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The Little Things that Kill a Book Before It Even Takes a Breath

5K views 42 replies 22 participants last post by  psychotick 
#1 ·
Jacks Full of Aces. My latest novel. 59000 words. According to Amazon it's "183 pages." They allegedly estimate page count by the number of words that appear on the screen after each page turn. That would mean 327 words on each Kindle screen. On my Kindle, it's actually about half that. (Yes, I counted)

Strike Battleship Argent. My first military sci-fi novel. Same series. 97000 words. According to Amazon it's "591 pages." Presumably both books have their page counts estimated the same way. (Or not, apparently) You can check for yourself. Both books are linked in my signature.

There's a math problem here. Argent works out to 164 words on a screen. About half the number for Jacks Full of Aces. Interesting that number also matches the number I came up with on my Kindle. Based on these numbers we can conclude Argent is being estimated correctly, while Jacks is being penalized for some reason.

Why the different criteria for page count? Nobody will ever know. What I do know is my book is dead. We're six days in and it's all over but the shouting. All the mailing lists and ads in the world can't help it. When people arrive at the page they think they are being sold half a book at full price. Result? Jacks Full of Aces sank like a rock. In fact, it's sales rank steadily dropped even when it was selling. I know. It's shocking. Had a two-week schedule of launch events for this book. All wasted.

Jacks Full of Aces still isn't part of my series page. I requested that a week ago. Oh sure there's an empty space where my book should be, but my book isn't linked. So now it looks like there's something wrong with the fifth book in the series. How is that going to affect sales? How to people usually respond to broken windows web pages where they are being asked to spend money? More sales lost.

There's no look inside, so nobody will be able to sample the story. (I have a hell of a first chapter) Even more sales lost. Just a few little details is all it takes to make my work look inferior and cheap. I believe even if I tried I couldn't come up with more effective ways to drive readers away.

Competing books, on the other hand, come out of the gate with dozens of reviews and all the details on their buy pages in perfect working order. Here's a good example. Brand new book. Brand new series. Page count looks accurate. Six reviews in three days. Has a series page even though there isn't a series yet. Top 300 book. Best seller. Clearly J N Chaney is just a better writer. Well, Exodus Ark is in KU (alongside 100 other J N Chaney titles) with a $25 paperback and already has 17 pages of also-boughts after three days but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Why is book five being treated differently from book one? Is it deliberate? Nobody will ever know. Might it be because I'm not in KU any more? Might it be because I'm not spending enough on AMS ads? (I'm spending zero). Is that why the buy page for Jacks looks so empty and unappealing and broken and half-finished? How is this going to affect reviews, if any? Not much danger of it affecting the "algorithms," is there?

The truth is my book was suffocated in its crib. This isn't the first time either.
 
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#27 ·
alcyone said:
I think I published the paperback first, although I did them on the same day. I do remember I definitely used Kindle's own software to create the file from my Word document. I've got a second novel I'll be publishing in the Dec/Jan timeframe, and I'll also try it that way to see if it makes a difference.
FWIW, I have always published the ebooks first, and all the paperbacks linked automatically. I know that's not true for everyone, but I'm a data point that says it does happen for some. I can't say exactly how long it took as I've never thought it was a critical element.
 
#28 ·
Shane Lochlann Black said:
My first military sci-fi novel. Same series. 97000 words. According to Amazon it's "591 pages." Presumably both books have their page counts estimated the same way. (Or not, apparently) You can check for yourself. Both books are linked in my signature.
Your first book is 591 pages because that number is based on the paperback. If you hover over the number, it even says "contains real page numbers based on the print edition". Your newer book is based on a more standardized, though not perfect, Kindle page turn estimate. It's actually fairly common for authors to inflate their page numbers by publishing paperbacks with large fonts and spacing and then linking it to the ebook. A 97000 word book would be less than 400 pages if it was the Kindle estimated page count. My experience is that a book has to be between 55000 and 60000 words to get to 200 estimated pages, depending on how it's formatted. The calculator shorted you, but not by as much as you seem to think.

Shane Lochlann Black said:
What I do know is my book is dead. We're six days in and it's all over but the shouting. All the mailing lists and ads in the world can't help it. When people arrive at the page they think they are being sold half a book at full price. Result? Jacks Full of Aces sank like a rock. In fact, it's sales rank steadily dropped even when it was selling. I know. It's shocking. Had a two-week schedule of launch events for this book. All wasted.
If you have a mailing list, why not just send out an email telling them that the Kindle page count is incorrect? An engaged enough audience shouldn't care that much about the page count. If you've built a mailing list of your readers, then it shouldn't be costing you money to point them to Book 5. Do you not give out ARCs? Most readers won't buy a book with no reviews, especially one that isn't in KU.

