What Do Amazon Sales Rankings Really Mean?

I was answering a question about Amazon rankings on a listserv. Since I looked up some information, I thought I'd share it here as well. Authors can get wrapped up in their sales rankings, but how much does your Amazon sales ranking really mean?

Some books will have very low rankings but may do well in school and library sales. There may also be different rankings for the paperback and e-book versions. For example, here's what Amazon tells me:
Copies sold are for the last year to date, Feb. 21, 2012-Mar. 3, 2013, per BookScan, which is available to authors through their Author Central page. "BookScan estimates they report 75% of all retail print book sales." – this includes chain and some independent bookstores, NOT just Amazon, but does not seem to include libraries. Amazon sales rankings are current, which pays most attention to recent sales, I believe. Yes, it's comparing apples to oranges. That's my point

Milton Hershey: Young Chocolatier sold 4491 copies in the previous year and is currently ranked #5,397,877 in Books, #49,604 in Kindle Store

Jesse Owens: Young Record Breaker sold 3980 copies, ranking #2,146,498 in Books (no Kindle)

The Well of Sacrifice sold 586 copies, ranking #239,389 in Books,  #320,872 in Kindle Store

What's really interesting is that Milton Hershey has the most copies sold according to  BookScan, but the worst Amazon sales ranking. That suggests it sells better through non-Amazon  channels. The Well of Sacrifice, on the other hand, apparently sells pretty well through Amazon.

FYI, my royalty statements usually show sales of around 2000 copies per year of The Well of Sacrifice, compared to the 586 showing up through BookScan, although the dates aren't aligned to the calendar year there, and I haven't yet gotten my statement for the last half of 2012. The difference may be that this book sells well to schools and libraries.

The main take away is, don't take your sales rankings too seriously!

New Year's Resolutions and Writing Goals

I have mixed feelings about New Year's resolutions. On the one hand, January 1 is just another day of the year, and it seems like most people set up vague and overly-ambitious resolutions that they quickly drop. On the other hand, I am in favor of regularly reviewing writing and life goals. That's the only way to clearly see what path you are on and figure out how to get where you want to go. And the beginning of the new year is as good as any time to do that!

I'll be leading the January SCBWI schmooze in Albuquerque, where we'll continue a series on the writing life. This time, we'll be discussing our goals and how to make them happen. In preparation, I've been tracking other blog posts on goals and resolutions. There's lots of great advice here.

Redefine Success, from Luke Reynolds (highly recommended).

Set Goals NOW for 2013, from Writers First Aid by Kristi Holl.

How's the Work Going? It All Depends: Focus on this moment, this day, this year, also from Writers First Aid by Kristi Holl.

Make Your Own Luck, by Angela Ackerman: What can you do to give yourself the best chance of success? 

Margaret Peterson Haddix on how she has defined success. (Hear how other authors define success with Cynsations Career Builder series.) 

Writing and Life Balance (Discipline, Setting Priorities, and Life and Volunteer Duties), by Susan Uhlig.

Writing In No Time, from this blog.

Debut Author vs. Career Author (although this one is targeting published authors, much of the planning and organizational advice should be useful to pre-published authors as well).

In personal news, I've been invited to join the Project Mayhem group blog. Learn about the new members here. I'm planning to stop posting to this blog (though I'll leave it up so you can visit the archives) sometime in the near future, and move my activity to Project Mayhem. I'll still be talking about the craft and business of writing, along with some other book topics. I'm looking forward to a new venue, a lighter schedule (a couple of posts per month from me), and the chance for a little more diversity in my topics. Please consider following Project Mayhem for news and thoughts from "The Manic Minds of Middle Grade Writers."

Like a Young Burt Reynolds: Problems with Character Description

Jodie Renner had a good post on description at Crime Fiction Collective recently. It got me thinking about something that bothers me: too much character description. Jodie's post talked about how too much character description can slow the story, especially when given in bulk for minor characters. 

