Let’s Get Visible is the sequel — a more advanced guide which tackles the most critical issue facing independently-published content: How to get more people to see your work, to discover it among the myriad other options available, and hopefully, how to get them to buy it. It assumes that you already know the nuts and bolts of how of digital publishing — producing professional-quality material, well-designed, attractive, and making it available for sale. The focus of this volume is on increasing the visibility (and therefore the sales) of your books once they’re ready to go.

There are, as a rough estimate, eleventy-bajillion “CRACK AMAZON’S SECRETS AND SELL TONS!!!” self-publishing cash-ins available for purchase. This is not one of them. This is a sober, honest breakdown of tactics and strategies for increasing the visibility of your book, whether it’s been previously published, or if you’re launching from scratch. It concentrates largely on methods to improve your books visibility on Amazon — which makes sense, since Amazon represents an overwhelmingly large percentage of the digital market. Your best efforts focused there will have the most direct impact on your overall sales. Gaughran also covers sites like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo and Smashwords, but spends most of the time giving you information that will do you the most good.

Gaughran presents the current best guess as to workings of Amazon’s algorithms for its Recommendation Engine, it’s sales rankings, it’s top lists. He sources this information with links to blogs and articles where the detective work has been done by himself and others, with the up-front caveat that Amazon does change these formulae, so the information that is presented in this book is only current as of May 2013. By providing the links, however, he insures that the reader can keep up to date on any further developments. He is honest about the fact that since the algorithms are proprietary, nobody but Amazon knows for sure how they work — but he clearly spells out the evidence for the methods he presents. This isn’t get-rich-quick one-true-wayism, but rather a evidentiary examination of logical conclusions, with the caveat that the information will change — but that those changes will be easier to adapt to once you have a basic grasp of how the process has worked historically. This is a breath of fresh air for indie publishing, which too often draws cult-of-personality gurus, heavy with the stink of hucksterism.

From examination of how Amazon recommends books to customers, Gaughran presents the logical methods for presenting your work so as best to take advantage of those suppositions, some of which is common sense, but much of which presents a new way to think about things (for example, a counter-intuitive method of launching a book which goes against the instincts I have developed over 20 years of working in publishing — but which makes perfect sense given the evidence provided about how the various recommendations and lists work).

I could go on — but honestly, you are far better served by reading the book than in reading a recommendation for it. Make no mistake, that is what I am unreservedly offering here: a recommendation, in the strongest possible terms. Despite my experience, this book gave me valuable advice, gave me new information that I hadn’t considered, and an entirely new way of thinking about promotion. Both books (linked below) should be an essential part of an Insurgent Creative’s tool kit — and I’d recommend adding David Gaughran’s blog to your regular reading list as well.
 

We just made the official announcement today: I’m taking a gig with Cubicle 7 Entertainment as the Line Developer for the tabletop games line of my creation Far West. So I’ll be continuing to helm FAR WEST, but will be doing it with an amazing amount of support!

Cubicle 7 will be the exclusive publisher of tabletop games for the setting, and will distribute them world-wide. I’ll shepherd the line, make sure it continues to mesh with all other FAR WEST releases (fiction, comics, web series, what-have-you) — which will still be released by my own company, Adamant Entertainment.

I’m thrilled about this. The delays in production of the FAR WEST Adventure Game core rulebook were due largely to the project becoming much larger than could readily be handled without assistance, and partnering with one of the top games publishers in the world will mean that I’ve got a great bunch of creative people at my back, as well as the infrastructure in place to handle things like distribution, warehousing, etc. — freeing me up to concentrate on line development, direction and creation.

Cubicle 7 has committed to a robust release schedule of support as well — so expect announcements soon about what we’ll have coming for the line in the first year.
 
 

First up, as I’m sure a lot of you know, Robot-helmeted French electronic duo Daft Punk have a new album coming out soon, called Random Access Memories. The only thing they’ve released so far is a 4-minute Radio Edit of a 7-minute-plus album track featuring Pharell Williams and Chic frontman/bassist Nile Rodgers. They’ve moved away from the electronic synthscapes of their work on the Tron:Legacy soundtrack, and even away from the Vocoder-based disco sound of earlier releases (like “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”), into a smooth sound that sounds like a cut from a late-70s Michael Jackson album. Daft Punk – “Get Lucky (Radio Edit)”

Another sneak look at an upcoming release: Alt-RnB vocalist Kelis (she whose Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard, and who Hates You So Much Right Now, ARRRGGHHH!) is about to release a new album called FOOD, and the advance single, a catchy electro-influenced track with some autobiographical lyrics, also features a gastronomically-influenced title. Kelis – “Jerk Ribs.”