Shane Lochlann Black said:
There's no look inside, so nobody will be able to sample the story. (I have a hell of a first chapter) Even more sales lost. Just a few little details is all it takes to make my work look inferior and cheap. I believe even if I tried I couldn't come up with more effective ways to drive readers away. Competing books, on the other hand, come out of the gate with dozens of reviews and all the details on their buy pages in perfect working order.
A lot of people are having problems with the look inside not populating right now, even popular authors. It's a known Amazon glitch. In fact, the book you linked doesn't have a look inside either, which does make this sound like a coincidence. As someone else pointed out, books usually only get reviews on release day if the author handed out prepublication copies. Some authors have reviews up on Goodreads months before the book actually comes out. You need to engage your existing fans. Organic reviews are only getting harder to come by. And a preorder usually mitigates page population issues because it takes time for everything to get where it should be even when the book is "live."

Shane Lochlann Black said:
The truth is my book was suffocated in its crib. This isn't the first time either.
Like Amazon is deliberately sabotaging you?

I think you're concerning yourself with the wrong things. Where are the readers who are loyal to you? By Book 5 in a series, you should be asking yourself why you don't have enough dedicated readers buying copies to bring launch week rank out of the hundred thousands. As long as there is a buy button, Amazon isn't keeping people from your book. Instead of promo, maybe you should refocus your efforts on engaging your existing readership.
 
#29 ·
By Book 5 in a series, you should be asking yourself why you don't have enough dedicated readers buying copies to bring launch week rank out of the hundred thousands.
Obviously they don't like my books. I'm getting to the point where I don't care any more. It's slowly dawning on me I made a terrible mistake taking up writing in the first place.

I had a fantasy series planned. Then I look at this page and I recognize I'm out of my league. There is nothing I can put on a page that can compete with 1100 reviews in seven weeks. When I publish a book, I'm forced to spend my time fighting over page counts and broken links. I never actually get to the story or anything that might make the book interesting to readers. I can't afford $2000 covers. I can't afford $5000 editors. I can't afford $10000 audiobooks. I can't really afford the ads I'm buying now either, but hope can be a poisonous thing sometimes.

This business is an automated playground for beautiful and impossibly successful millionaires who are loved by everyone. By now it's been made clear to me I don't belong.
 
#30 ·
Shane Lochlann Black said:
This business is an automated playground for beautiful and impossibly successful millionaires who are loved by everyone. By now it's been made clear to me I don't belong.
There is an interesting concept in psychology called the locus of control. Basically, people can roughly be split into two categories: those who have an internal locus of control and those who have an external locus of control. Though it really is a spectrum more than a binary thing. When presented with a challenge, those with an internal locus of control tend to assume that their behaviors will influence the outcome. Stuff like "hard work pays off" and "dedication is more important than luck." They focus on what they can do or change in a given situation, rather than lament why it's happening to them. Conversely, people with an external locus of control have a habit of believing that things just happen to people, that luck plays an outsized roll in success, or "bad things always happen to good people."

Having an external locus of control doesn't make you a bad person or a failure, but it does mean you're more likely to throw in the towel when things are challenging. If you believe that your behaviors have no effect on the outcome, it's very easy to give up.

It also becomes easy to blame external forces when things don't work out, instead of honestly examining the aspects of the situation that actually are under your control and then changing your behavior.

People with an external locus of control are generally less successful, more hopeless and more easily influenced by circumstances in a negative way. Shifting from an external to internal locus of control is often a goal of psychotherapy.

For any newbies reading this thread who might be discouraged, remember that you have to be the captain of your own ship to succeed in this business. Some things are not going to go your way, maybe even a lot of things. Every successful author has suffered a major setback at some point, whether it was obvious from the outside or not. But you roll with the punches: set aside what you can't control and focus on what you can.

Focusing on the stuff outside your control (like algorithms, other people's budgets, general Amazon weirdness) is useless. If what you're doing isn't working, it is in your power to change your behavior. Study craft, change genres, ask for advice, be open to criticism, refocus your efforts on personal vs financial success or ensure your goals are aligned with your plans. If you feel like nothing ever goes right for you, then you might need to start paying more attention to how your behaviors might be influencing your outcomes. There are so many micro decisions that have to be made to publish a book that it is literally impossible that nothing you're doing could be done differently. Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting lightning to strike isn't the way forward.