If the characters aren't important, something like "Juan Lopez, the youngest of the group" is enough to suggest his rough appearance. By giving more details, as a reader I feel like I'm supposed to pay attention. It pushes me out of the scene, and I might pause to study who had what color eyes/hair etc., assuming I'll want to know what they look like later. If they never appear again, or aren't important, you've wasted my time.

But there's another problem with detailed character descriptions. You're trusting your reader to have the same reaction you do, and that might not happen. This is especially dangerous if the character is supposed to be romantically appealing. I've read several romanctic heroes with a cleft chin, which is not something I find particularly attractive. Mention it once, and I can skim over it, but if a character trait is reiterated every time the character appears, it's hard to ignore.

Another problem is describing someone as looking like a celebrity. I've heard that technique described as lazy, but what I think is worse, it could have the opposite effect you intended. I recently read a book which was overall very good, but the romantic hero was described multiple times as looking like "a young Burt Reynolds." Since I don't find Burt Reynolds attractive, this came across as a negative thing. Plus, I only knew what Reynolds looked like in middle age.

You also risk the celebrity technique backfiring if the reader has no idea what that person looks like. I don't watch TV or see a lot of movies, and I don't follow celebrity gossip. There are names that I vaguely know as being popular, but I couldn't tell you what they look like. And as the years pass, some of those names will fade from popular consciousness – or worse, become associated with something negative. Imagine reading a book with a main character who has the sweet, girl next-door wholesomeness of Britney Spears. Might come across as a little dated now, huh?

For me, a brief character description works best. Let me fill in the rest with my imagination. 

On Becoming a Writer: My Path to Publication

I'm on a listserv for mystery fans, and we recently had a discussion on paths to publication. I wrote up my experience, so I thought I'd share it here. People often don't know what they're getting into when they decide to "become a writer," and no one outside of the business has a clue how challenging it is. Here's just one example. [Note – many, many people on the list didn't start writing until they were in their 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s, and many also took 20 or more years to get published.]

My path to publication is unusual – I sold the first novel I ever wrote, before age 30. 

But wait! Before the other authors start throwing things at me, let me tell the whole story.

I first went to art school (Rhode Island School of Design), where I studied photography. I learned I didn't want to be a photographer, but I got a great education in creativity and critiquing. Learning how to analyze and express what I feel works and doesn't work in other people's art has served me well in analyzing my own writing and especially in teaching/critiquing others. And learning how to take a critique as a learning experience helped build a thick skin. I also started writing for the school paper and got interested in journalism.

After two years of going nowhere much, I went back to college for my MA degree in Professional Writing and Publishing. Although I was focused on magazine nonfiction, I took classes in fiction, children's picture books, and book publishing. I went to New York City to look for work in magazines. While job hunting and doing temp work, I decided to start a novel for my own entertainment. I had an idea for a middle grade (ages 9 to 12) novel set in Mayan Guatemala, where I'd spent a summer traveling after college.

That became The Well of Sacrifice, which got me an agent and a book contract with Clarion – mainly because I was very, very lucky. First of all, historical fiction for kids was selling much better then than it does today. And there was no other historical fiction about the pre-Columbian Maya for middle grade kids. I didn't know that, or that kids study the Maya in fourth grade, or that teachers often use supplemental fiction when they teach history. So I accidentally wrote a book that was very marketable. It came out in 1999, and I still get a nice royalty check twice a year, mainly because of school purchases.

I also got lucky because I didn't make any of the mistakes first novelist typically make. I saved those for my second book… And my third… And my fourth… In fact, I went on to write something like eight novels that I couldn't sell. I don't know if I would've had the stamina to keep with it if I hadn't had that early success. 

I had naïvely quit my job at a magazine and moved west after selling the book, because I had money in the bank and thought I could make it as a writer. Over the next decade, I did work for hire nonfiction, sold a couple of short stories and a larger number of articles, and taught writing for children through a correspondence course and at local colleges (and did a lot more temp work).

