Kindle Scout and Me

Have you heard about the relatively new Kindle Scout program? If not, I’ll tell you about it in a minute. If so, I’ll tell you why I chose to try it.

But first, here’s how I came to my decision to try to qualify for this Amazon publishing venture and here is the link where you can nominate my book, Ant Farm.

The situation before Kindle Scout

The Seamus McCree series is published by Barking Rain Press (BRP), a small publisher. The books have generated positive reader reviews. The few professional reviews they have received have also been positive. But BRP does not have the resources for any kind of major publicity campaign. While I have done what I can to promote the books, one aspect I have not had any control over (nor would I in a traditional publishing contract) is the ability to aggressively price books to generate a larger reader base.

I have confidence that if I can get people to read a book in the series, they will want to read more about Seamus and friends and the scrapes they get into. If I were persistent and produced a book a year, by the time I had five or seven books in the series, I would have built a bigger following and the series might have traction. Was there a better way?

My electronic equivalent of the bottom drawer contained the first novel I wrote with Seamus McCree. I referred to it as my practice novel because, through its dozen drafts I learned how to write a mystery. It was good enough to garner an agent offer, but not strong enough to be published, and so six years ago, I put it aside. Last fall I reread it. Ant Farm had good bones, but needed major work to bring it up to my current standards. With effort, I could make it an excellent read.

If I self-published that reworked story, I could use it as a marketing device to help bring readers into the series. It could be a loss leader for the series. I could hook readers with Ant Farm and continue to provide good stories with Bad Policy, Cabin Fever, and Doubtful Relations (the manuscript I put aside to rework Ant Farm). Done correctly, I could build the Seamus McCree “franchise” more quickly.

After hemming and hawing at this change in plans from finishing Doubtful Relations first, I decided to tackle Ant Farm. I rewrote, re-edited, sent to beta readers, re-edited, proofread, and now it’s ready to go.

While I was revising, Amazon announced the Kindle Scout program. Briefly, it is a way for Amazon to get great content for their Kindle ebooks and Audible audio books based on reader nominations. An author submits a complete book in one of three genres, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Romance or Science Fiction/Fantasy. Amazon staff reviews the submission, which includes a book cover, logline, blurb, author bio and some optional questions the author can answer. If they appear reasonable, within a couple of business days the book is listed and available for nomination. My direct link is https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3IATL9SA04ZS2

Disadvantages of Kindle Scout Program

Extra preparation

Submitting to the Kindle Scout program cost me no money and only a bit of time to jump through their hoops.

Unlike traditional publishing where the publisher produces the book cover, for Scout I had to submit one. Since I had planned to self-publish anyway, I already had a cover prepared. However, I had to develop a logline with a maximum of 45 characters, a short blurb (max 500 characters), cram my author bio into another 500-character limit, and choose three questions to answer, each in 300 characters.

I can use the logline for promotion, and the other stuff didn’t take too much time, and I had no extra cost, so the process was not much of a burden.

Loss of Pricing Control

Recall that one of my reasons for independently publishing Ant Farm was to maintain pricing control so I could generate free and reduced price opportunities to introduce people to the Seamus McCree series. Amazon, as the publisher, controls all pricing decisions. They will decide if the book is $2.99 or $5.99 or whatever. They’ll decide whether to provide free days.

Loss of Timing Control

If selected, Amazon determines when the ebook version of Ant Farm will be published. If I am not selected, I could have had the ebook available a month earlier. That possibly cost a bit of revenue, but not much.

Kindle only

If accepted, my ebook will be available only in the Kindle format sold by Amazon or loaned through their Prime and Kindle Unlimited programs. No Barnes & Noble, no Kobo, no Scribd or Oyster. Amazon generates about 75% of my ebook sales. That means hooking my wagon to their horse gives up 25% of that potential revenue if all things are equal.

But will they be equal? I don’t think so, which brings us to the advantages as I see them.

Advantages of Kindle Scout Program

Promotion

The primary reason I wanted to independently publish Ant Farm was to generate more readers for the Seamus McCree series. I believe (no facts on which to judge as the program is too new) that Amazon will want the early books to succeed. As of this writing, the Kindle Scout program has selected eight books in November, eight in December, and so far only one in January.