No one sustains a career through luck alone. Luck can help, but it isn't necessary. And even if lightning does strike, it almost certainly won't twice.

Embrace that you have agency. If you believe that nothing you can do will influence your success, that it's all a roll of the dice, then it probably does make sense to just give up. Learned helplessness is a dream killer.
 
#31 ·
stacia_s said:
There is an interesting concept in psychology called the locus of control.
This was a really interesting read. Thanks for taking the time to write it up.
 
#32 ·
I can try a new book for $0.99 without worrying about buying anything else, or I can decide if I want to go to the beginning of your series and pay nearly six dollars to try that, in order to then read up to Book 5.
Shane Lochlann Black said:
The hypocrisy could split atoms.
What exactly do you think is hypocritical about what I said? It's simple math. I can try the one book for $0.99 or I can try the other (which isn't the first book in the series) for nearly $6.00. There's a much smaller barrier to entry with the $0.99 first-in-series book, both because it's much cheaper, and because I don't have to also read four other books to get to that point in the story. For me, a $0.99 book that looks like my kind of book is pretty much an insta-buy, but a lot more thought goes into the purchase when the book is over $4.00. I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
 
#33 ·
stacia_s said:
There is an interesting concept in psychology called the locus of control. Basically, people can roughly be split into two categories: those who have an internal locus of control and those who have an external locus of control. Though it really is a spectrum more than a binary thing. When presented with a challenge, those with an internal locus of control tend to assume that their behaviors will influence the outcome. Stuff like "hard work pays off" and "dedication is more important than luck." They focus on what they can do or change in a given situation, rather than lament why it's happening to them. Conversely, people with an external locus of control have a habit of believing that things just happen to people, that luck plays an outsized roll in success, or "bad things always happen to good people."

Having an external locus of control doesn't make you a bad person or a failure, but it does mean you're more likely to throw in the towel when things are challenging. If you believe that your behaviors have no effect on the outcome, it's very easy to give up.

It also becomes easy to blame external forces when things don't work out, instead of honestly examining the aspects of the situation that actually are under your control and then changing your behavior.

People with an external locus of control are generally less successful, more hopeless and more easily influenced by circumstances in a negative way. Shifting from an external to internal locus of control is often a goal of psychotherapy.

For any newbies reading this thread who might be discouraged, remember that you have to be the captain of your own ship to succeed in this business. Some things are not going to go your way, maybe even a lot of things. Every successful author has suffered a major setback at some point, whether it was obvious from the outside or not. But you roll with the punches: set aside what you can't control and focus on what you can.

Focusing on the stuff outside your control (like algorithms, other people's budgets, general Amazon weirdness) is useless. If what you're doing isn't working, it is in your power to change your behavior. Study craft, change genres, ask for advice, be open to criticism, refocus your efforts on personal vs financial success or ensure your goals are aligned with your plans. If you feel like nothing ever goes right for you, then you might need to start paying more attention to how your behaviors might be influencing your outcomes. There are so many micro decisions that have to be made to publish a book that it is literally impossible that nothing you're doing could be done differently. Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting lightning to strike isn't the way forward.

No one sustains a career through luck alone. Luck can help, but it isn't necessary. And even if lightning does strike, it almost certainly won't twice.

Embrace that you have agency. If you believe that nothing you can do will influence your success, that it's all a roll of the dice, then it probably does make sense to just give up. Learned helplessness is a dream killer.
I just want to say how much I appreciate this post. It's taken me years to grasp that the only control I have is over input. Outcomes are in the hands of the universe.

Thank you. Well said.

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." Rumi
 
#34 ·
stacia_s said:
(...) you roll with the punches: set aside what you can't control and focus on what you can.
This has been my philosophy through life, ever since I first began to suspect there was a shortage of fairy godmothers. Great post - well thought out and well said, so cheers, Stacia.

I'm going to add this though. When ebooks & ereaders first hit the scene, lightning struck. It struck again when the trad pub boys and girls turned their noses up at electronic books (or looked down their noses). Here was a fresh new playing field, seemingly without boundaries and for a good few years, Indies had it to themselves. Readers fell in love with their kindles: what's that? An entire library that weighs nothing? That I can carry around in one hand? Read anytime, anywhere? And it connects to the internet & downloads any book that grabs my fancy - in seconds?! Please - take my first born ... I mean - take all my money! Oh. Hang on. These titles cost less than a cuppa ... and there's a really wild and wonderful selection too ...