I finally sold a series in 2008. Haunted, about a brother and sister who travel with a ghost hunter TV show, launched with three books. Then my editor got fired and the publisher canceled the series. You know how common experiences like this are? I was recently on a panel about "hope and rejection" at a writers schmooze, and three of us have had gaps of at least seven years between book sales. The fourth person had sold her first novel a couple of years prior, but the publisher went out of business six months before they were supposed to release it. Another publisher took on the book, but her editor had just rejected her second novel.

A couple of years ago, I was feeling burnt out on writing for children, so I decided to start writing romantic suspense for adults. My former editor had become my agent, and he wanted to represent my first book. However, I had been reading a lot about new options in indie publishing, and I wasn't happy with what I was hearing from traditional publishers (lower advances without higher royalties, etc.). I said I was thinking about self-publishing, and my agent agreed that was the best path today for genre fiction.

I have released three books for adults in the last two years, under the name Kris Bock, to separate that work from my children's books. I haven't sold a lot of copies yet, but I have gotten good reviews, even from strangers. I've been focusing more on getting the first books out, so that I could market a body of work. I didn't want to get bogged down in publicity after just one book. I've also been learning a lot about publishing and publicity, so hopefully I can be more focused with my time.

I also released two of my unsold children's books – the fourth book in my Haunted series, because I'd already written it and I had an interested audience. And a mystery set in ancient Egypt, The Eyes of Pharaoh. Although many of my early, unsold books were not publishable, I was confident this one had merit. It was a finalist in the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards, and it has been picked up by several teachers for classroom use. It's the one making me the most money so far. Second is Advanced Plotting, a guide for writers adapted from my workshops, blog posts, and articles in Children's Writer and Writers Digest.

I'm still doing a lot of work for hire (children's nonfiction, test passages, manuscript critiques, writing articles, workshops) to pay the bills. 2011 has been fairly good financially, but my goal is to shift more of my income to my fiction.


I'm thinking about doing a breakdown in the new year on where my 2011 income came from, as an example of how a professional writer makes a living. Would you be interested in hearing about that, or should I stick more to writing craft?

Another Company Enters the Self-Publishing Market

Simon & Schuster has announced a new self-publishing imprint, Archway Publishing. The imprint is run by Author Solutions, a vanity press with a long and questionable history. Here are a couple of blog posts on the subject. These contain individual opinions,but the bloggers' numbers appear to be correct based on a quick look around the Archway site. Please be very cautious about doing business with anyone who claims to be representing Penguin who may really be trying to sell you services through Archway. A traditional publisher NEVER asks for money up front.

A New Way To Rob the Poor?, By Andrew E. Kaufman

Simon & Schuster Joins Forces With Author Solutions To Rip Off Writers

This may sound familiar because Penguin’s parent company, Pearson, purchased Author Solutions in July. (Here's an opinion on that: Penguin’s New Business Model: Exploiting Writers) My personal opinion: Big publishers need to look for innovative ways to increase revenue. Valid options include starting e-book-first imprints and lowering or eliminating advances while giving authors a greater royalty rate. They do not involve lending the publisher's name to a shady and overpriced vanity press.

Publicity Options: Ask David

A huge challenge for writers, whether traditionally or self published, is spreading the word about your books. Some people spend thousands of dollars hiring a publicist, but how do you know if you will get your money's worth? And if you are working on your own, how do you know you'll get your time's worth?

I have been somewhat active on Good Reads. I also have profiles on Library Thing, Jacket Flap, Red Room, and Authors Den. It takes a few hours to update all these sites every time I have a new book out, but it's important to have your book where people can find it.

Another community of book lovers and reviewers I've discovered recently is Ask David. Although not the largest out there, it offers a free opportunity for authors to promote their books, including a free book promotion page, links to websites/Facebook/Twitter etc., and the potential for reviews from users. It only took a few minutes to fill out the form, and they do the rest. This service can be free to the authors because the site gets a small commission from Amazon for sales through site links.

