Doing the Numbers, or, The Swimming Hole

Just a few words, this morning, about numbers. And thresholds.

I'm going to ignore, briefly, one of the best pieces of advice I've seen given to bloggers/tweeters, which goes something like 'No one but you cares about your own numbers; so what if you just added your 1000th follower or got your 5000th hit?'

But I'm blogging not only for what you might call read-only types; I'm blogging for everyone, potentially, and that includes people who are themselves bloggers or who might start blogging some day if they only knew how easy it is.

And I opened the door in Wednesday's post to at least a little talk about numbers when I mentioned that Monday's post about the Dickens centenary and readathon had become in less than 48 hours my sixth most-read post (of 'all time', which in the world of Jascha Writes means about 30 months). What I didn't realize at the time (because I was looking at the automatically generated most-read list that appears at the foot of every page of the blog and not at the actual numbers) was that Monday's Dickens post was in truth in a three-way tie for fourth place. By this morning, moreover, it was tied with last February's Ellery Queen post for third place. (The leader, if you will, continues to be Jo Nesbø, with my sole real Nesbø post to date scoring almost four times as many hits to date as the Dickens. Still back in the pack is determined newcomer James Hulbert, whoever that is, with respectable numbers of hits for four posts [in the top 10] relating to his novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me.)

As today's new business, I'd like to note two (additional) numbers, before they're swept away in the wash of ones and zeros in which we seem at times to be living.

Yesterday, Jascha Writes crossed the 10,000 threshold for cumulative page views ('pageviews all time history', in Blogger-speak)--thanks in no small measure to my friends Dickens and Nesbø, and, even more, to you. And, to every one of you who might have been wondering whether, if you 'gave' a blog, anyone would show up, I think this answers that question with a definitive yes.

The week's second threshold number may be less immediately significant to non-bloggers (and pre-bloggers, not-yet-bloggers), but most of the rest of you will understand. This is a Twitter number. Twitter caps at 2000 the number of people it allows you to follow--until you have enough followers yourself to justify letting that cap drift higher. The (unpublished, unofficial) threshold is currently 1820, and @jaschawrites crossed it a few days ago. Beyond this point, growth in the number of followers can become geometric again, after having been hampered in the run-up to 1820. And all of that I owe to the first 1820 and all the others to come. Thank you!

The moral of both of this week's threshold crossings, to put it succinctly, is a message of abundance: there's room here for everyone, and we create possibilities for one another and for ourselves. And that's something that we 'qualitative' types can hang on to when all the ones and zeros have moved on.

Because it isn't really a racetrack. It's a swimming hole.

Come on in....

Welcoming Readers from 26 'New' Countries--and Everywhere Else as Well

I was just sitting down an hour or so ago to draft what I planned for this, my second and concluding blogpost of the week. (I'm experimenting this month with blogging only three times a week, and between now and next Monday I won't have my usual access to the Internet.) A post was starting to take shape in my head, something like 'The "Great Books": Very Approachable'--when I took a quick look at the blogroll in the column to the right and got some news that pleased me so much that I have to blog about it today.

Apple's iBooks has just increased from 6 to 32 the number of countries in which it offers my novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me and 50,000 other ebooks handled by the aggregator Smashwords. Last week you could find Kiss in the iBookstores for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US; starting this week, it's also in the stores throughout Scandinavia, the rest of Continental Europe and beyond.

Think of Smashwords as being like a wholesaler or distributor in the bricks-and-mortar world. Indie authors and publishers frequently deal directly with Amazon but rely on Smashwords to get their books out to Sony, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other vendors. Smashwords is an outstanding partner for all of us (readers can shop there, too)--something I always tell new authors one-on-one but need to stress here as well.

A Kiss Before You Leave Me has been attracting more and more readers at iBooks (in France, the UK and the US), readers it might never have found without the partnership between Smashwords and Apple. I've written before about the special importance to me of readers from all over the world (for example, here).

It's clearly not just about numbers. Readers, wherever they live, are far more to a writer than mere consumers--and all our talk about distribution and e-retail should never obscure that fact. Readers from Cyprus, Scandinavia, Slovenia and everywhere in between have been with the blog Jascha Writes from its earliest days. I welcome all of you, all over again. And if our communication also comes about in the 'aisles' of your iBooks or iTunes store, so much the better.

A Little Bird Told Me: Twitter

I think it was almost a year ago, from Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, in his Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, that I first got the recommendation that emerging authors use Twitter to reach more readers. Since then, Twitter usage has tripled, and even agents and 'legacy' (i.e., traditional) publishers are growing reluctant to work with new authors who don't use social media in general and Twitter in particular. But it was Jon F. Merz and his book How to Really Sell Ebooks that finally persuaded me to get on board.

I emitted my first tweet less than eight weeks ago, on 14 June, and I now have almost 700 followers, most of them added in the two weeks or so that I've been following Jon Merz's guidance. That number is modest if compared with the numbers following, say, Margaret Atwood (almost a quarter of a million) or Lady GaGa (almost 12.5 million), but it's 2.5 times my combined friends and fans numbers on Facebook after years there.

My weeks on Twitter have also seen the visitor numbers for this blog, Jascha Writes, more than triple.

I also like Twitter--for reasons I'm only beginning to understand, and that I hope to write about another day. And I appreciate my followers, and those I follow, beyond motives of PR and ebook sales.