I'm one of those readers whose house overflowed with books and you'd better believe I jumped on kindle like a drowning rat onto a life-raft. When I found out about the Indie scene & self publishing, I'd finally found my tribe.

One more observation: There's two groups of newcomer Indies; those who gnash their teeth because they weren't in at the start of this revolution. And those who regard the more established Indies as pioneers who laid a rock solid foundation they can build on.

Be the captain of your own ship. But be aware you can still check out the charts drawn up by those who sailed before you, if only to note where be dragons.
 
#35 ·
I would hope you don't give up. To some extent it is a 'playground of the rich and beautiful' and there is a certain cynical fudging of the medium to be successful. Yet it is a vast world and you only need a small ***** of it to be 'successful'.

And, selfishly, I always hoped that your love/hate relationship with ShayneRutherford on these boards would eventually morph into some kind of 'mismatched cop'
series of its own.
 
#36 ·
Fwiw there is a new Series feature coming to your KDP Bookshelf. Not everyone has it yet so I expect a slow roll-out as it usually is with these things. If you browse around long enough on FB these last few days, you'll see pictures. It is VERY cool and long overdue where the control of our series and how they're displayed is placed in our hands.

You can even mark related short stories or novellas that are a part of the universe but not part of the main series etc.

So, it's coming and probably explains some of the issues people are experiencing.
 
#37 ·
stacia_s said:
There is an interesting concept in psychology called the locus of control. Basically, people can roughly be split into two categories: those who have an internal locus of control and those who have an external locus of control. Though it really is a spectrum more than a binary thing. When presented with a challenge, those with an internal locus of control tend to assume that their behaviors will influence the outcome. Stuff like "hard work pays off" and "dedication is more important than luck." They focus on what they can do or change in a given situation, rather than lament why it's happening to them. Conversely, people with an external locus of control have a habit of believing that things just happen to people, that luck plays an outsized roll in success, or "bad things always happen to good people."

Having an external locus of control doesn't make you a bad person or a failure, but it does mean you're more likely to throw in the towel when things are challenging. If you believe that your behaviors have no effect on the outcome, it's very easy to give up.

It also becomes easy to blame external forces when things don't work out, instead of honestly examining the aspects of the situation that actually are under your control and then changing your behavior.

People with an external locus of control are generally less successful, more hopeless and more easily influenced by circumstances in a negative way. Shifting from an external to internal locus of control is often a goal of psychotherapy.

For any newbies reading this thread who might be discouraged, remember that you have to be the captain of your own ship to succeed in this business. Some things are not going to go your way, maybe even a lot of things. Every successful author has suffered a major setback at some point, whether it was obvious from the outside or not. But you roll with the punches: set aside what you can't control and focus on what you can.

Focusing on the stuff outside your control (like algorithms, other people's budgets, general Amazon weirdness) is useless. If what you're doing isn't working, it is in your power to change your behavior. Study craft, change genres, ask for advice, be open to criticism, refocus your efforts on personal vs financial success or ensure your goals are aligned with your plans. If you feel like nothing ever goes right for you, then you might need to start paying more attention to how your behaviors might be influencing your outcomes. There are so many micro decisions that have to be made to publish a book that it is literally impossible that nothing you're doing could be done differently. Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting lightning to strike isn't the way forward.

No one sustains a career through luck alone. Luck can help, but it isn't necessary. And even if lightning does strike, it almost certainly won't twice.

Embrace that you have agency. If you believe that nothing you can do will influence your success, that it's all a roll of the dice, then it probably does make sense to just give up. Learned helplessness is a dream killer.
Holy forkballs!

I have never heard of this theory, but it makes hella sense. Very eye opening about my personality (I'm clearly internal, but I've had friends who are external and I could never understand their reactions to setbacks. Thank you.
 
#38 ·
Rhett Gervais said:
Holy forkballs!

I have never heard of this theory, but it makes hella sense. Very eye opening about my personality (I'm clearly internal, but I've had friends who are external and I could never understand their reactions to setbacks. Thank you.
I know, right? I used to be an external locus of control. I guess age has helped me shift to internal locus of control thinking and my life went up from there.
 
