royalty, dropping the word count down to 65, still being cost competitive.
[00:30:12] Now that's come back a bit as everyone's opened up and people are returning to bookstores. But I'm still sticking with that strategy. I want to write faster paced books and I want to make them affordable in whichever format they're in to my readers.
[00:30:25] Matty: Did you find any isolatable impact on sales when you went from 4.99 at 5.99. Because except for my first in series which is 2.99, my ebooks are all 4.99. And as a reader, $5 feels like a barrier to me that I'm speculating just based on my own reaction that once it goes over $5, it's a little bit more of a decision to make, even if it's only a buck more. Did you see any drop in sales when you made that price change?
[00:30:53] JK: No, no. If I had jumped significantly, maybe gone from, 4.99 or 6.99, then there may have been some pushback, but no, I didn't see any lag in this. And like I said, once you develop enough of a reader base, they trust that the book is still going to be as good at 5.99. And it is. The book was good at 2.99 at the beginning, from that point. But no, I didn't see, there was no sudden drop in my royalty curve from there.
[00:31:19] Matty: It's interesting.
[00:31:22] JK: Just to do it, just do it, just put them up.
[00:31:25] Matty: Well, I know I used to price my print books at 12.99, and I remember going to do an event at a bookstore. And they asked me, so they could put it into their register system, what it was. And I said 12.99. She goes, oh no, you could get more than that for it. It's like, okay, you're the person who knows.
[00:31:45] JK: How many words?
[00:31:46] Matty: They're like between 80 and 90,000 words. And so I put it up to 14.99 and then I have large print books that I sell at 19.99 because of the production price is more. But it's interesting because I think that the divide between indy and the traditional it's getting smaller and smaller over time. And what I think I'm seeing is traditional publishers are starting to moderate what used to be very high prices and indies are getting enough self-confidence that they're asking for a little more. And I think pretty soon it's going to meet in the middle.
[00:32:18] But it is nice to be able to ask 4.99, 5.99 for an e-book and still have it be a good deal, especially on the library front. And I say this every chance I get, because I think this is an opportunity that indy authors are really underselling, that if you are available wide through a platform like a Draft2Digital or IngramSpark for print, I price my ebooks for library sales I think at 29.99. So, you know, the library understands that they're going to have many readers reading it and so it's not fair to charge a one-shot deal. There are of course library systems that have a per checkout model, but even at 29.99, my books are so much less than the traditionally published authors in my genre that it still looks like a good deal. So I'm always encouraging indy authors not to undervalue their books on a library front.
[00:33:12] JK: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:14] Matty: So you've obviously focused very intentionally on Amazon. When you think of the things that people talk about in terms of how to hit it big on Amazon, what is some advice you have, whether that is debunking things that you hear that you don't think are true or emphasizing things you hear that you do think are true?
[00:33:30] JK: I think a couple of the strategies that I didn't adopt beginning and what I advise now is take any deal that Amazon throws your way as an indy author. Anything they throw to you, take it. Initially I was hesitant, and I pushed back. Prime deals, KU deals, countdown deals. You're only getting a small upfront and so on from there. And there's this myth that you don't make any money when you go on one of these deals.
[00:33:52] That myth is wrong because as I said at the beginning, you've got to play the long game. The best returns and if you take away anything from strategies on Amazon, there's probably is one point is that the best returns on Amazon are delayed. They're going to happen six months, 12 months down the track. So if you're willing to put the work in and take whatever deal they give you, then take it. There's this myth that, as I said, oh, you don't. You will make, if you look at the whole 12 months' worth of figures, you will definitely be streets in front if you don't pick up an Amazon deal. I have indy friends that aren't, I don't do any deal on Amazon. I just think that it's wrong and I'm not going to make any money. But they have a very short-term focus. You need a long-term focus.
[00:34:29] So my mantra now is as an indy author, don't try and sell your books to your readers. Get Amazon to sell your books to its readers. Cause it's got a lot more readers than you. And that's the strategy, that's how my mindset is now, is that get Amazon to sell your, still your books, but to its huge database of readers. So take any deal that comes. It'll work in the long run. It's simply take up any Amazon promotion when you can from that basis.
[00:35:04] Matty: I want to ask you a question about that because I got an email from KDP that says, 'Your titles are in consideration for a Kindle deal. If selected, it would be featured in the Amazon India Kindle store. The deal would run ...' And then there were dates and things like that. I actually sent it to a trusted business counselor to ask his opinion about that, but I pondered it so long I think I missed the deadline. And Kindle India, I don't know, I just felt like the time I would spend wouldn't ever be paid back in earnings there. But is that one of those things where I made a mistake in not paying more attention to that offer?
[00:35:41] JK: Yeah, look, I'm not going to say it's a mistake. You have to ask yourself, Matty, and your audience can ask themselves, how are you going to reach India on your own? How are you going to get your paperbacks or your ebooks into India? Simple answer for me, I can't. So I would take that deal. If any deal in terms of US, UK, anywhere, any isolated island in the middle of the Pacific, they said, hey, we'd want to put you on a Kindle deal on this island, I would take it on that basis.
[00:36:06] Because you just have to ask yourself, can you reach that market on your own? And you can't. And there's no effort. The analytics and the information that Amazon I have is mind boggling, down to the address of who has bought the last, say, Lee Child book in the last seven days in the world, paperback, hardback, e-book. We can't compete with that. So if they come knocking on your door and say, let's put it in to this market, I would take that deal.
[00:36:38] Matty: I think that the tough thing is that I'm balancing a probable uptick in sales in India against the time I'm going to spend trying to understand what I'm signing if I agree to that deal and the emotional cost of thinking, if I make a mistake, if I don't read the terms carefully, am I signing away something that I'm really going to regret having done?
[00:37:01] JK: No, it's not onerous. If you look, it's fairly clear, plain English what they give you. There's a certain time period your book will run from. They give an approximate start date and end date. It could be 30 days. It could be six months. They'll give you an idea of how they're going to price it. But they also put a disclaimer in certain examples where they can alter the price.
[00:37:18] I just think you have to take that leap of faith. They know what they're doing. They want to sell books. They've obviously looked at their demographics worldwide and they've looked at your book and they said, hey, there's a fit where we may have a slot in that India market for that genre of book.
[00:37:35] I would put a bet on them. They know what they're doing. And I would say, look, I'd take that deal because it's not them just coming up randomly with, let's throw books into any market and see what happens. They've found a strategic fit, they're willing to do all the backend and put all that in, and it's very clear in their agreement, read the agreements, it's very clear what they do.
