How Long Should My Book Be?

An important part of the equation of any book should be its length.  The simple and not so inaccurate answer is however long it needs to be.  I'm a big believer in stories going as long as they're entertaining and/or interesting.  I think that when people try to artificially lengthen or shrink a story, they damage it.  In fact, I wish movies would switch to a more open format, charging viewers based on their lengths.  There are some movies that would be wonderful 30 minute stories but feel stretched into two hours, (I felt that way when I saw Ex Machina,) while some movies are true epics and should last 3 or 4 hours, or be series.  (I felt that way when I saw the movie Elizabeth.)

However, you do want to make sure to categorize your book accordingly, then price and promote it based on its length.  If a story is more of a novella, you don't want people expecting an epic and being let down.  That only leads to bad reviews.  Likewise, if your story is a simple one, and it drags on, people aren't going to finish it.

Having come from the film industry, my own rule of thumb on novels comes from comparing the number of minutes to the number of words.  A typical movie is a little over or under 100 minutes, (about 70 minutes to 130 minutes.)  A typical novel is a little over or under 100,000 words, (about 70,000 to 130,000 words.)  That's average.  If you have a specific promotional goal in mind that you plan to sell it like it's Game of Thrones, you go for more words.  If you're going for a more serialized view where you're coming out with a lot of books, you go for fewer.  But be careful how few you go, you don't want the readers feeling it's more of a short story.

There are things you can do with sizes of pages and typsetting with the physical books, but remember that most people are purchasing your books on Kindle, so word count is more important than ever today.

10,000 - 30,000 words usually makes a short story, and 30,000 to 70,000 is usually a novella, but these numbers are flexible.  The most important thing to bear in mind is what your readers will be interested in, and be honest with them, because the most important thing to remember is that reviews trump everything in the book world.  They not only cause people to decide whether or not they'll buy your book, but they also place you up or down the rankings on sites like Amazon.

Kindle Promotions on Amazon

Over the past year or so, Amazon has added some options for promoting your book on their site.  They seem to be the only ones who understand that the more money you make as an author, the more they make as a platform, a lesson Barnes & Noble seems unable to figure out; but whatever.  Let's look at the three major options on Amazon.

First, there are the two options that are free to you: the Kindle Countdown Deal and the Free Book Promotion.  Of these two, you would think Kindle Countdown Deal is the better one.  First, it puts your book on sale without making it free, so you make some money from it.  It also places it prominently on the website so there's more exposure.  There's also a timer with this ad so people feel under pressure to buy it soon.  This sort of advertising works a lot with larger companies.

But somehow it hasn't seemed to work so well with independents.  When this option first came out, a lot of people tried it, and quickly said they were going back to Free Book Promotions because they saw better results with it.  I experienced the same thing.  I think that ultimately it comes down to people not wanting to take a chance, not even with a dollar, on something they don't know.

As for the Free Book Promotion, this allows you to give away your book for free for five days.  There's still a part of me that rolls my eyes when I hear that.  Gee, can I really give away my own product for free?  Thanks!  And what's worse, the book does not get placed in a better position; people still need to find it and happen to notice that it's free without a catch.  Generally, you have to pay other sites to show off that this sale is going on.  So why does it work so well?

It basically puts your name out there to people who weren't going to take a chance on you otherwise.  I think people who are giving a chance to unknown authors are wanting to see as much as they can for free before purchasing anything.  That's why series work best for indie authors.  If you have a solo book, once you've given it away for free, that's it.  They might buy it as a physical book, but what you're really hoping for is that enough people download it that the book raises high in the rankings, and when it goes up for sale at a price again, it's more visible on the site.  This does happen, but it fades back into obscurity pretty quickly, and whatever sales you got is what you got.

But when it's a series, that one book is given away, and people become curious as to what the next book will be, and the next, and so on.  The general strategy today is to release the first book for free as much as possible, always advertising the fact that it's free, and have the second and third one available for a price, sometimes 99 center for the second, then 2.99 for the third to get the readers slowly into it.