Jumping back in time, we land in the 80s, thanks to Jesse Slicer, a friend of mine who mentioned this earlier today on Twitter, and set my mind on a loop. A lot of folks enjoy the cheesiness that is “The Warrior” (“Shooting at the walls of heartache, bang-bang.”), but I’ve always preferred this — I love the synth riff that runs through it, and the synth solo. I miss solos in general, actually. Scandal – “Goodbye To You.”

I’ve always had a soft spot for songs like that, with a synth through-line. This one, from a few years earlier (right around 79/80) from a UK-based Prog-rock group making its transformation into a pop act, used an arpeggiated synth line almost like a toccata, which I thought was really kind of cool at the time (and I guess I still do): The Alan Parsons Project – “Games People Play.”

The concert for Hurricane Sandy saw Paul McCartney team up with the surviving members of Nirvana, performing a new track which they devised while jamming in the studio. The studio version of the track is appearing on the soundtrack to Dave Grohl’s indie film Sound City, a history of the eponymous L.A. recording studio. Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear – “Cut Me Some Slack.”

This is a very Florence-and-the-Machine sounding track from the trio being touted as the Next Big Thing in the UK music blogs. The Guardian referred to them as “trip hop given a bit of 2013 spit-and-polish”, and that’s not a bad description. London Grammar – “Wasting My Young Years.”

We’ll close out with another 80s track, because I’m a nostalgic fortysomething. This is, hands down, my favorite track from New Order (and that’s saying something, because I love so much of what that group did). New Order – “Age of Consent.”

There ya go. Enjoy, and come back next week.

First off, we have a track that I discovered via EA Sports FIFA 13. The FIFA series always features great music, and as they go out of their way to pick tracks representative of the sport’s global appeal, I’m always guaranteed to be introduced to acts that I’ve never heard before. Such was the case with The Presets (pictured above), an Australian electronic music duo. This track immediately struck me in its tonal and format similarity to old English sea shanties, but filtered through a modern electronic lens. The Presets – “Ghosts.”

The soundtrack album to Baz Luhrmann’s 3D version of The Great Gatsby is getting some notice, as it features new music from Florence and the Machine, Jay-Z and other big acts. I stumbled across this track via a music blog, and fell in love instantly. It’s from Sia, a vocalist best known on these shores for singing on “Destiny”, the debut single of the electronic music act Zero 7 in the early 2000s. I’ve loved her voice ever since — and this track, which closes out the Gatsby soundtrack has got “give this woman a James Bond theme” written all over it. Sia – “Kill and Run.”

Willy Moon is a London-based New Zealand-born musician who does sample-based music but with a 50s rockabilly edge to the vocals. He was named as “One to Watch” by the Guardian, and has been profiled in GQ, Elle and Vogue. This track was released as a single on Jack White’s record label, Third Man Records: Willy Moon – “Railroad Track.”

Long-time readers will remember that I fell in love very quickly with Janelle Monae, with the release of her first single, Tightrope. Her full-length debut, a sci-fi concept album called The ArchAndroid continued the story begun in her initial EP release Metropolis Suite 1 (The Chase, telling through her mix of neo-soul, funk and art-electronica the tale of Cindi Mayweather, a messianic android sent back in time to free the citizens of Metropolis from The Great Divide, a secret society that uses time-travel to suppress freedom and love. Her second album, The Electric Lady is due soon, and the first single, a duet with neo-soul superstar Erikah Badu, has been released: Janelle Monae – “Q.U.E.E.N. (feat. Erikah Badu).”

A quick jaunt back to the 80s. I always loved Quarterflash — Rindy Ross was responsible for both of the things that stood out for me, providing both the vocals and the sax riffs. Rather than hit you with the usual tracks that nostalgia-radio focuses on (1981′s “Harden My Heart” and “Find Another Fool”), I figured I’d go instead with their last top-20 single, from their sophomore release in 1983. Quarterflash – “Take Me To Heart.”