[00:37:55] Maybe my suggestion then as a second phase off the back of that is when it comes to an end or when it starts, maybe run some promotion, maybe contact some book bloggers in India and run some ads. Reach out to podcasts in India. And I would be doing that off the back of that and trying to time it across that period. And that way you've added more leverage to the whole exercise. But no, I would look at an offer in Iceland if I had from that side of it. Cause their reach is unbelievable.
[00:38:25] Matty: Well, maybe it's not too late. I'll check into it.
[00:38:27] JK: Let me tell you now, it is, because I've let one lapse. They said, no, even though I pleaded, sort of, sorry, the dog ate my homework. No, no, you can't do it. But then they note that. They flag that. So you haven't burned your bridge. They will come back to you. But I will shoot them an email and just say, look, I'm sorry, please consider me for the next round, and then they note everything, and they will circle back to you.
[00:38:51] Matty: So do you have an actual human being at Amazon that you contact when you have these kinds of situations or are you just confident that in their huge database of information there's an entry that says offered it, it expired, he got in touch with us. We're not going to put a black mark next to his name.
[00:39:11] JK: No, it's just a huge database that they have. The database they have, everything is known. It's incredible. You will talk to 50 different people, and they can repeat verbatim the last conversation you had with someone at Amazon. So, no, it'll go into the system and they're very good at that.
[00:39:28] Matty: Another thing that I wanted to ask you, because you have standalones, you have a trilogy, and you have a series, and I'm wondering in your publishing strategy, do you start writing a book knowing that it's going to slot into one of those?
[00:39:41] The books that are now in your standalone offering, did you start those out knowing that they were standalones and having a business reason for writing them as standalone, as opposed to writing them as a series or a trilogy?
[00:39:54] JK: The short answer is, every book starts off as a standalone. And once again, I go back to the readers. I look at the sales six months later. I looked at the reviews on Amazon and people saying, oh, I really like that character, or I hope we see a book two. So every book, I approach every book creatively as a standalone. And even if it means if I really liked it and it didn't go that well, and no matter how much I liked the characters, it'll stay as a standalone if the readers don't want to see a second book.
[00:40:22] I don't ask them if they want to see a second book. I will review the reviews, the feedback, the comments, I'll do some posts on social media to say, hey, what do you think about this character? I never tell anyone I'm writing a second book, or it's going to be built out into a series. It's always a standalone. I leave it to the market to decide. I never say at the beginning, hey, this is the first in a trilogy or this is the first in a new series.
[00:40:45] I've done that with one book that I finished at the moment. And that's the first time I've ever decided from the beginning, because the publishers who were considering it, they want a series. They don't want a standalone. They want something, they can build out into 5, 10, 20 books from that size. I specifically designed that book from front to back as ongoing, the characters were designed as ongoing. They come together as a group. They all hate each other at the beginning, but by the end of the book, they come together as a group which leads to, we know what book two is going to be about.
[00:41:16] So, no, I don't. Except for that example, every book's in isolation. I never was going to write a sequel for MILL POINT ROAD. It was done. I tied it up. There was some small loose ends and the fact that it took off, Matty, and it went well, and people were inquiring about it and agents were getting interested in it, the market spoke, and so the book two is in development for that side.
[00:41:37] But no, I never approach a book as, as I think it backs you in a corner. I think if you make a commitment upfront with your readers on social media, then they'll call you out. They'll hold you accountable that, hey, you know what happened? So, no, I think an indy author needs to just put the book out there and see how it goes. Don't try and make it a series. Don't pre-sell it as a trilogy.
[00:41:58] Matty: The trilogy I have, didn't start out as a trilogy, that just became a trilogy, I realized I was done with a story in three, and then my ANN KINNEAR SERIES, I'm on four, the fifth is going to be out later this year and there's no end in sight. But what I did find is that when I had two ANN KINNEAR books and three LIZZY BALLARD books, then I was giving all my promotional love to the first LIZZY BALLARD book, because I thought this is great. They have two more to read through. And now that I have four and soon five ANN KINNEAR books, I'm kind of neglecting the trilogy, and then feel bad about it when I realize I'm doing that.
[00:42:32] When you're deciding where you're going to give your love and your money for promotion, how heavy an emphasis do you place on how many books in that thread there are for people to read if they're really gripped by the first one?
[00:42:46] JK: I've got a production schedule now of about four books a year. So there'll be one standalone. I'll be adding one book to my NO JUSTICE series, which is now to six books. So the NO JUSTICE, because that’s sells really well. So I'm committed to at least I don't neglect a series, once I've started one because the readers wanted at the end of the day, so I'll do one NO JUSTICE book, I'll do one standalone. I've got another series once again, because everyone loved it. They never started off as a series. The started off with the first book called A WINTER'S KILL and the readers love the character in that. So I thought, I’ll build that out into a second book and a third book, so I'm looking at that.
[00:43:24] That's production, that's what I just spoke about is production effort. In terms of marketing spend, you have to put all your money, you've got to go all in on your bestselling book. It may be a standalone. It may be the third book in the series, which is odd. People say, I'm going to put all the marketing book in the marketing area for dollar spend in the first. I'm going to make the first free, or I'm going to make it 99 cents. What's worked for me is I've always looked at the royalties and I put the most money, everything, into one book, your best seller, on the basis that you'll get read through. The people will pick up others, it'll have a trickle-down effect and people will then pick up your other series and say, okay, what else is Matty written and so on from there? So that's the approach.
[00:44:04] I'm committed with my production for 12 months because I've met a promise to the readers, but in terms of marketing spend and budget, it's purely what's on the royalty graph. And then people say, spread my marketing spend, I do some Facebook ads for this book. And then I do some AMS ads for another book and I can't spread it like that. I have to pick the winner in the race. If they're a clear winner, we're getting on board simple as that.
[00:44:28] Matty: Is the book that's making the most money changing all the time, or do you have one sort of consistent winner in that assessment?
[00:44:35] JK: Since MILL POINT ROAD came out, it is the consistent winner. But since its success, the readership, KU reads and paperback and ebooks of all my other books have lifted as well. And I guess it's probably one tip to look at is, in the back of your clear winner is, put the sample chapter of your second clear winner. Or if you feel that people were really like another series and there's some crossover you can do then as the back matter of your ebook or your paperback, put the sample chapter. Hey, you've just finished this book, well, maybe you'd like this other series.
