Nightfall - the US edition

Nightmare - the third book in the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective series will be published by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK next week - following on from Nightfall and Midnight.

It rounds off the trilogy but sets the scene for a continuing series based around Jack - solving crimes and battling the forces of darkness. I have great fun writing the Nightingale books and the research is a blast!

Meanwhile, Amazon is preparing to publish the first book - Nightfall - in the United States. They will be using their 47North imprint and will have the book out in March, followed soon afterwards by the other two. It's going to be exciting seeing them launched onto the American market!

Amazon have had great success with the two eBooks of mine that they have published - The Basement and Once Bitten. The Basement topped both the US and the UK Kindle charts which I think is pretty amazing. I'm hoping that 47North will have similar success with the Nightingale series. The KIndle has opened up the publishing world to independent writers in a way that a few years ago they could only have dreamed of, but there's no doubt that success is easier to achieve once you have Amazon's awesome marketing weight behind you.

The Bestselling eBooks of 2011

The Bookseller magazine has just produced its list of the top 50 bestselling eBooks in 2011. And two of mine are numbers 3 and 4. How cool is that?

This is what the magazine has to say:

The number one title is Confessions of a GP, the Benjamin Daniels hit that has been in and around the the weekly chart for much of the year, thanks to some smart pricing decisions and marketing from publisher The Friday Project: in print the book has sold just 8,500 copies in UK, but has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Top 10

1 Confessions of a GP Benjamin Daniels The Friday Project
2 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson Quercus
3 The Basement Stephen Leather AmazonEncore
4 Hard Landing Stephen Leather Hodder
5 One Day David Nicholls Hodder
6 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest Stieg Larsson Quercus
7 The Girl Who Played with Fire Stieg Larsson Quercus
8 A Game of Thrones George R R Martin Harper Voyager
9 Room Emma Donoghue Picador
10 The Hanging Shed Gordon Ferris Corvus

Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo is in second place (and with the US film version of the book now out we can expect sales to once again begin climbing), ahead of two Stephen Leather titles, one self-published and now part of the AmazonEncore programme. David Nicholls One Day, a print and film success over the year, comes in at fifth, ahead of the next two Millennium titles, with A Game of Thrones, Room, and The Hanging Shed, making up the remainder of the top ten.

11 to 20

11 Sugar & Spice Saffina Desforges MWiDP
12 Truth Dare Kill Gordon Ferris Corvus
13 The Alchemist's Secret Scott Mariani Avon
14 Bloody Valentine James Patterson Cornerstone
15 Star Sullivan Maeve Binchy Orion
16 Life and Laughing Michael McIntyre Penguin
17 Sister Rosamund Lupton Hachette Digital
18 The Unremarkable Heart Karin Slaughter Cornerstone
19 A Clash of Kings George R R Martin Voyager
20 The Help Kathryn Stockett Penguin

Despite having no titles in the top ten, Transworld is actually the most successful publisher in the top 50 with five titles, though among the big groups the spoils are won by Hachette, which has 11 titles in the list compared with Random's nine. There are fewer self-published titles than one might have thought given all the noise they generate, but of course this is not just a Kindle chart, it includes chart positions from the likes of Waterstone's and W H Smith, where self-published titles gain little light. There are, of course, no self-published books in the equivalent print chart.

21 to 30

21 The Last 10 Seconds Simon Kernick Transworld
22 The Redbreast Jo Nesbø Vintage
23 A Tiny Bit Marvellous Dawn French Penguin
24 Limitless Alan Glynn Faber
25 Those in Peril Wilbur Smith Macmillan
26 Caught Harlan Coben Orion
27 The Case of the Missing Boyfriend Nick Alexander Corvus
28 Silver Steven Savile Bad Press
29 Unlikely Killer Ricki Thomas Wild Wolf
30 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro Faber

The chart is dominated by fiction, and in particular adventure/thriller novels. There are 30 such books in the digital top 50 compared with just 12 in the print equivalent. In non-fiction the highest charting book is Life and Laughing by Michael McIntrye, which at 16 is 22 places ahead of the next contender, Madeleine by Kate McCann. The McInyre title was of course last Christmas' big Christmas hit—unlike in the print chart there are barely any Christmas biggies from 2011, in particular not a Jamie in sight. James Corden does, however, sneak in at 47—he has shifted 130,000 print copies too.