I was introduced this week to this group from South Africa. SKIP&DIE started as a collaboration between the South African vocalist/visual artist Catarina Aimée Dahms (aka Cata.Pirata) and Dutch producer Jori Collignon (aka Crypto.Jori), collaborating with musicians from Soweto, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Guguletu. This stuff is phenomenal, mixing hip-hop, electronic, various traditional African forms, Indian and more, with vocals in English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Spanish and Portuguese, into a style which has been described as “Township Bass.” They’re so good, I’m giving you two examples:

The first, SKIP&DIE – “Jungle Riot.”, and another, SKIP&DIE – “Lihlwempu Lomlungu (with Driemanskap).”

Will close out with a bit of smooth. My favorite track from the solo years of Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry, from his 1985 album, Boys and Girls: Bryan Ferry – “Sensation.”

There ya go, kids. Enjoy, and see you back here with more next week.
 
 

The lovely young lady at left is Etta Bond, a UK singer/performer who describes her style as “soul, with a bit of weird.” This track, which she recently posted to her Soundcloud page, is described as “posh rap”, and is a jazzy spoken-word piece over glitchy electronica. Very cool, with some great lines: Etta Bond – “Inside My Head.”

Another bit of weird: A poppy, summery tune about the murdered girl in Twin Peaks. This is a track from UK alternative band Bastille — but I’m posting a remix by RAC (the Remix Artist Collective, a group of three DJs spread between Portugal, NYC and Portland, Oregon) which I like much, much more. RAC took the song, pitch-shifting the vocals and adding a much more 80s-pop sound replacing the original track’s Coldplay-esque bombast. I played it for my wife Laura, and she described it as sounding like a “tribute to Laura Palmer’s last great summer.” Bastille – “Laura Palmer (RAC Mix).”

The FX TV show The Americans is really quite good, telling the story of deep-cover Soviet agents in early 80s America. It’s somewhat disconcerting to see an era that I clearly remember being handled as a “period piece.” Makes me feel old — but one of the things that the show has gotten very right is the music. This track (from one of my favorite bands) was featured in a nightclub scene in this week’s episode: Squeeze – “Slap and Tickle.”

While I’m on the subject of feeling old, nothing perhaps makes me feel older than realizing that the Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is twenty goddamn years old. Yikes. Hip-hop with soul samples and dialog cuts from old kung fu movies? It was almost like it was genetically engineered specifically to make me a fan. So here’s a bit of NSFW lyrical madness that’s almost old enough to drink: Wu-Tang Clan – “Bring Da Ruckus.”

Sample-based music, turntablism — I love all of that stuff. Caught a show on VH1 late night this week called “Master of the Mix”, which is a competition show for DJs, which is cool for folks like me who dig that. One of the guest judges was Cut Chemist (aka Lucas MacFadden, who has DJed for Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli in addition to solo stuff), which reminded me of this track, one of my favorite bits of turntablism: Nat King Cole – “Day In, Day Out (Cut Chemist Mix).”

Lastly, all of the news out of Boston has had this song going through my head — a mocking paean to the city by a California garage band, which the city took and said “Nah, fuck you. We’re keeping this.” — and turned it into an actual anthem. That’s pretty much Boston in a nutshell. The Standells – “Dirty Water.”

There ya go, kids. Enjoy.

As I watch the news today, where despite overwhelming majority support from the American people, the Senate failed to pass the watered-down bill for background check on gun sales — even though it had 54 votes, a majority in a 100-seat chamber — I realize that our country is almost irreparably broken: perhaps more so than at any time since the prelude to the Civil War.

What we need are 21st century Free-Staters.

Part of this inspiration comes from witnessing the unhinged rhetoric of the Right, especially on the issue of gun control legislation: They are quick to phrase things in apocalyptic, violent wish-fulfilment: There is instantly talk of “taking up arms” to “defend against Tyranny” and such. It reminds me that, for a large percentage of the American Right, “Culture War” is not a metaphor. They firmly believe that Progressives are coming for their guns, to outlaw their religion, to place them under the yoke of tyranny.

