I’m nearing the halfway point of the first draft of the unnamed sequel to The White Tree. It’s a big book. A lot of travel. A lot of new characters. A lot to keep in mind, in other words. Oh, and it might be the better part of 700 pages long. I’m thinking I could use a couple-three beta readers to help me out.
What’s a beta reader? A beta reader’s somebody who reads an early draft of a book with an eye for making it better. This can cover everything from proofreading (“You misspelled ‘rein’ again, dummy”) to problems with characters and plot (“How did they get from the Cauldron of Scalded Souls to Naked Fairy Lake in two days? In chapter 42 you said they were 1000 miles apart”). It’s a pretty broad role, really. Your feedback would pretty much be whatever you feel comfortabe giving. And what do you get in return?
…Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Ah ha ha ha!
Well, not quite nothing. It would be a volunteer position. In most ways, the compensation will be pretty minimal: a free copy of a book you were (presumably) going to buy anyway. Getting to read it weeks or months in advance of when the final version will be released to the public. Helping me increase the book’s overall awesomeness. And a thank you on the acknowledgements page.
It’s probably going to be about three months before I reach this stage, so don’t expect to see any hot new copy until then. But I figure I may as well start casting the net now. So if you read The White Tree, you liked it, and you want to help the sequel be even better, please let me know–just leave a comment with your email here, or drop me a line at edwrobertson AT gmail
From there, I’ll let you know when completed draft day draws near. Thanks, everyone.
Since last month, I’ve been trying out Amazon’s KDP Select program with my novels. Select is, to boil it down, a deal where you make your book exclusive to Amazon for 90 days in exchange for another sales route (borrows) and the ability to make your book free for 5 days. Being allowed to give your book away for nothing might not sound like much of a positive, but it can be kind of a big deal.
By and large, Select has been a very positive experience for me, one I should really blather about here. For now, check out Jim Kukral’s piece on Huffington Post about the pros and cons of the program. In it, he quotes several authors–including one stunningly handsome one–on their experiences with and feelings about Select. It’s a good snapshot of the ambivalent mood and level of success the indie community has for the program.
Oh, and since Jim started gathering his info for the piece, I’ve had another great Select run. Two days ago, I made Breakers free for one day. It was downloaded about 1600 times. Since going back to paid status, I’ve sold a bit over 300 copies.
So yeah, I’m a fan of Select.
David Gaughran has a great post on this today. Here’s the quick summary: people continue to attack Amazon for its monopolistic, predatory, anti-competitive practices when it comes to ebooks, particularly when it comes to the Amazon’s KDP Select program, which allows authors certain perks in exchange for offering their content exclusively to Amazon.
The thing is, the reason this program has been so effective is because it works. For self-publishers, it’s far from impossible to establish a presence at Amazon and sell some serious books. At B&N? The sledding is much, much tougher. As Gaughran points out, at B&N, the playing field continues to be tilted significantly in favor of the big publishing houses. For everyone else–indie and small-press books–sales are almost entirely driven by direct traffic to their books’ pages. In other words, B&N isn’t doing anything to help them be seen.
My experience there has been and continues to be just that. Last year, my books were never going great at Amazon, but there were always 15-20 sales at the end of every month. With B&N, most months the totals were zero.
So last month, I signed up for Select with all my novels. After all, I had nothing to lose. (Actually, I had a little to lose by pulling those books from Smashwords, but we’re talking about hamburger money. Not Fatburger money, either. A lucky month might get me a cheeseburger at In-N-Out.) In the last four weeks, I’ve done very, very well.
I’ll get into that in greater detail pretty soon. And Select isn’t a magic bullet, either. It doesn’t work for everyone. But it’s yet another example of the way Amazon is making it possible for more and more authors to make a living. Right now, B&N simply isn’t doing that. And that’s why so many authors have no problem in giving them up without a look back.
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