31 to 40

31 Second Son Lee Child Transworld
32 Locked in Kerry Wilkinson Self-published
33 Mr Right for the Night Marisa Mackle Self-published
34 The Affair Lee Child Transworld
35 Cold Kill Neil White Avon
36 Mile High Guy Marisa Mackle Dodder
37 The Family Martina Cole Headline
38 Madeleine Kate McCann Transworld
39 Into the Darkest Corner Elizabeth Haynes Myriad
40 The Crimson Petal and the White Michel Faber Canongate

The average selling price of the top 50 on Amazon was just £3.50, with 10 available for less than £1. In the printt char, the equivalent price was £6.60 with just one book (The Official Highway Code) retailing at under £4.

41 to 50

41 Afterwards Rosamund Lupton Hachette Digital
42 That Summer in Ischia Penny Feeny Tindal Street
43 Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson Hachette Digital
44 Suicide Run Michael Connelly Orion
45 Candles on the Sand Katie Stephens Self-published
46 Snuff Terry Pratchett Transworld
47 May I Have Your Attention Please? James Corden Cornerstone
48 Daddy's Home A K Alexander Self-published
49 Catch Your Death Voss/Edwards Harper
50 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John le Carré Sceptre

Ignoring the self-published titles, there are two e-book originals in the top 50 Lee Child's Second Son and Karin Slaughter's The Unremarkable Heart. Given the announcements coming out from publishers towards the end of this year, I think we'll see more originals and shorter works in next year's Top 50.

I have to say that I'm not convinced that the Confessions Of A GP did outsell The Basement - More than 160,000 copies of The Basement sold on Kindle alone, and it was in the charts for much longer than the GP book. But I'm happy with third place!

The Basement Hits Number 2 in the US Kindle Store

The Basement got to Number 2 in the US Kindle store today - how brilliant is that?

Sadly it hasn't got much to do with me, it's more a reflection of Amazon's marketing power.

They cut the price to 99 cents and made it the Daily Kindle Deal which means it was massively promoted.

Over the space of a few hours it went from Number 60 to Number 2, just behind The Hunger Games.

Amazon did a similar deal with Joe Konrath and Blake Crouch's book Stirred last week.

The Basement has been out for a year now and never got higher than Number 2,000 while I was publishing it. But as soon as Amazon Encore took it over, it shot to the top of the charts. That's great news for me, but I don't think it bodes well for Indie authors. A lot is said about how Indie writers don't need publishers any more but in this case Amazon is acting as a publisher and they have achieved far more success in a few hours than I've achieved in a year. So next time someone tells you that publishing is dead you can take that with a pinch of salt. The publishing world is still going to be dominated by publishers, and as the eBook cake grows bigger, they will be taking a bigger share. That doesn't mean that independents won't still flourish, but it's going to be a much tougher market than it was a year ago.

Amazon Encore Take Over Two Of My Books!

As of this week, I am no longer self-publishing The Basement and Once Bitten, my two eBook bestsellers that between them have sold almost a quarter of a million copies on Kindle alone.

After selling close to half a million eBooks over the past twelve months I’m now taking a step back from self-publishing. I’ve spent twelve months promoting, marketing, plugging, Facebooking and tweeting and I’m exhausted. It’s time for someone else to do the hard work so that I can do what I do best – write.

Amazon Encore is now publishing my vampire novel Once Bitten, including for the first time a paperback version, and my serial killer novella the Basement, which topped the UK Kindle charts for several months and sold more than 150,000 copies.

Then early next year Amazon’s new imprint 47North is publishing my three Jack Nightingale supernatural detective series – Nightfall, Midnight and Nightmare.