Progressives, by and large, are not prepared to fight a war. We dismiss the rhetoric with sarcastic snark, and look down upon what we see as ignorant hayseeds who seem to revel in violence, anti-intellectualism, and blind adherence to political or religious dogma. While we insult and demean, it only reinforces the divide — a divide which is already as intractable as it was 150 years ago. Meanwhile, the other side acts — and through manipulation of a hopelessly out-of-date electoral system that encourages disproportional representation and gerry-mandering, and a legislative system that requires that all sides operate in good faith or it breaks down completely — they hold our entire country hostage to their minority extremism.

Progressives need to stop snarking and start DOING. Unlike the Right, however, we’re not going to advocate armed insurrection to get what we want. So instead, I argue that we should take a page from the tactics of the Free-Staters.

Progressives should move, en mass, to the deepest of Red States, in an effort to change the political demographics on the ground. In short, if you’re tired of people like Lindsay Graham and Rand Paul holding the entire country hostage to their agenda, the only solution is to flood into places like South Carolina and Kentucky until we tip the scales.

It’s not a quick fix — and it certainly isn’t an attractive option for many, since we all prefer to live in cultural surroundings that reflect our own. But if we’re serious about changing the country, about altering the course of our culture in the long run, then we Progressives will have to abandon our propensity for aggregating in a small selection of high-population cultural centers, because the electoral reality is that low-population areas are given disproportional representation.

So we need to game the system.

I’m starting the habit again, because I realize that I need to make time to do the things I enjoy, purely for the enjoyment’s sake. So here we go. More Friday Music!

This track from 2010 has been getting more notice recently, as the theme tune for The History Channel’s excellent drama series, Vikings. Appropriately enough, it’s by Swedish artist Karin Dreijer Andersson, half of the electronic music duo The Knife, who records solo under the name Fever Ray, pictured above. Fever Ray – “If I Had A Heart.”

I discovered this track after it’s use in a Bacardi commercial — it’s the work of Parov Stelar, an Austrian DJ who specializes in electro, acid jazz, breakbeat and house. This track is a perfect mixture of booty-shaking electro and the retro swing sound of the 1930s. Parov Stelar – “Chambermaid Swing.”

I heard a track via the soundtrack to EA Sport’s FIFA 13, and tracked down the band, who sounded to me a lot like Duran Duran. Young Empires are a Canadian group who describe their music as “World Beat Haute Rock” — World Beat referring to the Latin and African percussion they use, and “Haute Rock” being, in the words of bassist Jacob Palahnuk, “tracks that make you feel wealthy, attractive, powerful; a soundtrack to your haute life.” Which pretty much describes Rio-era Duran Duran pretty well, too. I mean, listen to this — it’s not just me, right? Young Empires – “Rain of Gold.”

From the neo-80s to the actual 80s: I’ve been listening a lot recently to The Ultimate Collection, a Best-Of collection from The Fixx, who were a group whose songs I always really liked, yet I somehow never managed to buy an album. I’ve picked two tracks for your Friday listening — one pretty well-known, one slightly less so (at least in the US).

The well-known track: The Fixx – “Red Skies.”

…and the lesser-known earlier track, a slice of Cold War pessimism: The Fixx – “Stand or Fall.”

Long-time readers will be aware that I’m big fan of hip-hop — and have a special interest in international varieties, where the idea of DIY music, using samples, is filtered through the local culture of the underclass specific to a region (French hip-hop that mixes North African music, for example). Here’s an example of Romanian hip-hop, from Bucharest: Skizzo Skillz – “BINIDITAT (feat. Karie).”

Lastly this week, for no other reason than it’s been noodling around my head a bit, I’ll leave you with a track from perhaps the best Canadian singer-songwriter in the history of Ever. Gordon Lightfoot – “Sundown.”

Enjoy, kids. Back here for more next week. (F’reals, yo.)
 
 

Long-term planning will often mean that you need to have faith in your plan even when it appears not to be working in the short term. This is difficult. Long-time readers will remember that two years ago, I nearly buried my company by shifting to an “app-pricing” model, which completely torpedoed my income. I stuck with it for almost four months, but had to stop because this is my sole income, and I simply could not afford to risk sticking to it in the hope that my plan panned out. If I’d been able to continue would the trend have reversed? I don’t know. I wish I’d been more financially secure and able to continue down that road a bit further, just to see if the data indicated an upward swing.