[00:45:08] Especially if you've got crossover between your two books, between your two series. If you've got some characters that jump between series, which I do, and you really want to get some attention for no marketing cost at all, you're just putting back matter in that series that you want to draw readers to and new readers to, then just put a sample chapter in and say, hey, she also appears in this book. It may be a cameo, but you then are pulling readers who really love one series into another series.
[00:45:34] And sometimes strategically, and I guess it is a strategic decision, if it fits, I have put a character from one book into another, on the basis, not solely, but because I did want to pull readers into the second series and the link was this character. So that's something you can do. But definitely, it's a simple way to draw way to readers from one series to another is, the horse that's coming in front, one that's coming second, put some of that back matter into that book and see what happens.
[00:46:04] Matty: Well, Jack, this has been so helpful. I have lots of to do's, lots of considerations now that I'm going to take away. So I thank you for sharing that and please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your books online.
[00:46:16] JK: No, it's been a pleasure, Matty. It's been great. I'm just happy that you've had me on the show. You can find me on, www.JKEllem.com. All my links, all my social media links are in that one location.
[00:46:29] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:46:31] JK: Thank you, Matty.
[00:02:14] So it evolved, and what I did with MILL POINT ROAD, and that was part of the success of how it climbed, was that I got a cover done like everyone else. And I thought it was great. It's a domestic thriller but I wanted to do something different. I just didn't want it to get lost with all the other books in the Amazon store.
[00:02:29] So I got a different cover, something that was a bit different, for the domestic thriller for a crime book. Put it up there and it died. We had average pre-sales and two months, three months in it just wasn't getting the traction. And that was me. That was me saying maybe a bit of selfishness. I like the cover. That's what we're going with.
[00:02:45] So then we got a second cover done and I adopted this strategy of I'm not going to make the decision on which cover. We got two or three concepts done. And I put it up on my Facebook page and I let the readers decide, hey, here's three covers. We're doing a cover refresh. What would you prefer? And they voted, I think it was 70% for a particular cover. And that's what we put up. And everything changed and the book just took off from there. So I guess the strategy was that, put your readers in the book, let them decide on the cover.
[00:03:16] And it's a hard thing to let go of, but that was one of the strategies and that really has changed everything. So going forward now I always get two or three concepts of covers done, and I don't make that decision no matter how much I hold onto the cover of a book and say I really liked that cover, you really have to take yourself out of the equation and let your readers decide because they're purchasing the books. You've only got a split second to catch someone's eye and now they decide what cover design goes up from there.
[00:03:44] Matty: Can you describe what your original cover for MILL POINT ROAD was, and then what it evolved to based on the reader input?
[00:03:50] JK: Yeah. It was a domestic thriller and it had five women living in a gated community. So, the original cover had just a set of heels, a woman walking along a corridor with a set of heels, with a scorpion snapping at her ankles. And it was about how these five women interact, and how there's a murder involved from there. And you go back to cover convention and think, some people look at that cover and think, is this crime thriller? Is it erotic romance? Is it erotic thriller? And that's probably where the confusion came in from that side of it.
[00:04:19] So the strategy now is that whilst you must have a cover that's a bit different and stands out from the crowd, the strategy now for me, for trying to adopt success on Amazon, is to still stick to convention to a certain degree. So then we swapped out the cover and we had the traditional cover that a domestic thriller would have. There's a house, there's gates in a gated community. And it was a good cover, but I think it identified with people who are looking for domestic thrillers and crime books. So there was a bit of maybe of a mixed messaging with the original cover, from that side of it.
[00:04:52] It's like, when you go into a bookstore, as an indy author, as your audience will probably know, if you took the name and the title, the author, the title of the book, you should be able to look at a book cover, browse along a bookshelf and go, okay, that's the crime thriller, that's sci-fi, that's sweet romance, and maybe that's a vampire thriller. So you've got to take that strategy into account. So my strategy has evolved tremendously since then.
[00:05:14] Matty: So we're recording this on August 9th, 2021. And on August 10th, the episode that goes up is going to be Ricardo Fayet from Reedsy. And one of the things we talked about in that episode, which will be Episode 92, is the idea of getting a cover concept from your cover designer, and then superimposing it on a page of Amazon thumbnails from your own genre, which I thought was a brilliant idea, because I think everybody just looks at the cover and they think, that's great or it's not, or it's gorgeous, or I love it. But rarely if I heard the advice to look at it among the other books that you want to be displayed with. And of course you want it to stand out, but you don't want it to stand out because it looks unlike the others. You want it to jump out as affiliated with these things, but the one you want to pick, not one of these things is not like the others. So that understanding of what the expectations are among readers of that genre I think is really important.
[00:06:12] JK: Exactly.
[00:06:13] Matty: If you go back even further, when you were first finishing your first book and you were deciding whether to go indy or traditional, let's address that first. Was there ever any consideration for pursuing a traditional deal?
[00:06:27] JK: No, because being honest and I think as an indy author, you've got to be honest with yourself, I wasn't good enough. It was my first book. You never stop learning the craft. The plan always was to take that first book, the first book, second book, and third book, and forget about submitting it.
[00:06:44] I knew what was going to happen if I submitted those first few books. So the plan, the strategy always was to let's test, let's improve my craft, that gets better with each book. Let's test things like covers, marketing, book blurb, platforms. We originally went wide on every platform, Apple, Kobo, the whole lot. And then we pulled back just to Amazon.
[00:07:04] So the plan, Matty, at the beginning was never to initially submit any of the manuscripts. But the plan always was when I got to a certain point where I had some successes and some wins and some credibility under my belt, then I could go down the traditional path or to an agent and say, hey, look, this is what I've achieved to this point. Maybe you should have a look at my fourth book or my fifth manuscript. And I think that's, if I give one piece of advice to indy authors starting out or just partway through their first book or are they thinking about writing their first book is don't submit it. Let the market test it. Let your readers test it, give you valuable feedback. You're not going to be the rare unicorn, and it's great if you can, hats off to you if you can. It's super great if you can land a publishing deal on your first manuscript, on your debut.
[00:07:54] But my view is get your craft together, build up an audience and listen to the readers, listen to the people who are buying your books. Look at every positive and especially, I read my negative reviews more than I read my positive reviews, because I'm trying to improve that book. And then when I get to a certain point. I feel comfortable to say yes, I can submit because I know I'll get an avalanche of rejections if I went down the other path.