Today I just want to welcome all my Twitter followers--past, present and future--to Jascha Writes and to promise to provide in future posts some fundamentals about myself and my work, starting with my novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me. Of course, you can already use the search window in the extreme upper-left corner of this page, or the 'blog archive' listing at the foot of the right-hand column, or the 'labels cloud' a bit higher, to make your way around the posts that are here now. As always, I hope you like what you find, and that you'll want to return.

See you here, and see you on Twitter!

Making Changes: On Deodorant, Cola and Ebook Prices

We’re not surprised when writers of all sorts talk, and write, about politics, money, alcohol, love, sex or, in my case, about coffee. I feel the need, though, to ask your indulgence before I go on about... deodorant.

Deodorant formulations and formats seem to have nothing to do with ebooks, but there are surprising parallels in the marketplace.

I must first disclose that I’m part of a disgruntled minority of U.S. consumers. We grew up using one formulation and format of underarm deodorant and are frustrated that we are no longer able to buy it. The product in question is Old Spice round stick in the original Old Spice scent. The manufacturer, now Procter & Gamble, has discontinued the product, which had a large following, and now offers only an oval stick labelled ‘original round-stick formula’ but which hordes of consumers, including me, contend does not really smell the same as the discontinued round stick. (Die-hards also prefer the very shape of the round stick: if they wanted a ‘speed’ [i.e., oval] stick [like Mennen], they’d buy one.) The Internet can be an angry place: on some boards my cohorts go so far as to invoke the example of ‘new’ versus ‘classic’ Coca-Cola. Spokespersons for P&G are polite and articulate but have not explained the elimination of the round stick.

Those who post on these boards generally reveal the action they’ve taken in the face of this frustration. Surprisingly often, they’ve done exactly what Procter & Gamble would have them do: buy some other P&G product instead of the product they really want—want so much that they’re posting about their frustration. It would seem more logical—that is, more likely to sway Procter & Gamble to make the desired product available again—to substitute a different manufacturer’s deodorant, or do without deodorant altogether (and inform P&G of the reasons for one’s action); Classic Coke was not restored without a struggle.

Readers of ebooks seem to me every bit as displeased about changes in ebook prices that began last year. Until then, the norm in the U.S. had been one established by Amazon when it introduced the original Kindle in 2007: with very few exceptions, when a book appeared in hardback, the corresponding ebook cost US $9.99 (or less) at Amazon, even if the publisher had assigned the ebook a higher list price; books available in trade paperback sold typically for $7.99 as ebooks, others for even less. But all that changed with the advent of Apple’s iPad and iBooks. Apple was not willing to compete with Amazon’s aggressive discounting and entered into ‘agency model’ pricing agreements with (five, then all six, of) the largest publishing conglomerates: the publishers would have access to the huge customer base correctly anticipated for the iPad, and in return the publishers would assure that uniform prices, set by the publisher, were imposed on all U.S. ebook retailers (now understood to be ‘agents’ of the major publishers) and their customers. Today, if a book is on the New York Times hardback bestseller list, the corresponding ebook typically costs $12.99. But the ebook of Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants has been priced at $19.99 since it appeared last September; that ebook price will fall by only one dollar when the book appears in paperback in August. And the next Stephen King will cost $16.99 in eformat when it’s released in November.

The debate over whether the new prices are justifiable is complicated, and I make no pretense of exploring it today. But I believe that not only readers but also authors—and perhaps even publishers and estores—would be better served by much lower prices. (These matters are frequently discussed on the blogs listed in the column to the right.) Many readers object to higher ebook prices, including hundreds of visitors to Amazon’s product pages who not only tag an ebook as overpriced but also give it a one-star (i.e., the lowest possible) rating (with explanation) if they believe the publisher is engaging in price-gouging. Some decry this (one-star) practice, but as far as I can tell it does work initially as intended: the resultant lowered average rating (shared by print and electronic formats) spells lower-than-expected sales.

It seems obvious to me that readers who are unhappy with the price of an ebook should not buy it. Paying $12.99 or $16.99 or more for an ordinary ebook, is voting for continued pricing in that range. And so-called ebook ‘piracy’ is not the only alternative. Prices generally come down in time; rare is the book that must be read immediately; and public libraries and estore-based lending systems are becoming more and more viable sources for ebooks. And don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of ebooks available for $9.99, or $2.99, or $0.99, or free of charge, from any ebook store. It’s your wallet. How will you vote with it?

And how will I vote—not as a reader, today, but as a blogger who profits when a reader clicks on a link and makes a purchase?

I already have voted: last month I silently removed from this blog the last display ad for an ebook priced in the ‘gouge zone’, and I adopted the following policy: no more display advertisements here for ordinary U.S. ebooks priced higher than $9.99. (I reserve judgment on ‘bundled’ ebooks and their equivalent, like Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy or the collected novels of José Saramago, and on ebooks as published overseas, where different market conditions may justify slightly higher prices.) I may mention or discuss in a post an ebook from the gouge zone, and I intend in such cases to continue to provide text links to pages where readers can get more information and decide for themselves whether to buy. The distinction between posts and display ads—I see the former as predominantly altruistic and the latter as predominantly for profit (if not downright venal)—is admittedly slippery. Here, as elsewhere, I welcome feedback.

Short Pause for a Good Cause

Expect a hiatus for this blog, beginning soon and continuing through most of the month of November. There may be a quick post on the run now and then, and the blog list to the right should keep you current on day-to-day changes in the world of e-publishing and beyond. (And all the other links should continue to work about as well as they have in the past.) But I'll be back on a more regular schedule after Thanksgiving.