An Independent Author and an Idea – by Paul Story

In writing the following article for Teleread, I followed the example of others; providing facts and figures, links and information that fellow writers might find useful or interesting. When I started researching the subject, reliable data was scarce or obscured by misinformation. Throughout the journey, I will reveal what works and what does not – what I do right and what I screw up. It is all about eBooks but its focus might surprise you.

I have a ridiculous dream. I’m an unknown author, homeless, almost penniless and I want millions of people to read my novels. Before you feel sorry for me you should know that, although the homelessness is real and occasionally tough, it is also a self-inflicted writing adventure – a strategy that I embrace for however long it takes. I can afford to live like others only if I give up the dream. I’m not going to do that. In making such a choice, it concentrates the mind. I am free to write, free to take risks and free to fail.

Laggan – Inspiration for Creggan Cottage in Dreamwords

So, what to do with that freedom? How do you even start getting people to read your work? The new electronic landscape will change everything but we’re at that awkward, transitional phase. Here, in the UK, we are a year or two behind our US cousins. I ordered my Kindle on day-one, and saw my first UK Kindle ad on TV yesterday. The rate of change is accelerating as fabulous new devices fight for your money but it will take time to build. Right now, print is king and so I decided to find my future eBook readers by using the only universal format guaranteed to work in every UK household – paper.

The irony is inescapable and it would be easy to mistake this move as a step back to the old. It is not. I was keen to use the lessons the Net has taught us about social networking, trust, word-of-mouth, fear of theft vs obscurity and to find out if these ideas would translate into the real world with 10,000 trade paperbacks. To fully explain what I’m doing and why, I should put it into context:

A Digital Birth

In 2005 I did a crazy thing. I wrote a novel ‘live’ and podcast it – two chapters a week – over a period of 10 months. This was a full-time job. I slept on floors or in cheap accommodation to free myself for the task. The novel was extremely successful and I stopped counting when it reached 20K listeners.

With my head down and working hard, I knew that I was not making best-use of the opportunity the podcast offered me, but I was in the zone, enjoying the writing, loving the emails and comments, lapping up the back-slaps.

And then it ended. The last chapter of Book One in a series was complete and my listeners moved on. I had no way of contacting them and no way of using what I’d done to make a career from it. Many people asked me to keep going with the second book and many others asked me why I did not have a donation button on my site.

The crazy project worked but I had been too stupid to make anything of it. I got on a couple of BBC radio shows, was covered by the Guardian, The Times, had full colour pages in The Sunday Herald magazine and a double-page in The Record (Scottish tabloid) and numerous other outlets spanning millions of eyeballs – but so what? I had nothing to sell.

Lesson learned, I sold shares in my future work and then went quiet to write Book Two. Dreamwords is an ambitious project. From the claustrophobic tale in Tom Corven (now Dreamwords Book One) the story opens up to reveal some of what is hinted at in that first book. The commitment in time and energy is something that I welcome but I had no illusions to how hard it would be to launch the follow-up when it was complete.

Two years ago, I looked at traditional publishers, astonished that they appeared to be in denial of what was to come. I realised that, if I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones to get an agent and then snag a publishing deal, the book would hit the shelves no earlier than 2011 but probably later. Did I really want that? Did I want to be part of the dimming age of traditional publishing or go my own way and ride the new?

After one email (that was not answered) I decided not to apply. Decision made, I knew that launching Book Two in a series made no sense but, would the podcast novel work as a book? Many people loved the atmospheric hue of the reading (they told me so). I could not assume its popularity would translate to print.

To find out, I used Lulu to make 20 copies and gave 18 out to strangers. I had the germ of an even crazier idea and I needed to know what would happen if the novel landed in the hands of a sixty-year-old man or a sixteen-year-old girl, a person who reads mostly romance or one that reads horror or science fiction. I got family and friends to find people who did not know me and asked them to say nothing of the book’s origins, or what it was about, beyond what they saw of the cover and what was written on the back. The story does not conform to a fixed genre and might be difficult to target. It is a mystery, thriller, speculative fiction with a hint of romance. I hoped that it might reach a wide ‘audience’ but knew the danger of confounding expectations.

My fantasy was that 50% might want to read Book Two and I would have been overjoyed with anything beyond 25%. With such a small sample, I cannot read too much into the results, but exactly 50% did ask to read on (and most of them specifically said that they loved it). Only 4 readers said it was not for them and – since I never heard from the rest – I assumed that the other 5 felt the same. Of those who enjoyed it, a number stated that, if they had known what the book was about, they would not have picked it up (but were glad they did).

I decided to run with the project; borrowed from family and maxed out my credit card. I sent the manuscript to an editing service and put out a tender to the print industry for 10K trade paperbacks. After a lot of work, I took possession of the shipment in April 2010. The whole process of sending money I could not afford to a stranger in India was one that took a lot of faith and care but I was delighted by the results.

With no template to go on, I needed to experiment and so over the early months of summer, I built displays that could belong inside a store and then abandoned them to the public. I lost hundreds of books trying to figure out how to distribute them but eventually had a plan that I felt had the best chance of success.

So, what was this crazy idea?