[00:08:17] So I made a very clear decision. No, I'm going to learn. I'm going to do as best as I can, hone my craft to get my stories right, develop a reader base, and then I'll have something tangible to go to the agents with. Because they're getting thousands and thousands of submissions every week. And for you to stand out and put your hand up and say, hey, I've done some hard work. I've had some success on a fourth book or a third book. It just gets you out of that initial slush pile, maybe closer to the surface, the top of the slush pile, where they will consider you.
[00:08:50] Matty: So are you now being published, you have some indy published books and you're also traditionally published?
[00:08:55] JK: I've got all my books are indy published books still, but now after what happened with MILL POINT ROAD, people have approached me, which is great. So I've got publishers approaching me, and saying, let's have a look at the next manuscript. What else have you got in development? And which is great, and this is one of the strategies that I guess authors or agents look at. Everyone is watching what is ranking on the Amazon store, what's in various genres. So now I've got people looking at me, wanting me to submit. I had the audio book, worldwide rights for MILL POINT ROAD were sold in the UK and the US, so I had someone approach me straight on that, that the publisher straight from that. And now I'm submitting to various agents, but I'm also submitting directly to publishers.
[00:09:37] I've got to that point now where, and I guess this is some strategy that you need to look at as an indy author is, it's not about selling books. Don't go into it initially thinking I want to sell a heap of books. Those first couple of years, you're developing relationships in the industry. You're meeting people, agents, possible future agents, publishers, editors, cover artists, and so on. So that's the strategy that I initially adopted. I never was going to go down that path, but now it's just opened up doors. It simply has unlocked the doors, Matty, that wouldn't have been unlocked. I would have been embarrassed if I had submitted, going back now, my first, second or third manuscript. I've now got to go back and rewrite them. I feel comfortable in myself now that yes, I'm going to go back and rewrite them.
[00:10:26] Matty: When you rewrite them, how are you going to handle that from the reader point of view? Are you going to advertise it as a revamped story?
[00:10:34] JK: Yeah, I guess being indy published, you've got ultimate flexibility. If there's one spelling mistake, I found on page 43 in a book, I will change it and I will upload a new one, paperback and ebook. So you've got that ultimate flexibility. It'll just be a new edition. It's not nonfiction, so I wouldn't go down the path of saying, oh, updated version of it.
[00:10:53] But Kindle do that automatically. They'll if there's an update version or on any platform, you'll get a notification that, hey, a new version of this book, which tends to fix all the spelling mistakes, but I'll just call it a fourth edition or a fifth edition or a second edition. And it may be expanded, but it will certainly be an improvement on the first go at them.
[00:11:11] Matty: As you're considering traditional deals now coming in, potential deals with people approaching you, how are you weighing the pros and cons of taking a traditional deal versus sticking to an indy route?
[00:11:26] JK: Great question. I guess initially I was all about control. And I think one of your previous guests, Jason Kasper, he spoke about it's, I want to control, I'm happy to pass away the social media on the marketing side, but I want control about what my next book will be and so on.
[00:11:43] I used to be like I was very strong with control, but then I realized I want a team around me. I'm not the smartest person in the room. And I do want to look at what publishers can offer. I don't care relinquishing control or portion of the royalty. I think if you're playing the long game and that's a strategy you've got to adopt as an indy author, there's no immediate gratification, you've got to play the long game, you know, three or 4, 5, 6, 10 years, then there's enough of the pot to split with anyone because they'll bring things to the table that I can't. Distribution, the sheer reach of what some of these publishers can achieve. I can't do that.
[00:12:22] So when I'm considering a contract, I'll certainly have a look at the royalty and I'll have a look at more importantly, who I get to work with, which editors I want to work with, what input I can have.
[00:12:34] I've looked at a TV shopping agreement. I've got a shopping agreement in place, which expires at the end of October for MILL POINT ROAD, with a production company based in the UK who has affiliates in the US and through Scandinavia. TV rights and film rights are totally different. One of their first questions to me is that, can you relinquish all creative control on the final product? And I said, sure, if you can put Ridley Scott on board, I would. But yeah, it's a different kettle of fish when you're talking about TV rights. You don't have the name, unless Stephen King or John Grisham or James Patterson, you don't have that ability to still retain creative control. I'm still new to the game. I've got a long way to go. So it's a case of, okay, what do I give up, but what do I get in return?
[00:13:17] And I think as an indy author on your third, fourth, fifth book, there's a lot more that you can gain from having a team of really clever people who are experts in their industry. It's why I want to collaborate. So I'm willing to sacrifice. And it's not about the money at the end of the day. It can be later, but the money is just a byproduct.
[00:13:36] Matty: So what kind of team do you surround yourself with now as an indy author?
[00:13:41] JK: It's just my wife. I do all the production and my wife, Jennifer, I'm very glad to have her as the person that takes care of my social media. I have some input in social media, Facebook, Instagram. And then I farm out to contractors the production of covers and formatting and some of the social media side of all the design and graphics side of it and the websites.
[00:14:02] I'm trying to focus more now on the production process of the books. And I just have Jennifer, my wife, who takes care of social media, and she does a great job with that. I don't have anyone else.
[00:14:13] Matty: When you were deciding on putting our first books out, and you were making the recommendation to not take your first book to a publisher and you were sort of market testing, is what I gathered, kind of market testing with your early books, how did you make the decision when you felt that it was good enough to share with an audience, knowing that books two through N we're going to be better and you didn't want to sully your reputation with a subpar first one, but that it was good enough. Like, how did you define good enough when you were working on your first book and deciding when to put it out?
[00:14:46] JK: It goes down to developmental editors. It goes out to proofreaders. And all I could do was fix up what they came back with and say, it was good enough. It wasn't perfect. No book is. But you're not aiming for perfection. I just got to a point, well, hey look, it went out to an advanced reader group as well. And I think that's key, a key strategy to have as an indy author. Go back and get some feedback from your readers and look at the suggestions that they make. And once I'd covered off all of them, there was nothing else I could have done at that point in my ability. It was good enough for the advanced readers and I'd fixed up what everything the developmental editors had said, then you have to hit publish and move on to the next one and move on to the next one.
[00:15:24] Matty: How did you find your group of advanced readers?
[00:15:28] JK: Through Facebook. I simply posted up there and we still do it, we've got a couple of hundred in the ARG at the moment. And I just put the call up that I wanted readers. Anyone you may know, just DM me. And we give them a certain list of criteria, which they have to try and follow in terms of they'll get a book they'll have 28 days or four weeks to read it, to give us back some comments.