Most of what follows recently appeared on Joe Konrath's blog, but it's worth retelling here.

Self-publishing was always an experiment for me. In fact I was one of the first authors to self-publish on the Kindle – I put up my book Private Dancer back in 2005. I hardly sold any and months would go by without a single sale.

But everything changed for me in the summer of 2010 when Amazon opened its first Kindle store outside of the US and allowed us Brits to buy from Amazon.co.uk. The new store, plus the fact that the Kindle was about to become the most Christmas-gifted item of all time, gave me the impetus to start self-publishing.

Exactly twelve months ago I put up three more eBooks on the Kindle through Amazon’s KDP platform, books that my UK publisher Hodder and Stoughton had turned down. There was a vampire story (Once Bitten), a serial killer novella (The Basement) and a science fiction murder mystery (Dreamer’s Cat).

It’s been a resounding success. I don’t know of any UK-based author who has sold more self-published books. (Though fellow Brit Lee child of course was one of the first to hit the one millions sales mark).

Over the last twelve months I sold 155,662 copies of The Basement through the UK Kindle store. Mainly at the Amazon minimum (75p plus 11p tax in the UK) but over the last couple of months the price has gone up to £1.49 (about $2).

Over the same period I sold 82,583 copies of Once Bitten and 19,810 copies of Dreamer’s Cat. The Kindle success spilled over onto the other eReaders and by the summer I was selling tens of thousands of copies a month on iBooks.

My earnings were much better than I expected when I first signed up with KDP. My best month in the UK (January) netted me an Amazon check for £11,295 and my worst month (February) produced £5,236.

My sales in the US were much lower – just 5,197 copies of The Basement and 2,397 copies of Once Bitten over the year. But earnings were more consistent, around $1,200 every month. I realised fairly quickly that low prices don’t necessarily equate to higher sales in the US so I kept my prices at $2.99 and above.

I pretty much tried everything to boost my US sales. I blogged, I tweeted, I gave away free copies, I posted on the Kindle US forum (not a pleasant experience, it has to be said). Nothing worked. Even a guest blog on Joe’s site only shifted a few dozen extra copies.

That’s why I’m so excited about the Amazon Encore deal. Yes, I’ll get a lower royalty rate (they don’t pay the 70 per cent royalty on Amazon Encore books, no matter what the price they sell at). And yes I lose control over the marketing and pricing. But I’m hoping that Amazon’s marketing expertise will kick in and hopefully replicate my UK success in the US. Their massive database knows which customers like vampire stories and which prefer serial killer stories. They’ll be able to offer my books to the right customers, hopefully at the right price. I’ve seen them do it several times in the UK, where the Amazon imprints have launched American writers into the UK Top 10 in a matter of days. It’s as impressive as hell, they can do in hours what it takes me weeks to do. If they can do that for me in the US then the sky’s the limit. Say the US market for Kindle eBooks is five times that of the UK’s – if that’s the case then there’s no reason that Amazon Encore couldn’t sell a million copies of The Basement and Once Bitten. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

But one of the fascinating things for me about my whole Kindle experiment has been the support I’ve received from my UK publisher, Hodder and Stoughton. I’ve been with them for more than twenty years, ever since they paid a six-figure sum for my books The Chinaman and The Vets. It was that advance that launched my career as a full-time writer and changed my life forever.

Not only were Hodder supportive of my eBook experiment, they also joined in and cut the price of one of my thrillers to 49p. The book, Hard Landing, is the first in my Spider Shepherd undercover cop series – and over the last 12 months Hodder have sold more than 120,000 copies. It spent weeks at the top of the Kindle UK chart and only recently dropped out of the Top 100. And not only that, there was an immediate boost in sales of all the other books in the series – and they were selling at £4.99 each. Over the year they sold more than 35,000 Spider Shepherd eBooks at that price.

But the really big surprise for them came this summer when they released the latest book in the Spider Shepherd series – Fair Game. Sales of the paperback were twenty per cent up on the previous book at a time when the UK thriller market as a whole was well down.