Trust

Launching The Honesty Edition

It starts with a belief in people. Beyond the need to survive and the dictates of passion, I believe that most are honest – particularly on a personal level (as opposed to dealing with a wealthy corporate body). I put all the instructions inside the book and called it The Honesty Edition. The printer bagged each copy in transparent plastic to protect it from the weather and I created a series of stickers and flyers to deal with different situations. Armed with some large signs, I tried various experiments with around 1,000 books. I encouraged people to help themselves. Sometimes I talked to them but I also left small stashes in the middle of nowhere on a high hilltop or outside a desolate and empty cottage for weeks on end (where the tale is set).

To understand the subtle points that make all the difference, you have to have a physical copy of the book, preferably after hearing my explanation. Failing that, my website is a good place to start.

The following is an excerpt from the current flyer I’m using. If the flyer is lost, the instructions are still inside the book which can survive on its own…

I understand that the The Honesty Edition is not free and that Paul Story is trusting me. In taking a book, I become its champion – its means of finding its way to someone who will enjoy and pay for it. This promise is made on my sense of honour – Paul will neither chase me nor know who I am unless I tell him

I promise that:

• I am a reader
• I will finish Book One within one month
• I will pay if I want to read Book Two
• I will otherwise pass it on to the next honest reader
• I will comply with the instructions inside the book

I emphasise that if they pass it on, they should only do so after the next person agrees to the same terms. That way – in a perfect world – each book should self-guide to find its reader; someone who will enjoy and pay for it.

In its design phase, I threw some calculations and wild assumptions into the air. I told myself that half the books would disappear for a hundred reasons. Of the 5,000 working for me, the most I should hope for is that half will enjoy it until I get a better handle on finding my readers. That meant that, if everything worked well, I might expect 2,500 payments and a corresponding number of people who want to buy Book Two and help spread the word. I felt that if I got 1,000 (thus paying for the entire print run with profit on Book Two) I would feel it was worth it and that that seed could lead to greater things.

I ran the idea past some marketers who told me that any corporation running such a campaign – with all their resources and expertise – would be overjoyed to get a 3% return. That, they said, would count as a fabulous success and it was extremely unlikely that I would achieve anywhere near that. I thought that people would treat an individual who trusted them differently and most would take their promise seriously. There is a real relationship between writer and reader and I felt that aiming for three times that ‘maximum’ figure was entirely reasonable. Only a fool would ignore such advice, however, and these warnings helped me shape the project.

In the experimental phase (mid-May to end-July), I distributed approximately 1,000 copies and to-date (from that base) have received over 200 payments. If I factor in Book Two, the experimental phase alone will pay for half the cost of the entire 10,000 print run.

I have a long way to go. In the past few weeks, I’ve put out another 1,500 copies to people at the Edinburgh International Arts Festival. It will be at least two months before I get a handle on the results from this latest push but, in total, I now have 241 payments. Some of the extra 41 will have come from fast Edinburgh readers and others from late payers or from people who acquired a copy from someone else during the experimental phase. I missed a trick and did not ask people to let me know where they got it from. Thankfully, along with their contact details and fabulous letters and comments, many tell me anyway.

I may yet fall flat on my face but if the current rate of payment continues, I will have twice the number needed to call success and the book will make more than it would have done had I gone down the traditional route with all 10,000.

I will keep you posted.

Facts and figures:

10,000 trade paperbacks (high quality paper) complete with weatherproof covering – £5,400. This figure includes proofs, shipment from India to the UK and then directly to storage near Glasgow. It includes all customs duty and import tax and is VAT free.

I charge £7.99 if someone wants to own the book or £3.50 per reader if they are happy to keep it in circulation (by getting another honest person to agree to the terms before passing it on).

Most people pay full-price. At this time the figure is over 70%. I expect that ratio to change as more of those who pay the lower sum find like-minded readers. I have no idea how this aspect will work out but, if successful, the pay-off for accepting a reduced price will be a greater readership and more sales of Book Two and beyond.

Around 90% of those who pay provide contact details so that when Book Two is published I will send emails, postcards and sms text messages to let readers know that it is available.

Almost every person I talk to on the streets ‘gets it’. In particular, I’m seeing an instant reaction in young people’s eyes as they light up and I have discovered that a key ‘audience’ for my work lies with intelligent readers in that age-group. I don’t know why, but that was a surprise. The story starts with intrigue before gaining energy and I guess I worried that I may lose impatient readers for that reason. Young women and older girls as well as young men with good attention spans appear to love it, but the book has many older fans of both sexes and I would not know what shelf to put it on.

The idea is mirrored by an eBook Honesty version on my site. Like the physical copy, only those who enjoy the story should pay the full price.

Dreamwords is on the Kindle and, through Smashwords, the iPAD, Nook, Sony & Kobo.

I truly believe that authors can take control of their careers. They can change their own lives and inspire others to do the same. While my decision to use trust as the basis for this project was a commercial one, I hope to remind us all that we are lucky to live in the modern-world. It only takes one person to destroy your life, but in protecting ourselves from the bad-guys, we need to be careful not to exclude our neighbours. Most are honest, most are worthy of our trust. I’d stake my life on it.

Editor’s Note:  This article was written for TeleRead by Paul Story. You can find Paul’s website here. You can also buy the ebook from the site in Epub or Kindle format for $6.99 – and if you don’t like it and email Paul “within two and seven days stating that you read more than halfway and did not enjoy it … I will believe you without question [and will] will refund $5.99” I just bought a copy, myself. PB.