As authors, of course we'd rather spend our time writing – but it's worth trying some of the promotional sites, especially the free ones.

Happy Endings

Back in June and July I did a series of posts on the process of turning an idea into a story. (Those essays are under the tag "developing ideas"). A story has four main parts: idea, complications, climax and resolution. I’ve talked a lot about getting off to a strong start and developing the middle of the story. Last week I talked about the climax. Now let’s look at how stories wind down—the resolution.

The climax ends with the resolution. You could say that the resolution finishes the climax but comes from the idea: it’s how the main character finally meets that original challenge. 

In almost all cases the main character should resolve the situation himself. Here’s where many beginning children’s writers fail. It’s tempting to have an adult—a parent, grandparent, or teacher, or even a fairy, ghost or other supernatural creature—step in to save the child or tell him what to do. 

That’s a disappointment for two reasons. First, we’ve been rooting for the main character to succeed. If someone else steals the climax away from him, it robs the story of tension and feels unfair. Second, kids are inspired by reading about other children who tackle and resolve problems. It helps them believe that they can meet their challenges, too. When adults take over, it shows kids as powerless and dependent on grownups. So let your main character control the story all the way to the end!

Child characters can receive help from others, though, including adults. In I Am Jack by Susanne Gervay (Tricycle Press, 2009), Jack faces bullying. He solves his problem, in part, by asking for help. In the end, Jack stands up for himself, but with the support of family, teachers, and friends. It’s a realistic ending that inspires kids to take charge in their own lives.

Though your main character should be responsible for the resolution, she doesn’t necessarily have to succeed. She might, instead, realize that her goals have changed. In My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters by Sydney Salter (HM Harcourt, 2009), Jory starts out thinking that she needs a nose job to change her life. After a series of humorous disasters, Jory decides she really doesn’t need surgery to feel better about herself.

Stories for younger children generally have happy or at least optimistic endings, even if the original goal changes. Teen stories may be ambiguous or even unhappy. Unhappy endings are probably most common in “problem novels,” such as stories about the destruction of drug addiction. The main character’s failure acts as a warning to readers.

This principle is equally important when writing for adults. Don't fall back on deus ex machina, the Calvary to the rescue, etc. Your main character should solve the problem. Even in today's romance novels, the heroine is more likely to rescue herself (and maybe the hero) than to let the hero do all the work.

Tip: How the main character resolves the situation—whether she succeeds or fails, and what rewards or punishments she receives—will determine the theme. Ask yourself:

What am I trying to accomplish? Who am I trying to reach? Why am I writing this?

Once you know your theme, you know where the story is going, and how it must be resolved. In My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters, Salter wanted to show that happiness comes from within, rather than from external beauty. Therefore, Jory had to learn that lesson, even if it conflicted with her original goal of getting a nose job.

The Relationship Between Plot and Setting

I "met" Vickie Britton through a marketing listserv for mystery writers. Since I love mysteries and history, especially ancient Egypt, I had to grab a copy of The Curse of Senmut, a mystery she wrote with her sister. And they have others involving the Maya and Inca as well! So many wonderful books, so little free time. Vickie and Loretta also have one e-book on the craft of writing, Fiction: From Writing to Publication (available on Amazon or Smashwords) and one focused on mystery novels, Writing and Selling a Mystery Novel: A Simple Step-by Step Plan, available on Smashwords. Here they share some advice on The Relationship Between Plot and Setting

A good setting works hand in hand with plot, for like the scenes of a movie or the props for a play, it establishes the necessary background for the action and the success of your story. Below is an excerpt from our ebook  Fiction: From Writing to Publication.

Developing a setting is very important to a novel for it adds flavor and color to the book. Many times a novel is begun because of the author’s interest in a particular setting. Because of this, a sense of place emerges naturally from what is known and understood. Often writers select their home towns, states and countries where they have lived or visited, or one where they want to go. If this place is significant to the writer, it will show in the work. What would Tony Hillerman’s novels be without the canyons and small towns of New Mexico, or Willa Cather’s without the Nebraska prairie?