It’s become clear that my success with eBooks has fed through to my legacy publishing books in a big way. But it’s also clear that my publisher is keen to help me build on that success. So this year I have signed deals to write five more books for them in return for an advance of close to US$750,000.

I know there are those who’d say that I’d make more money doing books myself. But I’m not so sure.

Publishers publish. That’s what they’re good at. They find writers, they help shape their stories, and they sell them. All that’s changing is the method of selling stories, from paperbacks to eBooks. The big publishers are like oil tankers, it takes a lot of effort to make them change their direction and speed, but once they have moved they have one hell of a lot of momentum. Yes, I can arrange the editing myself, design covers, market, promote and publicise. But that’s hard work and it’s not what I’m good at. I’m a writer. I write. And I’d rather concentrate on writing and let my publisher get on with publishing.

Yes, the industry is changing. Yes, sales of paperbacks are down and sales of eBooks are rising. Without a shadow of a doubt the eBook market will dominate in the future. But I think what we have seen over the past year has been a bubble, a bubble that is now slowly deflating. Not a bubble in sales – but a bubble in the performance of self-published eBooks. A year ago, when I started my eBook experiment, it was relatively easy to get three of my books into the Amazon Kindle UK bestseller list. And they stayed there – for months. Only last month did they leave the Top 50. But an eBook I released last month – optimistically titled The Bestseller – went into the Top 10 but didn’t stay there for long. And most of the eBooks that were doing so well earlier this year have pretty much disappeared from the bestseller lists. The self-published authors who were shouting that the traditional publishing industry was dead and that the future lay with them are now seeing their books dropping out of the Top 1000 and sales slowing to a trickle.

In their place we’re seeing the old faces starting to dominate the bestseller list – Lee Child, Stephen King, Michael Connelly, PD James. The usual suspects. And among them are the Amazon-published authors benefiting from Amazon’s marketing muscle.

Why is it happening? I don’t know. It might be that the marketplace is changing, it might be that Amazon has changed the way it compiles its bestseller lists. But the cause doesn’t matter – it’s the effect that counts. And I think that bit by bit we’ll see the legacy publishers tighten their grip on the eBook bestseller lists, and the self-published books will find it harder and harder to make any sort of impression.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that I’m far from being the typical self-publisher. And what works for me probably wouldn’t work for a writer who has never had a traditional publishing deal or who is only just getting started. But I’m happy enough now to get off the self-publishing treadmill and let someone else do the hard work. I’ve got books I want to write!

I Make The Bookseller 100 Most Influential List

I made the Bookseller magazine list of 100 Most Influential people in the UK book trade. How cool is that?

40th Review For The Bestseller

Yeah, my eBook The Bestseller just received its 40th review in the UK - and thankfully it's with five-stars. And it's from someone using their real name, too, which I always take as a good sign. I have fewer reviews for The Bestseller in the US, but so far they have all been five stars!

Here it is:


5.0 out of 5 stars Quick and enjoyable..., 7 Nov 2011
By A. J. Philpott "mightyyid" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Bestseller (Kindle Edition)
Nice good easy read, and great for train rides and given the seemingly smaller length, it is not as intrinsically captivating as a long novel that Mr Leather is renowned for, but at the same time it's an easy read that captivates from start to finish. All in a ll a good solid read that was quite enjoyable.

So thanks very much for the review, Mr or Mrs Philpott - you made my day.

I'm less taken with a reviewer who hid behind the name 'Waylander' who took the time to give every single one of my books on the Goodreads forum a one-star vote. The reviews only stayed up for a few days before they were taken down. I'm not sure if "Waylander" had a change of heart or if the Goodreads moderators removed them, but it doesn't matters in the grand scheme of things because my books have so many four and five star votes that the odd one star doesn't make any difference. I do think it's a shame that websites like Goodreads and Amazon allow anonymous postings. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, on authors and on books, and providing they aren't libelous or offensive they have every right to express their opinions. But there are people who use anonymity as an excuse to behave badly, and really something needs to be done about that. If someone wants to give a book a negative rating that's all well and good, but at least they should have the courage of their convictions and use their real name. I post reviews under my real name and stand by them. And whenever I post on a public forum I use my own name. I would never post a negative review under an alias. That's just cowardly.