[00:15:48] And we're very specific. We want them to be brutal. I don't want praise. I want what's wrong with the story. What's wrong with the characters? It's not vanity. I want to know what's wrong with it. I want to fix it and have a better reader experience on that side of it. And we're constantly putting more people into the ARG and people are dropping out. They'll send me an email and say, look I'm busy the next couple of months or I'm on traveling, but I'd love to come back in. So yeah, you just put the call out there. You'll be surprised at how many people from nearly every part of the world want to read your books.
[00:16:22] Matty: And how did you create that pool of people on social media from which you're drawing your advanced readers?
[00:16:29] JK: From having no one on social media, just getting one person and getting two people, then getting five people. And this was another thing too, and this is probably a strategy as well for your audience, if you want to build a social media presence. And this is what Jennifer does really well for me. I gave the idea, the strategy to her that, go and find on social media on Facebook or Instagram, authors that are in your genre, but authors that are indy authors, not necessarily traditionally published, big hitting authors. Not the Lee Childs or the James Pattersons or the Nora Roberts of the world. Find authors that are where you want to be in the next two or three years, but they're doing really well, and they've got thousands and thousands of followers and likes and so on. And they're in the genre. I wouldn't say that they are competitors, but they're in the same genres that you are.
[00:17:19] And then just go and invite their friends. Just invite them and say, hey, come and follow what I'm doing on my page. And the basis of that was that these people have voracious readers. They're going to say I'm going to wait, except with the exception maybe of James Patterson, they have to wait 12 months typically for another book to come out from their favorite authors. So they're willing to read and willing to follow other authors until that happens. So the strategy always was, is go and find on social media. And it's simple to do, go to their webpage and then look at inviting their followers and that really grew exponentially. And we're still doing that now.
[00:17:52] Matty: Do you have to get any kind of informal okay from an author if you're planning on inviting their followers to your page? Is there any etiquette around that that writers should be aware of?
[00:18:06] JK: No, I guess look, it's what you're trying to do is build the community and we all get notifications. I'm sure you do, where you get invited to someone's page, and that's all it is. It's an invite to someone's page. And it's up to the follower or the fan or the person to say, I'll have a look at this page and, oh, it's interesting. I like to see what they're doing.
[00:18:24] And from that side of it, it's not a case I'm taking someone else's database. The whole idea of social media is that you're trying to build a community. And they can make the ultimate decision. Yes or no. Yep. I'm going to have a look at Jack Ellem or no, I'm not going to accept the invitation. It's similar to LinkedIn, it's where you send an invitation to connection. You put some blurb in there and they either accept it or reject it from there.
[00:18:48] Matty: That's an interesting comparison because having come from the corporate world, I have many, many LinkedIn connections. And I didn't care. I would accept anyone as a LinkedIn connection because there was seemingly no responsibility attached to it. Whereas in something like Facebook, it seems as if you're accepting a little bit more of a relationship by accepting an invite. It just seems more engaged, and not necessarily engaged in the way we're all aiming for, but just somehow you're committing more on Facebook. Do you get any sense of that?
[00:19:22] JK: I've got people that have started LinkedIn pages and they haven't posted once in 12 months. And I've got people that have set up Facebook pages, friends that have got it, and they haven't posted anything in six months. But I also have a separate business page for my Facebook. And I think that's where the comparison to LinkedIn is. It's the JK Ellem page, which is my business page, is about me as an author. Jack Ellem, which is my profile, I will post a lot less into there, but it's more personal things about where I'm traveling to and my process and so on.
[00:19:52] So I'm not asking, I'm not revealing to people and it's up to you, whatever you want to reveal. But on my personal page, by Jack Ellem page, it's still author based, but I'm not asking for a connection. What I'm committing to, and this is something that you self-assess, is if you're going to put a Facebook page up, you've got to stick to it. Any part of social media, you've got to stick to it for 12 months. Don't post once a month.
[00:20:14] The commitment I'm making to the followers and fans that every two or three days, I'm going to post something interesting for you. Not for me. It's not, hey, look, I'm at a restaurant or I've just bought a speedboat or a Porsche or something. You know, I'm in the Bahamas. I hate those type of Facebook posts where it's all about me, me, me, me, me.
[00:20:36] I make it a rule, and I guess your point about making a commitment, you've got to make a commitment of posting information and something that's entertaining for the followers, not for you to show off what you've done. Certainly you've got to celebrate your wins. And if your book hits high on a certain shop, I will post it up there. But I tell my wife, Jenny, can we post something else apart from that Something a bit more personal? So you're committing to posting interesting content that your followers need. You have to have them, same as your readers, you've got to have them, your followers, in mind, not yourself.
[00:21:09] Matty: I wanted to go back to another important strategic decision you've made, which is Amazon exclusive versus wide. Can you talk a little bit about what led you to the decision you made in that area?
[00:21:19] JK: I guess the strategy initially was to go wide because everyone said, oh, you've got to go wide, you know, spread your books on multiple platforms. And the long and the short of it, it was taking up a lot of time to have to upload in different formats for iBooks, for Kobo, for the other platforms. And once again, it was an experiment. We tracked that for 12 months, looked at the royalties that were coming across all platforms and the reach. And the royalties just weren't there for the effort that was going in. Amazon, being exclusive with Amazon KU, was miles in front.
[00:21:53] So once again, I'm very much into testing. I guess part of my background, I love the analytics. And if the facts are there that saying, it's not working for the effort to go wide, we made decision 12 months in to pull everything back and go 100% in with Amazon.
[00:22:08] It's got nothing to do with how big Amazon and people say that they're the biggest book seller in the world, which they are. It was to do with how the numbers work for you as an indy author.
[00:22:17] I know indy authors that will sell a lot more on Kobo than Amazon, and they'll sell a lot more on iBooks than Amazon. So it comes down to your personal choice. Don't just go on my record, my strategy. My advice to your listeners is, test it. Test it. What works for you. If you're selling more on Kobo, then stick with Kobo. If you're selling equally across and stick equally across. But for me personally, the jury was in within six months that's we were killing it on Amazon.
[00:22:42] Matty: Do you feel as if the decision to go wide or to go exclusive impacts your appeal to traditional publishers?
[00:22:52] JK: Gee, that's a good question. I've never really thought about that. In terms of traditional publishers, perhaps coming back to me with an offer and saying, or not coming back to me with an offer and saying, your books and all in with Amazon. Are you comfortable going wide? It's a commercial decision. I'm comfortable going wide. I just didn't have the scale or the reach to effectively go wide on all the other platforms, whereas a traditional publisher will. Bookstores, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, WH Smith in the UK, Dymocks in Australia, they've got that ability.