If they select my book, it will be one of the first published, and I believe they will make sure those books will do well. They will promote the heck out of them, and they can do that much better than I, because they have the platform for it.

Advance

The Kindle Scout program pays a $1,500 advance for books they publish. That advance would cover the editing and book cover costs I’ve incurred. Whatever royalties I earn would be profit.

Free Publicity

Participating in the Kindle Scout program provides 30 days of free publicity for Ant Farm and by extension the entire series. Even if not selected, at the end of the 30-day period those people who nominate the book receive an email from me thanking them for their interest and inviting them to keep in touch with an email address and link to my website.

Plus, during the nomination process I will use social media to generate interest in Ant Farm’s participation in the program. If others retweet and share Facebook posts, it provides additional content for new people to learn of the series.

As the saying goes, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”

Exit Strategy

The initial contract with Kindle Scout is five years. However, if the ebook does not meet defined monetary goals, an author can cancel the contract in as few as two years. My contracts with Barking Rain Press have a three-year lock in. In reading Kindle Scout’s contract, it’s clear they intend the authors to be successful and if not, let them out of the program. So, if it is a bust, I can exit after two years, self-publish on all the platforms, and move on.

My conclusions

It comes down to giving up total control and ebook retailers to gain Amazon’s marketing power. Given my current level of sales, I think it provides a good risk/return tradeoff. Others may be in different places in their writing careers and could come to a different conclusion for them.

In case I haven’t been obvious. If you haven’t nominated Ant Farm yet, I hope you will. If you have, then thank you very much. I am offering extra praise for those who help publicize Ant Farm’s quest by letting others know.

It’s a good book, although I am a bit prejudiced.

~ Jim

Choosing Continuing Series Characters

Every novelist who writes a sequel or series has to choose which characters from the first (or second or third) should have a continuing role and which should fade into history. The main character is an obvious choice for a continuing role. Can you imagine Sue Grafton’s “Alphabet Series” without Kinsey Milhone? Neither can I. However, Clive Cussler managed over time to supplant his aging protagonist, Dirk Pitt, with his son, Dirk Pitt, Jr. But I digress; let’s assume your protagonist will continue to have the lead role. Who else do we keep, and why?

If the novels are cozy mysteries set in a small town or village, the author can keep everyone—until the author chooses to kill them off, that is, because the mortality rate in these places is pretty darn high. Fortunately, authors can easily replace the dead in the next volume in the series.

I don’t plot in advance; I’m a pantser. As I started writing the second in the Seamus McCree series (Bad Policy, which turned out to be the first published), I faced the question of who should get pink slips and whose contracts I should extend. Seamus’s son, Paddy, was a favorite of many readers. They enjoyed the father-son banter and occasional head-butting. I started with the premise I wanted to keep Paddy and he, of course, still had his cats, Cheech and Chong, so they got a free pass.

I wanted to write about insurance fraud, and I had introduced as a side character a man who owned an insurance agency. I killed him off. Because he was living in a town fifty miles from where Seamus lived, I had the opportunity to retain a number of local characters who readers enjoyed or would likely remember. First was Charlene—a sassy waitress. Next was her now boyfriend, Bear—a sheriff’s deputy. Charlene was perfect to fill in the local gossip, and Bear provided the local police angle. As a bonus, readers would see their relationship advance. Perfect, said the pantser.

The insurance agency had a secretary who Seamus thought of as Miss Smiles. Since her boss died early that allowed her space for a bigger role. The insurance fraud involved annuities, which allowed me to return a couple of folks from the local insurance company.

All these reflections allowed me to better understand why people like cozies: all those characters they get to know and love, or dislike, or whatever the author wants the reader to feel.

In the first manuscript I had introduced a nosy neighbor, Mrs. Keenan, and her wonderful Golden Retriever, Alice. When I needed someone to report on strange happenings while Seamus was away from home, I thought “who better than Mrs. Keenan?” I even gave Alice a larger role as an alert watchdog.

The first book introduced a love interest for Seamus, who had been divorced for many years. Abigail Hancock got a return role, but as often happens with love interests, not everything went as Seamus planned.