The paid ad campaign is the newest feature.  Ads never work as well as reviews in books, but they certainly don't hurt.  Sometimes all the social media work in the world doesn't help as much as just having your book image appear on thousands of computer screens.  And best of all, Amazon only charges you for the clicks that went through, meaning you're only paying for the ad when it's successful enough to grab a customer.

In this way, I believe it's helpful.  It's not the end-all be-all.  You need to remember that the ad campaign needs to be run in conjunction with other efforts, and it's more of a long-term goal rather than a short one.  You'll get more people looking at your work and who you are when they see this ad, which will hopefully turn into sales.  This is another reason series are a bit better, because they can stick with you, checking you out from time to time as your work keeps getting released.  And that journey sometimes begins with an ad.

So what I'll be using is Free Book Promotions on the first book in my series in conjunction with an ad campaign that comes out more and more the closer we come to the release of book 2.

The Top 6 Mistakes People Make Self-Publishing a Book

I've been watching this woman's work for a while now and she has wonderful advice for independent authors and publishers.  This is about mistakes that indies often make.

Beginning Science Fiction Promotions

The biggest lesson I learned from publishing and promoting Two Gun Hart is that there is a reason the independent bestsellers are not typically non-fiction, they are fiction.  In fact, they're typically sci fi or fantasy, and they generally are in series.  So I've had to look hard into what works.

I can't say I've entirely figured it out, but I'm learning as I set it all up.  My original plan had involved a lot of concentration on pre-sales, trying to get so many people to buy before the release so the release date would look huge, and hopefully I would get into the New York Times Bestseller list.  I learned from Two Gun and from other top sellers that this isn't a goal that's good to concentrate on for independents.  People don't know us yet, so they need to learn to trust us.

That's why series work the best.  Readers want to see what we can do before they spend money.  That means seeing something for free.  And if you have only one book, you're limited on what you can show.  You can give away a chapter, maybe two, but after you've given those away, you don't have a lot more to give to get attention on another day, and audiences typically need to see you multiple times before they'll buy your work.  I think I heard the number is something like nine times before they'll consider buying your work.

So the best thing to do is to have a series where you have multiple books.  Most of the top sellers have given away the first book and the second costs some money, often still very cheap.  This entices readers in slowly but surely.  I have been coming out with short stories and giving them away to anyone who would read them to hopefully get them involved.  I always direct them back tot he website where new products are constantly being posted.

As for my plans for promotion, they go in three stages:  Pre-pre-release, Pre-release, and Post-release.

Pre-pre-release is 6-3 months before release.  This is when I send out everything that's been done before.  I'm trying to get my first book out to as many reviewers as possible, and make people aware of the series, the short stories, and the products that existed before.  I'm sort of catching up during this period.

Pre-release is beginning Christmas day, and will go until release in March, a period of almost exactly 3 months.  This is going to be when I build hype for the book coming out, and will mostly focus on how the story is directing towards the second book.  The short stories will start leading toward something specific, that something being what's in the second book.  Also, this step begins on Christmas because I will be giving away the first novel and the pick your path book that day to get people who just got a new Kindle into the series.  The pick your path book in particular leads to the second book as it's the introduction of the villains who are in it.

And finally, release.  This will be the biggest time for this.  I've found that with self-published authors, readers typically want to see what you've got, not what could be.  While it's good to generate hype leading up to the product, I've noticed that those who have done well have done so once the book's out.  The release will be happening at Wondercon, which will be the big event where we have a booth, are hosting a game, and will be doing everything we can to bring attention to the book.  Just before and after that, we'll be throwing up every advertisement we can, and appearing on every social media group possible, giving away the first book, short stories, and every manner of giveaway item we can just to bring attention to that second book, which will be available on Kindle for a low price to attract readers.  The number of downloads will be more important than the profit as these numbers get the attention of more numbers, and it's the interest in the series I'm most interested in at this time.

If it becomes popular enough, I can continue the series, and the fan base will grow for book 3.