[00:23:23] Look, is it a concern that they may look at me and said, well, you're all there. There's a lot of authors that have been all in with Amazon, a lot of indy authors, and they've got publishing deals and they've gone wide. As I said, I can relinquish anything. It doesn't worry me. I've said in my submission letters that, look, I will go wide with any platform. I always looked from day one, as KDP giving you that opportunity indy authors never had five, 10 years ago to be able to put your work up, publish it, get some feedback and develop an audience. And I'm very grateful for that, but it always was a testbed, Matty, at the end of the day.
[00:24:31] Matty: One of the things that I think people often bring up, if a goal is to make a living at writing, is the rapid release schedule. Can you describe what your release schedule is and how much of that is driven by your creative process and how much of it is driven by your strategic goals for your books?
[00:24:50] JK: I used to have a 53-day first draft cycle, which meant that if I was writing 1500 words a day, in 53 days I'd have a first draft roughly of an 80,000-word book. And that was fine, I was happy with that. Then add third, fourth redraft, rewrite on onto them. And the only issue that I had, and this was the strategy that we changed, was that with an 80,000-word book plus in paperback, we weren't maximizing the royalty through Amazon, through their paperback function. So I was aiming for a 20% royalty.
[00:25:22] Now I still wanted also to be competitive with the mass market paperbacks you see for 9.99, that anyone can pick up in Walmart or Target or Barnes and Noble. So I had to balance that competitiveness of how can I create a paperback for 9.99 and still be competitive with a mass market one. But also have a production cycle that was straightforward.
[00:25:42] So what I did was that I worked out a sweet spot on the production cycle where we then dropped down to 43 days of producing a first draft. And that gave me a 65,000-word manuscript, which is 250 pages at I think a 11-point font, which then I could price at 9.99. So that's the commercial decision, and sell that comfortably, and make 20% paperback royalty on Amazon. So that was the decision.
[00:26:10] And not many people tell you that. I had to price books that are 80,000, 90,000, a hundred thousand words, and my royalty was being eaten into because after production costs, I was only earning 12% or 10% through the process.
[00:26:26] I guess the commercial decision is to find out a sweet spot and no one tells you this it's a formula. I had to work out after much trial and error. And the formula is, and there's nothing wrong if you want to write a hundred thousand words, 150,000 words, if that's your genre, if that's what you're writing, but I find that people today want to read faster books. They don't have time. There are so many books out there. As you've got more books to read. I've got more books to read then I can read. And so I made a commercial decision to pull my word count back from 80,000 to 65,000. And that was a commercial decision so I could still hit that sweet spot of 20% maximum royalty. You can certainly price the book more and an 80 or 90 hundred-thousand-word book.
[00:27:06] But mine weren't selling for my crime thriller, psychological thriller, domestic thriller genre. I still have to keep in mind what the reader is also browsing on the bookshelf. They're browsing mass market paperbacks at 9.99. And if they look at mine for maybe 12.99, then it may be an economical, simple economical. I don't have the name, for them to want to spend 12.99 on a book. One day I will. But in this point where I'm in in my journey, it’s a commercial decision from there.
[00:27:37] But the other thing I'd like to touch on too with that, it's a win-win for you and the reader. It's a win-win for you as a writer because when I had to pull myself back to 65,000 words, it forced me to write tighter prose, keep the pacing high, remove all the padding and guff that I may have put in a book to get it to 80 to 85,000 words. And it's a better reader experience too, because they're reading a fast-paced thriller. I've read books, no doubt your audience have read books, where you've got to the end and you thought, oh, we could have still got to the same result maybe with a 15 or 20,000 less words or that chapter that went off at a different angle, which has nothing to do with the plot.
[00:28:17] So to answer the question: commercially it was the right decision. But also when I started doing that, I found the response from readers was, this was really fast paced. I couldn't put it down. What have you changed? And it was really nothing. I just cut out twenty-five percent of the word count to get in that maximum royalty. It allowed me to increase my production because I could then churn out more books, but it also was a better reader experience, because they want to read fast paced thrillers. They want to have something that's a page turner.
[00:28:47] Matty: How do you make the decision about what you price your ebook at?
[00:28:50] JK: My books were 4.99 and now they've gone up to 5.99. And once again, I look at comparative analysis. Once again, you cannot look at the big hitting authors in your genre. You've got to look at the second level authors that are maybe independent or are still traditionally published authors, but they're not of the scales of the handful that I've mentioned. And you've got to be competitive. You've got to check your ego at the door. You can't say, why wouldn't they pay 12.99 for one of my ebooks? They simply won't. Stephen King, his latest book that's just come out, yeah, I think it's 14.99 for the eBook. I'm not in that realm of charging that.
[00:29:24] So I capped my ebooks now probably at 5.99. Once again, based on the success that I had originally, they were priced at 2.99 in the first couple, but now they're up to 5.99. And I'll test that for the next 12 months. They are 70% royalties from Amazon. So I'm happy with that level.
[00:29:41] But what I found in the last 12 to 18 months when everything changed and there were lock downs and businesses were shut and bookstores were shut, my paperbacks took off. And if I hadn't made that strategic decision of dropping the word count and still being competitive at 9.99 in a paperback, they would have taken off, but I don't think I would have seen that spike in my paperbacks as much if I hadn't made that decision about maximizing the 20% royalty, dropping the word count down to 65, still being cost competitive.
[00:30:12] Now that's come back a bit as everyone's opened up and people are returning to bookstores. But I'm still sticking with that strategy. I want to write faster paced books and I want to make them affordable in whichever format they're in to my readers.
[00:30:25] Matty: Did you find any isolatable impact on sales when you went from 4.99 at 5.99. Because except for my first in series which is 2.99, my ebooks are all 4.99. And as a reader, $5 feels like a barrier to me that I'm speculating just based on my own reaction that once it goes over $5, it's a little bit more of a decision to make, even if it's only a buck more. Did you see any drop in sales when you made that price change?
[00:30:53] JK: No, no. If I had jumped significantly, maybe gone from, 4.99 or 6.99, then there may have been some pushback, but no, I didn't see any lag in this. And like I said, once you develop enough of a reader base, they trust that the book is still going to be as good at 5.99. And it is. The book was good at 2.99 at the beginning, from that point. But no, I didn't see, there was no sudden drop in my royalty curve from there.
[00:31:19] Matty: It's interesting.
[00:31:22] JK: Just to do it, just do it, just put them up.