What I quickly discovered was that if I had a particular role to fill and I already had a character from the first book, there was no reason to create a new character as long as the first one made sense.

In the next book (Cabin Fever 3/2014) I changed locales. I cut loose all the now non-locals with small roles; those roles I needed to fill with new characters. I knew I wanted Paddy to participate in the story and sure enough found a way to involve him. The same thing happened with Abigail Hancock, the main love interest (the situation worsened—or did it?). As I wrote, I found ways to bring back a few of the previous characters for cameo roles. Readers liked that.

I am almost finished writing the first draft of the next in the series. I’ve developed some rules I now use.

1. Readers expect Paddy to have a significant role. Seamus would not be Seamus without Paddy. They want to see how the two of them deal with each other as father and son and as colleagues in solving problems.

2. Readers want Seamus to have a love interest—they don’t necessarily agree on who that should be.

3. A certain group of readers strongly appreciated Seamus’s mother in BAD POLICY. They were disappointed to discover the CABIN FEVER story did not lend itself to including her. However, in the edits I was able to include a closing bit to remind those people of Trudy McCree. She even gets the last word, which is what you would expect from her.

4. Don’t create a new persona when you already have someone at the ready to fill a role. People are always saying, “It’s a small world.” In my fiction, I want readers to smile when someone they’ve met before reappears. However, I must clue in new readers into the prior relationship is such a way that they feel comfortable (not a deus ex machina event) and continuing readers aren’t bored.

5. Some roles are useful to have. The gossip who knows everything that’s happening is one, but when changing locales, it’s important to find new kinds of players to fit the same role. Much better when I changed location from Chillicothe, Ohio to the Upper Peninsula Northwoods to replace Charlene, the sassy waitress, with Owen, the octogenarian woodsman, than to find another sassy waitress in the new town.

Those of you who are ahead of me in this writing game can let me know what I’ve missed. Readers, what do you like or not like about continuing side characters?

~ Jim

The Next Four Letter Word

Today we welcome Molly MacRae to Salad Bowl Saturday. I'll be seeing Molly as we both attend Magna cum Murder in Indianapolis next week. I had the good fortune to read her Last Wool and Testament. Despite the fact that it was a cozy (which I tend not to read) and had woo-woo elements (which I often dislike), I thoroughly enjoyed her first her Haunted Yarn Shop series. The second is now out. I think you'll find her sense of humor on display in this piece as well. ~ Jim

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“Next” is such a small word, a shruggable preposition you might take for granted. It isn’t quite cozy, though, is it? It could be, if you’re thinking about a cat curled beside you on the sofa or if you’re looking forward to the next book in your favorite mystery series. But more realistically, “next” is a word freighted with expectations, emotions, and a whole baggage claim of possibilities. Consider the following examples of “next” as . . . 

Pressure – “Is your parachute secure? You jump next.”

Promise – “If you’ll dance with me again, next time I’ll try not to Two-step on your toes.”

Prophecy – click here to see a Mutts comic by Patrick McDonnell

Threat – “The next time you weed whack my hydrangeas . . .”

Organization – “Bring the eye of newt to a bubble. Next, stir in the toe of dog.”

Hope – “Please don’t pick me next, please don’t pick me, please.”

Hypothesis – “I’m as sane as the next woman.”

Negotiation – “I’ll gladly pay you [next] Tuesday for a hamburger today.” ~ J. Wellington Wimpy from an episode of Popeye

Placement – “You’ll find The Joy of Cooking next to The Pleasure of Poisoning.”

Finality – “Sorry, we can only release information about the severed hand to the next of kin.”

“Next” implies forward movement, but an actual “next” isn’t inevitable. That’s because “next” isn’t just beleaguered by all those emotions, expectations, and possibilities, it can also be frightening. Paralyzing, even. In fact, fear of the word “next” could be the root cause for most cases of writer’s block. Think about it. A blank page, the start of a new chapter or scene, the first word of the next sentence . . . each of those is a huge, scary void staring you in the face demanding to know what you’re going to do next. George Carlin offered this advice: “Always do whatever’s next.” Yeah, right. Easy for the funny guy to say, but a blank page can reduce grown men to jelly and convince strong women there’s safety in cleaning the refrigerator.