Anyway, on a more productive note I'm flat out on a new Jack Nightingale story which Hodder and Stoughton will be using to publicise my new Nightingale book - Nightmare - which will be published in January. I hope to have it finished by the weekend.... It's about a gypsy's curse and I'm having great fun with it....

When the short story is done I'm embarking on a new project that I'm really excited about. I'm getting together with three of the brightest names in ePublishing to co-write an eBook about werewolves. It's a whole new venture for me because other than on screenplays I haven't worked with other writers before, and it'll be my first time writing about werewolves. I'm sure it's going to be a blast. I'll keep you posted!

Great Article In The Daily Mail

There's a great article in the Daily Mail about ePublshing, quoting me at length. YOU CAN READ IT HERE

The article was written by journalist Andrew Wilson, who has just published his own book on the Kindle.

Andrew sent me a whole list of questions for his article, here they are in full:


How easy is the process of self publishing?

Self-publishing is now very, very easy and inexpensive. Amazon have totally transformed the market with their Kindle Direct Publishing platform. It takes a few minutes to open an account, and a few minutes to download a book and its cover. Then within hours your book is on sale and available to millions of Kindle-owners around the world. You can reach all the other eReaders by going through an on-line company called Smashwords, which is just as easy to use.




What’s the best way to start?


First, write a good book. The big problem with the explosion in ePublishing is that the vast majority of books that are being self-published are just plain awful. Badly written, badly-edited, badly formatted. Most of the so-called “Indie” writers (who previously would have been described as ‘unpublished’) rush to get their work on-line and frankly most of them are wasting their time. A badly written book isn’t going to sell, no matter how cheap it is.
I think of writing a book as being akin to running a marathon. Anyone who finishes a marathon deserves kudos. It’s a long haul. It’s hard work. But just because you’ve run a marathon doesn’t mean you should be running at the Olympics.

Writing for the most part is a craft. A skill that has to be learned. Very few writers published the traditional way see their first book in print. It’s often their fifth or sixth that is good enough to be published. Jack Higgins famously wasn’t published until after he’d written more than a dozen novels and he didn’t achieve any real success until his 36th – The Eagle Has Landed.

EPublishing has removed that learning curve. Now any book can be published, no matter how awful. And I think that’s bad for writers.

Assuming though that you have written a good book, the second stage is to open accounts with Kindle Digital Publishing and with Smashwords. It requires a little work to get the books formatted, but you can someone to do that for at little as £25. And you need a good cover. Again most ‘Indie’ writers Photoshop their own and generally they look awful. I pay a professional designer £350 a time for my covers. You don’t have to pay that much, but you need your cover to look professional. Then you’re good to go. You download your book and cover and wait for the royalty cheques to arrive.



What kind of books sell best? Why do thrillers sell so well on Kindle?


A look at the various eBook bestseller lists shows that books that sell well as paperbacks also sell well as eBooks. A good book sells no matter what the format. But at the cheaper end of the market there does seem to be a lot of interest in crime, thrillers and in paranormal romance. It might be because fans of those genres do tend to read more than the average reader.



What mistakes did you make if any? What have you learned?


Generally I got it pretty much right. I would say that my first books were downloaded with too many typos but I was lucky in that very quickly a few readers came back to me pointing out mistakes they had spotted. The beauty of ePublishing is that you can make any necessary changes almost immediately. With hindsight I should have paid for a professional proofreader to go through the books before I started selling them.



What advice can you give about pricing?


The cheaper the book, the more it will sell, obviously. Amazon allows you to sell for as little as 99 cents in the US and 75p in the UK. For s first-time writer self-publishing on the Kindle, that’s probably the best price. Certainly it’s hard for a first time Indie writer to sell a book for more than £1.




What advice would you give about cover design?