[00:31:25] Matty: Well, I know I used to price my print books at 12.99, and I remember going to do an event at a bookstore. And they asked me, so they could put it into their register system, what it was. And I said 12.99. She goes, oh no, you could get more than that for it. It's like, okay, you're the person who knows.
[00:31:45] JK: How many words?
[00:31:46] Matty: They're like between 80 and 90,000 words. And so I put it up to 14.99 and then I have large print books that I sell at 19.99 because of the production price is more. But it's interesting because I think that the divide between indy and the traditional it's getting smaller and smaller over time. And what I think I'm seeing is traditional publishers are starting to moderate what used to be very high prices and indies are getting enough self-confidence that they're asking for a little more. And I think pretty soon it's going to meet in the middle.
[00:32:18] But it is nice to be able to ask 4.99, 5.99 for an e-book and still have it be a good deal, especially on the library front. And I say this every chance I get, because I think this is an opportunity that indy authors are really underselling, that if you are available wide through a platform like a Draft2Digital or IngramSpark for print, I price my ebooks for library sales I think at 29.99. So, you know, the library understands that they're going to have many readers reading it and so it's not fair to charge a one-shot deal. There are of course library systems that have a per checkout model, but even at 29.99, my books are so much less than the traditionally published authors in my genre that it still looks like a good deal. So I'm always encouraging indy authors not to undervalue their books on a library front.
[00:33:12] JK: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:14] Matty: So you've obviously focused very intentionally on Amazon. When you think of the things that people talk about in terms of how to hit it big on Amazon, what is some advice you have, whether that is debunking things that you hear that you don't think are true or emphasizing things you hear that you do think are true?
[00:33:30] JK: I think a couple of the strategies that I didn't adopt beginning and what I advise now is take any deal that Amazon throws your way as an indy author. Anything they throw to you, take it. Initially I was hesitant, and I pushed back. Prime deals, KU deals, countdown deals. You're only getting a small upfront and so on from there. And there's this myth that you don't make any money when you go on one of these deals.
[00:33:52] That myth is wrong because as I said at the beginning, you've got to play the long game. The best returns and if you take away anything from strategies on Amazon, there's probably is one point is that the best returns on Amazon are delayed. They're going to happen six months, 12 months down the track. So if you're willing to put the work in and take whatever deal they give you, then take it. There's this myth that, as I said, oh, you don't. You will make, if you look at the whole 12 months' worth of figures, you will definitely be streets in front if you don't pick up an Amazon deal. I have indy friends that aren't, I don't do any deal on Amazon. I just think that it's wrong and I'm not going to make any money. But they have a very short-term focus. You need a long-term focus.
[00:34:29] So my mantra now is as an indy author, don't try and sell your books to your readers. Get Amazon to sell your books to its readers. Cause it's got a lot more readers than you. And that's the strategy, that's how my mindset is now, is that get Amazon to sell your, still your books, but to its huge database of readers. So take any deal that comes. It'll work in the long run. It's simply take up any Amazon promotion when you can from that basis.
[00:35:04] Matty: I want to ask you a question about that because I got an email from KDP that says, 'Your titles are in consideration for a Kindle deal. If selected, it would be featured in the Amazon India Kindle store. The deal would run ...' And then there were dates and things like that. I actually sent it to a trusted business counselor to ask his opinion about that, but I pondered it so long I think I missed the deadline. And Kindle India, I don't know, I just felt like the time I would spend wouldn't ever be paid back in earnings there. But is that one of those things where I made a mistake in not paying more attention to that offer?
[00:35:41] JK: Yeah, look, I'm not going to say it's a mistake. You have to ask yourself, Matty, and your audience can ask themselves, how are you going to reach India on your own? How are you going to get your paperbacks or your ebooks into India? Simple answer for me, I can't. So I would take that deal. If any deal in terms of US, UK, anywhere, any isolated island in the middle of the Pacific, they said, hey, we'd want to put you on a Kindle deal on this island, I would take it on that basis.
[00:36:06] Because you just have to ask yourself, can you reach that market on your own? And you can't. And there's no effort. The analytics and the information that Amazon I have is mind boggling, down to the address of who has bought the last, say, Lee Child book in the last seven days in the world, paperback, hardback, e-book. We can't compete with that. So if they come knocking on your door and say, let's put it in to this market, I would take that deal.
[00:36:38] Matty: I think that the tough thing is that I'm balancing a probable uptick in sales in India against the time I'm going to spend trying to understand what I'm signing if I agree to that deal and the emotional cost of thinking, if I make a mistake, if I don't read the terms carefully, am I signing away something that I'm really going to regret having done?
[00:37:01] JK: No, it's not onerous. If you look, it's fairly clear, plain English what they give you. There's a certain time period your book will run from. They give an approximate start date and end date. It could be 30 days. It could be six months. They'll give you an idea of how they're going to price it. But they also put a disclaimer in certain examples where they can alter the price.
[00:37:18] I just think you have to take that leap of faith. They know what they're doing. They want to sell books. They've obviously looked at their demographics worldwide and they've looked at your book and they said, hey, there's a fit where we may have a slot in that India market for that genre of book.
[00:37:35] I would put a bet on them. They know what they're doing. And I would say, look, I'd take that deal because it's not them just coming up randomly with, let's throw books into any market and see what happens. They've found a strategic fit, they're willing to do all the backend and put all that in, and it's very clear in their agreement, read the agreements, it's very clear what they do.
[00:37:55] Maybe my suggestion then as a second phase off the back of that is when it comes to an end or when it starts, maybe run some promotion, maybe contact some book bloggers in India and run some ads. Reach out to podcasts in India. And I would be doing that off the back of that and trying to time it across that period. And that way you've added more leverage to the whole exercise. But no, I would look at an offer in Iceland if I had from that side of it. Cause their reach is unbelievable.
[00:38:25] Matty: Well, maybe it's not too late. I'll check into it.
[00:38:27] JK: Let me tell you now, it is, because I've let one lapse. They said, no, even though I pleaded, sort of, sorry, the dog ate my homework. No, no, you can't do it. But then they note that. They flag that. So you haven't burned your bridge. They will come back to you. But I will shoot them an email and just say, look, I'm sorry, please consider me for the next round, and then they note everything, and they will circle back to you.
[00:38:51] Matty: So do you have an actual human being at Amazon that you contact when you have these kinds of situations or are you just confident that in their huge database of information there's an entry that says offered it, it expired, he got in touch with us. We're not going to put a black mark next to his name.