In The Bridges of Madison County, author Robert James Waller wrote so convincingly about the area that readers actually went in search of the covered bridge mentioned in his story, even though the bridge itself is fictional.

While it is the best policy to travel to your settings, you can portray a good setting with proper research. Say you want to set your book in China. Sometimes it’s just not possible to have an extended stay in China, although a ten-day trip might be within your budget. But if it’s not possible to travel to your chosen setting at all except in your mind, the Internet and the library become your new best friends.

Pictures, written narratives, websites with shots of the area can give you a feel for the setting without actually traveling to the location. The Internet, especially, has become a good source for viewing remote areas through specialized maps and photographs, providing details that were once not possible without an actual visit.... Whether your books are set on the Sioux Reservation in South Dakota or in an English village, a strong setting will often draw and hold readers. A story can be set in a big city, a small town, or just about anywhere in between, but it is always of great importance. Your job as an author is to create a good setting and make sure it is in harmony with the characters you are creating. [End excerpt.]

What works best for us is to personally visit every setting for our stories, to get a feeling for the location. Sometimes we may change certain details such as making up our own towns, rivers, mountains, etc, but they are always in keeping with what might be found in the actual area.

Here are some examples of how some of our plots have developed from our own experience with travel and personal interests. Ardis Cole, in our Ardis Cole Mystery Series, is an archaeologist who travels the world and runs into a crime in every different place. The plots for these novels were actually formed from the settings. For instance, in The Curse of Senmut a tomb is located which is believed to belong to Senmut, Queen Hatshepsut’s scribe and lover, and in Unmarked Grave a skull is found on the grounds of an ancient castle in Scotland, one that we visited.

When Vickie lived in Laramie, Wyoming, we became drawn to the Old West, the legends and rough terrain. From this love grew our High Country Mystery Series, The Luck of the Draw Western Series, and the Western single Death Comes in Pairs.

An authentic setting will draw the reader into the story and give them a sense of actually being there.

Biography: Loretta Jackson and Vickie Britton are sisters and co-authors of forty-three novels and numerous short stories, mostly mysteries and westerns.

          Loretta lives in Junction City, Kansas, and Vickie in Hutchinson, Kansas. Loretta taught school at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota while Vickie was living in Laramie, Wyoming. There they became interested in the legends and history of the Old West.

           Their recent titles include Whispers of the Stones, The Wild Card, The Lost City of the Condor and The Viking Crown .The sisters were recently interviewed in The Mystery Writers:Interviews and Advice by Jean Henry Mead More about the authors and their works can be found by visiting their web page , or Amazon Author Central.

Building Your Novel: The Climax!!!

In previous posts, I’ve talked about setting up conflict and building tension through the middle of the story. Finally, at the climax, the main character must succeed or fail. You’ve built to this point with your complications. Now time is running out. The race is near the end. The girl is about to date another guy. The villain is starting the battle. It’s now or never. 

However you get there, the climax will be strongest if it is truly the last chance. You lose tension if the reader believes the main character could fail this time, and simply try again tomorrow.

In The Well of Sacrifice, the high priest throws Eveningstar off a cliff into a sacrificial pool. If she can survive and get back to the main temple in secret, she can confront the high priest with new status as a messenger from the gods. But the penalty for failure is death—the highest stake of all.

In my Haunted series, each book takes place in a new location where the ghost hunter TV show is researching a ghost. The shoot will last only a couple of days. If Jon and Tania don’t figure out how to help the ghost within that time, they’ll lose their chance. I gave this challenge added importance through backstory—they had a little sister who died, so the idea of someone being stuck in an unhappy ghostly state has special resonance.