You get what you pay for. Doing it yourself, unless you are a talented designer, marks you out as an amateur. In the world of ePublishing people most definitely do judge a book by its cover.



How long should a book be? I know The Basement is 40,000 words – what’s the ideal length for Kindle?


The beauty of eBooks is that the buyer is more concerned about quality than length. That’s different to paperback books where publishers go out of their way to make it look as if the buyer is getting value for money – they seem to feel that the more pages, the better. I think 40,000 words is a great length for an eBook as it can be comfortably read in one sitting. I have also started selling short stories on the Kindle. I think the eReader is going to revitalise the short story market. Someone who is about to get onto a bus or train for an hour might not want to start a new book but would happily read a short story. I also think that we might see more serials being sold, with writers putting up a new chapter every week or month. But generally a novel should be around 100,000 to 120,000 words.



How do you get the book noticed? And noticed – and noticed??

I think writers should concentrate on improving their craft rather than worrying about promoting their book. Every “Indie” writer now has a blog, they have a Facebook presence which they use to constantly push their work, (a quarter of my Facebook “friends” are writers who do nothing other than post about their books) and they spend hours on the various eBook forums. It’s all about the marketing. They ask for other writers to tag their books, they get friends and family to post favourable reviews (it’s amazing how many self-published eBooks start off with half a dozen five-star reviews on Amazon, mostly from readers who have only ever reviewed the one book) and they share Tweets with other writers. Every “Indie” writer is following the same formula. Sell, sell, sell. Does it work? In the early days of ePublishing it probably did because it was a new phenomenon but these days there are just too many writers out there promoting that you really can’t see the wood for the trees.

The way to get your book onto the bestseller list is to write a book that people want to read. Word of mouth will do the rest. Too many Indie writers seem to think that you can create a buzz by just pushing your book down people’s throats. That doesn’t work. Word of mouth happens because people read a book that they have enjoyed and they tell their friends. You can’t create that, it’s down to the quality of the book.



What are the best websites/blogs to use to try and publicize one’s book?

You need your own blog. That’s a given. And you should guest blog on as many other blogs as you can. The various Kindle forums run by Amazon are good, and there are lots of other good sites around including Goodreads.com and Kindeboards.com. New sites are springing up every day. The trick is to go onto the various forums and make them aware of your books without overstaying your welcome.


How many e-books have you sold?

Since I started self-publishing last November, I’ve sold close to 400,000 eBooks and my publisher has sold more than 100,000, mainly of my Spider Shepherd series, so in total about half a million.



Can you say how much you’ve earned from e-books?

(Honestly I’d rather not say – it’s quite complex to work out because there are so many different prices and royalty rates)


Is it possible – as some claim – to make a million from Kindle?

Providing you have good work that sells, of course. It has always been possible to become rich by writing. But the simple fact is that the vast majority of writers don’t earn enough to support themselves by writing. And that’s not going to change. All ePublishing has done is to change the way that books are delivered to customers. That doesn’t mean that a customer is more likely to buy your work. Can you make a million from the Kindle? Sure. Price your book at 75p and sell four million copies! Amazon will give you a third of the money they make – and that’s a cool million.



How do you see publishing in 5/10/20 years?

As time goes on more people will have eReaders and I think that within five years there will be more eBooks sold than paperbacks. But I don’t think paperbacks will die out for a long time yet. Most people do seem to prefer to hold a real book in their hands – I certainly do. Publishers will have to adapt, and most are starting to change. Agents too will find their work much harder. In the past it was agents and publishers who decided which books were published and sold. But ePublishing has changed that, now anyone can publish their book and it is the readers who decide what sells. That is a major shift in power that I think people in the industry are only just coming to terms with. But there is definitely a role for publishers in ePublishing. I would say that ninety per cent of the eBooks that are self-published are awful. And I would say that ninety per cent of the books published by traditional publishers are excellent. So who are buyers more likely to trust when it comes to buying a book? That’s why we’ll always need publishers, because they more than anyone understand the importance of maintaining quality.