[00:39:11] JK: No, it's just a huge database that they have. The database they have, everything is known. It's incredible. You will talk to 50 different people, and they can repeat verbatim the last conversation you had with someone at Amazon. So, no, it'll go into the system and they're very good at that.
[00:39:28] Matty: Another thing that I wanted to ask you, because you have standalones, you have a trilogy, and you have a series, and I'm wondering in your publishing strategy, do you start writing a book knowing that it's going to slot into one of those?
[00:39:41] The books that are now in your standalone offering, did you start those out knowing that they were standalones and having a business reason for writing them as standalone, as opposed to writing them as a series or a trilogy?
[00:39:54] JK: The short answer is, every book starts off as a standalone. And once again, I go back to the readers. I look at the sales six months later. I looked at the reviews on Amazon and people saying, oh, I really like that character, or I hope we see a book two. So every book, I approach every book creatively as a standalone. And even if it means if I really liked it and it didn't go that well, and no matter how much I liked the characters, it'll stay as a standalone if the readers don't want to see a second book.
[00:40:22] I don't ask them if they want to see a second book. I will review the reviews, the feedback, the comments, I'll do some posts on social media to say, hey, what do you think about this character? I never tell anyone I'm writing a second book, or it's going to be built out into a series. It's always a standalone. I leave it to the market to decide. I never say at the beginning, hey, this is the first in a trilogy or this is the first in a new series.
[00:40:45] I've done that with one book that I finished at the moment. And that's the first time I've ever decided from the beginning, because the publishers who were considering it, they want a series. They don't want a standalone. They want something, they can build out into 5, 10, 20 books from that size. I specifically designed that book from front to back as ongoing, the characters were designed as ongoing. They come together as a group. They all hate each other at the beginning, but by the end of the book, they come together as a group which leads to, we know what book two is going to be about.
[00:41:16] So, no, I don't. Except for that example, every book's in isolation. I never was going to write a sequel for MILL POINT ROAD. It was done. I tied it up. There was some small loose ends and the fact that it took off, Matty, and it went well, and people were inquiring about it and agents were getting interested in it, the market spoke, and so the book two is in development for that side.
[00:41:37] But no, I never approach a book as, as I think it backs you in a corner. I think if you make a commitment upfront with your readers on social media, then they'll call you out. They'll hold you accountable that, hey, you know what happened? So, no, I think an indy author needs to just put the book out there and see how it goes. Don't try and make it a series. Don't pre-sell it as a trilogy.
[00:41:58] Matty: The trilogy I have, didn't start out as a trilogy, that just became a trilogy, I realized I was done with a story in three, and then my ANN KINNEAR SERIES, I'm on four, the fifth is going to be out later this year and there's no end in sight. But what I did find is that when I had two ANN KINNEAR books and three LIZZY BALLARD books, then I was giving all my promotional love to the first LIZZY BALLARD book, because I thought this is great. They have two more to read through. And now that I have four and soon five ANN KINNEAR books, I'm kind of neglecting the trilogy, and then feel bad about it when I realize I'm doing that.
[00:42:32] When you're deciding where you're going to give your love and your money for promotion, how heavy an emphasis do you place on how many books in that thread there are for people to read if they're really gripped by the first one?
[00:42:46] JK: I've got a production schedule now of about four books a year. So there'll be one standalone. I'll be adding one book to my NO JUSTICE series, which is now to six books. So the NO JUSTICE, because that’s sells really well. So I'm committed to at least I don't neglect a series, once I've started one because the readers wanted at the end of the day, so I'll do one NO JUSTICE book, I'll do one standalone. I've got another series once again, because everyone loved it. They never started off as a series. The started off with the first book called A WINTER'S KILL and the readers love the character in that. So I thought, I’ll build that out into a second book and a third book, so I'm looking at that.
[00:43:24] That's production, that's what I just spoke about is production effort. In terms of marketing spend, you have to put all your money, you've got to go all in on your bestselling book. It may be a standalone. It may be the third book in the series, which is odd. People say, I'm going to put all the marketing book in the marketing area for dollar spend in the first. I'm going to make the first free, or I'm going to make it 99 cents. What's worked for me is I've always looked at the royalties and I put the most money, everything, into one book, your best seller, on the basis that you'll get read through. The people will pick up others, it'll have a trickle-down effect and people will then pick up your other series and say, okay, what else is Matty written and so on from there? So that's the approach.
[00:44:04] I'm committed with my production for 12 months because I've met a promise to the readers, but in terms of marketing spend and budget, it's purely what's on the royalty graph. And then people say, spread my marketing spend, I do some Facebook ads for this book. And then I do some AMS ads for another book and I can't spread it like that. I have to pick the winner in the race. If they're a clear winner, we're getting on board simple as that.
[00:44:28] Matty: Is the book that's making the most money changing all the time, or do you have one sort of consistent winner in that assessment?
[00:44:35] JK: Since MILL POINT ROAD came out, it is the consistent winner. But since its success, the readership, KU reads and paperback and ebooks of all my other books have lifted as well. And I guess it's probably one tip to look at is, in the back of your clear winner is, put the sample chapter of your second clear winner. Or if you feel that people were really like another series and there's some crossover you can do then as the back matter of your ebook or your paperback, put the sample chapter. Hey, you've just finished this book, well, maybe you'd like this other series.
[00:45:08] Especially if you've got crossover between your two books, between your two series. If you've got some characters that jump between series, which I do, and you really want to get some attention for no marketing cost at all, you're just putting back matter in that series that you want to draw readers to and new readers to, then just put a sample chapter in and say, hey, she also appears in this book. It may be a cameo, but you then are pulling readers who really love one series into another series.
[00:45:34] And sometimes strategically, and I guess it is a strategic decision, if it fits, I have put a character from one book into another, on the basis, not solely, but because I did want to pull readers into the second series and the link was this character. So that's something you can do. But definitely, it's a simple way to draw way to readers from one series to another is, the horse that's coming in front, one that's coming second, put some of that back matter into that book and see what happens.
[00:46:04] Matty: Well, Jack, this has been so helpful. I have lots of to do's, lots of considerations now that I'm going to take away. So I thank you for sharing that and please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your books online.
[00:46:16] JK: No, it's been a pleasure, Matty. It's been great. I'm just happy that you've had me on the show. You can find me on, www.JKEllem.com. All my links, all my social media links are in that one location.
[00:46:29] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:46:31] JK: Thank you, Matty.
The original cover of Jack's MILL POINT ROAD (left), and the updated, more genre-appropriate version that his readers chose (right).
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