Movies are well-known for this “down to the wire” suspense, regardless of genre. In Star Wars, Luke blows up the Death Star during the final countdown as the Death Star prepares to blow up the planet. In Back to the Future, Marty must get his parents together before the future changes irretrievably and he disappears. He’s actually fading when they finally kiss. In the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama, Melanie decides whom she really loves as she’s walking down the aisle to marry the wrong man. 

The technique works just as well for books and stories, and you'll get the most suspense if the stakes are high. In my mystery/suspense novel What We Found (written as Kris Bock), Audra would be perfectly happy to leave the murder investigation to the police – except the killer seems to be targeting her. She has to find out who's responsible before she becomes the next victim. In Whispers in the Dark (also written as Kris Bock), the heroine stumbles into a dangerous situation by accident, but once she's there, her life is at stake, and so is the life of the man she's starting to love.

This works for some nonfiction as well, especially biographies or memoirs. In Jesse Owens: Young Record Breaker, the book I wrote under the name M.M. Eboch, the true story had a natural ticking clock – the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, where Jesse could prove himself or fail.

Exercises:
Study some of your favorite books. Is there a “ticking bomb,” where the characters have one last chance to succeed before time runs out? If not, how would it change the book to add one?

Now look at your work in progress, a completed manuscript draft or outline. Do your characters have a time deadline? Do you wait until the last possible moment to allow them to succeed? If not, can you add tension to the story by finding a way to have time running out? 

Tips:
Don’t rush the climax. Take the time to write the scene out in vivid detail, even if the action is happening fast. Think of how movies switch to slow motion or use multiple shots of the same explosion, in order to give maximum impact to the climax. 

To make the climax feel fast-paced, use mainly short sentences and short paragraphs. The reader’s eyes move more quickly down the page, giving a sense of breathless speed. (See my posts on Cliffhangers.)

Endings: The Storm before the Calm

I've been discussing building a strong novel. Of course an important part of the novel is the climax, the big ending. You want the climax to be the most dramatic part of the novel, so the reader walks away satisfied. But before we get to the climax itself, let's look at the moment right before the climax. My brother, script writer Doug Eboch, has this to say about movie plots:

“There’s one other critical structural concept you need to understand. That is the moment of apparent failure (or success). Whatever the Resolution to your Dramatic Question is, there needs to be a moment where the opposite appears to be inevitable. So if your character succeeds at the end, you need a moment where it appears the character will fail. And if your character fails at the end, you need a moment where they appear to succeed.” (The full essay is in my writing craft book, Advanced Plotting.)

I wondered whether this held equally true for novels. Looking through a few of the books on my shelf, certainly the climax is a crisis point where the reader may believe that everything is going wrong and the main character could fail.

In The Ghost on the Stairs, Tania is possessed by a ghost and her brother Jon isn’t sure if he’ll be able to save her.

In The Well of Sacrifice, Eveningstar is thrown into the sacrificial well, a watery pit surrounded by high cliffs, and realizes no one will rescue her.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the lion Aslan is killed and the good army is losing their battle.

In adult mystery or suspense novels, this may be the point where the bad guy has captured the hero or is threatening to kill him.

In a romance, this is the point where the couple is farthest apart and we wonder how they’ll ever resolve their differences to live happily ever after.

Does your story or novel have a crisis point, a moment at the climax where readers truly believe the main character could fail? If not, you may want to rethink your plot or rewrite the action to make the climax more intense and challenging. The happy ending is only satisfying if it is won at great expense through hard work. In literature as in real life, people don’t always value what comes easily. Success feels that much sweeter when it can be contrasted to the suffering we’ve had to endure.

Next week I'll talk about the climax itself.

See Doug’s entire 4000-word essay covering all the dramatic story points of three-act structure, plus much more, in Advanced Plotting. Buy Advanced Plottingfor $9.99 in paperback or as a $4.99 e-book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or in various e-book formats from Smashwords.

Douglas J. Eboch wrote the original script for Sweet Home Alabama. He teaches at Art Center College of Design and lectures internationally. He writes a blog about screenwriting at http://letsschmooze.blogspot.com/.