#39 ·
Shane Lochlann Black said:
Then I look at this page and I recognize I'm out of my league. There is nothing I can put on a page that can compete with 1100 reviews in seven weeks. When I publish a book, I'm forced to spend my time fighting over page counts and broken links. I never actually get to the story or anything that might make the book interesting to readers. I can't afford $2000 covers. I can't afford $5000 editors. I can't afford $10000 audiobooks.
Quoting for lurkers. Comparing oneself to one of the biggest sellers in the genre is dangerous, as is assuming you must spend what the OP claims on each item. You can release a book on a budget and succeed. A book of mine that's sold 500k copies has a $99 cover. Editing costs were saved by working with other authors. These days, I have custom covers created for well under $1000. Editing will not cost $5000. I typically spend $1-2k, depending on length and how much work I feel it needs. Audio is dependent on narrator and book length, but it really depends on who you hire. Find a narrator you like under $200 pfh and your book can be done for under $2k, but name narrators will also help sell books, so sometimes spending more like $400-500 pfh is worth it for audio for those names. Get a Nathon Fillion like Podium recently did, and I'm sure you'll sell even more.

I know this wasn't the point the OP wanted to make in his post, but I think the spread of misleading information is dangerous for those who are looking to release their first book. Amazon can be difficult. Yes, selling well gives you access to Amazon reps and other services, but even with that access, strange things happen and you have to roll with it and try to problem solve. Control what you can control and ask for help when it's not going well. KDP reps accessible through the dashboard will help.

As to the OP. The page length is a mystery. As someone with many books out, I can't predict what Amazon's page count will generate. I don't think readers really care that much, though, but that's my opinion. Link a print book, email to have them match the print length to the ebook, and that's what you can control. Also boughts are generated by sales. Putting a book up for preorder would explain why a day 1 release had a bunch of also boughts. I've heard it generally takes 50 sales before also boughts start to populate, but don't know for certain. Having a release team is a strategy for getting release day reviews, but not necessary. I've done it both ways, and had good sales both ways.

The series page is likely software related. I've heard from other authors that Amazon is rolling out a series page addition in the dashboard so we are in control. I don't have the feature myself, but that might explain some issues on the backend. It stinks that it happened to you and hope it'll get sorted out soon. I question the impact on sales through the series page by a book 5, though. Lead your readers to the next book by linking to it a the end of book 4.

Note that none of this was a comment on quality of writing. I'm not sure why the OP jumped there in a previous post when no one had made any comment about the quality of the books.
 
#40 ·
blubarry said:
Quoting for lurkers. Comparing oneself to one of the biggest sellers in the genre is dangerous, as is assuming you must spend what the OP claims on each item. You can release a book on a budget and succeed. A book of mine that's sold 500k copies has a $99 cover. Editing costs were saved by working with other authors. These days, I have custom covers created for well under $1000. Editing will not cost $5000. I typically spend $1-2k, depending on length and how much work I feel it needs. Audio is dependent on narrator and book length, but it really depends on who you hire. Find a narrator you like under $200 pfh and your book can be done for under $2k, but name narrators will also help sell books, so sometimes spending more like $400-500 pfh is worth it for audio for those names. Get a Nathon Fillion like Podium recently did, and I'm sure you'll sell even more.

I know this wasn't the point the OP wanted to make in his post, but I think the spread of misleading information is dangerous for those who are looking to release their first book. Amazon can be difficult. Yes, selling well gives you access to Amazon reps and other services, but even with that access, strange things happen and you have to roll with it and try to problem solve. Control what you can control and ask for help when it's not going well. KDP reps accessible through the dashboard will help.
All of this. ^^^

blubarry said:
Note that none of this was a comment on quality of writing. I'm not sure why the OP jumped there in a previous post when no one had made any comment about the quality of the books.
Because many months ago he asked people why his work wasn't selling and I suggested that, at least with his YA stuff, it might have something to do with his main character seeming much younger than her actual age (she's 16, but sounds about 12). And because I dared to suggest that the character might be improved with some rewriting, that turned into me saying he was a crappy writer.
 
#41 ·
I haven't read the whole thread yet, just the first few posts.

The economy is down.

Amazon is still being affected by corona. They've even had AWS server glitches. The absence of LookInsides, which I think is an automated process, is an example of another sort of glitch that I don't think happened even 2-3 years ago.

And unfortunately, some authors are seeing negative results because of these issues.

PS, I just looked at the linked book in the original post... LookInside is missing there, too.
 
#43 ·
Hi,

The locus of control is an interesting way of examining how people see the world. However the most important thing to remember is - as was said - it is a spectrum. It's also only a model.

The most important thing for anyone, especially any author, to remember is that there are things that are within your control and things that aren't. You need to focus on what you can control and forget the rest. You can control the quality of your work, your covers, even the genre you write and of course your marketing. You can't do a damned thing about Amazon's algorhythm or luck, so don't waste your time even thinking about them.

Cheers, Greg.
 
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