But no matter how horrifying it might be, “next” is a good word for mystery writers. “Next” is tied up as tightly as the hero in a melodrama with those other classic mystery words: who, what, where, when, and how. “Next” is the word, whether it’s actually on the page or up there skulking between our ears, that every story and every writer depends on. Writers need readers up until two in the morning flipping pages to find out what happens next.

“Next” has been on my mind lately. Dyeing Wishes, the second book in my Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery series came out in July. I turned in the manuscript for the third book, Spinning in Her Grave, soon after. I’m about to leap headlong into writing the fourth book and now that third book is back for revisions. And people keep asking, “How’s the writing going? What’s next?” It’s a kindly meant question, so I try not to do my imitation of “The Scream” when I answer. Not because I don’t know what’s next, but because I do know. A lot of work comes next – writing, revising, editing, promoting, keeping up with my day job, proofreading, getting up at five in the morning to fit it all in, crawling away from the computer once in a while to say hi to my family, not the laundry, thank goodness, because my son took over doing that, but generally anything else that’s part of what we call life is what comes next. With caffeine.

But do I really know what’s next? Um, I hope I know about the writing and rewriting, and sharing meals with my family, and about keeping up with the day job. But beyond those hopes? Nah. How could I know? The wonderful Gilda Radner said, “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what happens next.” In other words, life is full of mysteries. Mysteries? Hey, cool. I like mysteries and I can live with that.

So, what’s next for me? The first word in the first sentence of the next book. I wonder what it’ll be. What’s next for you?

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The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” Molly is the author of the award-winning Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries from Penguin/NAL. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990. After twenty years in northeast Tennessee, Molly now lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois. You can find Molly at her website www.mollymacrae.com, on Facebook and Pinterest. Her books can be found at independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and your public library.

THE PROBLEM WITH SERIES

When I started editing my third book, Ladies of the Garden Club, I began to think maybe I had too many characters. In my first two books, I listed the characters with a few brief words identifying them at the beginning of the books. I have had positive feedback from readers that they liked that. But as I started the list for the third book, my list is much longer. The reason for this is except for the murderer and the victims many of the characters in my small town of Portage Falls are returning from the first two books. Not all, of course, but many still make an appearance.

The other day I ran into someone who had read The Blue Rose, and wanted to know if two characters she liked would be returning in Daylilies for Emily’s Garden. I had to tell her no, and then wondered if I should bring them back at least briefly in book four. People seem to get attached to certain characters. I know I do in certain series I read, and maybe even more so with my own series.

And that could be my problem. These characters become real to me, and it’s becoming harder to discard them. In Ladies of the Garden Club I’ve compounded the problem by creating a garden club that needs at least ten members. I mean I can’t have only five members, especially since it is members of the garden club who are being poisoned.  The Portage Falls Garden Club meets more often because they’re working on a big project. I can’t just have women getting together so I have men meeting mornings over breakfast and coffee at Belle’s Diner just like the men you see in every restaurant all over the world. In both the Garden Club and the men meeting for breakfast, I’m bringing back characters from the first two books, but I need new characters, too. They create new interest plus I need new suspects, not that some of the returning characters can’t be the murderer. 

In stand-alone mysteries, the author can walk away from his or her characters at the end of the book. The same would be true to some extent for a PI in a large city. The writer of a PI series would only need to keep a core group of friends or co-workers of their main character.

But I can’t as easily walk away from my characters both because they help define my small town, and because I am fond of many of them like Mayor Winifred (Fred) Partridge or Belle, the diner’s waitress. Yes, a few characters won’t return for various reasons and that’s okay, but with each new book comes brand new characters and many of those I like too much not to bring them back in following  books even if it’s only in brief appearances.

Of course, in Ladies of the Garden Club there will be three victims and the murderer so they won’t return. But again I’ve created new characters who are neither murderer nor victim that I like too much to say good-bye to. So I guess my only option when making up my List of Characters at the beginning is to ignore those who appear so briefly that no one would consider them the murderer. And anyone I leave out won’t be. It wouldn’t be fair to do otherwise.

Do you like having characters return in the series you read?

If you write a series, how do you handle all the characters that seem to accumulate?