Jim Zub, creator of the independently-owned comic book series SKULLKICKERS (published by Image) had a similar risk to take. As he details in this excellent blog post, his title amassed a massive amount of debt in the first two quarters of 2011, about which he writes:

We dug into the red aggressively overprinting the first trade paperback to keep it in stock and profits gained from the issues, trade and minuscule digital sales didn’t cover the difference that early into its sales cycle. All in all, we dug down 27% more than we made in the first half of 2011.

For most creators that would’ve been the end of it and that’s totally reasonable. Even with Image covering costs so we didn’t have to spend our own money to print or distribute, the complete lack of profits for 6 months would have sealed the series’ fate. Thankfully, Edwin, Misty and I all have day job income and stuck it out for the long haul.

He and his fellow creators didn’t have to depend on that for their sole income, so they stuck to their plan. The result can be seen in the rest of his post, which should be required reading for any prospective Insurgent Creative: He digs down deep into profitability, costs, trends in physical vs. digital sales and more.

He and his fellow creators treated their efforts as a marathon, not a sprint. And the trends are paying off in the long run — and, in a edit to the post made yesterday, he added a note which indicated that the losses he was seeing in the data weren’t as bad as he had original thought, because more information came in that showed that the numbers didn’t include direct sales via conventions. (Again: More data is a good thing.)

Make your plans. Figure out your long game. Start running your marathon.
 
 

Click here to read.

An excerpt:

What was the first project you worked on? What was that like?

My first game design was a “war game” — or rather what I thought was a wargame based on looking at advertisements for Avalon Hill and other publishers in various SF magazines and comics. Using a bunch of Avery labels, I created a “game board” out of the only real-world map I could find at my Grandmother’s house — a map of Canada from an issue of National Geographic. I came up with a scenario where we’d discovered the Canadians had been tapping into the Alaska pipeline, and so we invaded (naturally). I called the game “Conquer Canada.” I was around 11 or 12. Obviously, it never saw print.

My first commercial release was in 1993 — a small-press science fiction RPG called PERIPHERY: SCIENCE FICTION ROLEPLAYING ON THE EDGE, which was a percentile-based generic space-opera game that I designed and published with several college friends. We only had a print run of about 500 or so copies, but I still occasionally come across one at the GenCon auction.

Check out the rest over at BoardGameGeek.com
 
 

And yet.

And yet.

I will argue that making an independent go of it is the best option IF you are the sort of person who is wired for it.

What do I mean by that?

It’s all about the effort. You have to be the sort of person who wants to do all of the ancillary things, beyond creation, that are necessary to making a living. You have to want to handle production, marketing, promotion, etc. You have to be the sort of person who is not only prepared to do those things, but also prepared to put in the effort to get good at them — as good as you are in your chosen creative field.

Yesterday on Twitter, Graphic & Game Designer Adam Jury posted this excellent summation of self-publishing:

@chuckwendig Self publishing means actually running a small publishing company. Acquiring manuscripts is different, but that’s it.

— Adam Jury (@adamjury) April 4, 2013

You are running a publishing company, with a “stable” of only one writer. But that means that you still have to do the rest of it. If you’re not prepared to that, then get prepared. Learn the things you need to know. If that doesn’t interest you, if you only want to write… then perhaps self-publishing isn’t really for you.

In an interview in today’s New York Times, comedian Louis CK talks about his recent independent work — and the effort and time it requires:

Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?

Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?

You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.

So why do I have the platform and the recognition?

At this point you’ve put in the time.

There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

The benefit of putting in the effort, though, is that it allows you to negotiate with the traditional companies (if you choose) from a position of strength. As CK notes later in the interview:

And HBO will let you do an online release of “Oh My God” later in the year?

Another reason I was willing to do it there was because I had told them I have to be able to sell it on my site. At first HBO was like, “We can’t do that.” And I said, “Well, let’s not do it then.” The power I had was to be able to keep saying: “I’ll do it myself. I do not need you.” They took a while on that one.

A similar story can be seen in the example of Hugh Howey, a self-published SF author who recently signed a six-figure deal with Simon & Schuster — but only for the print rights to his books. He kept the digital rights himself. As an author who was already selling well, he didn’t really need Simon & Schuster, so he was able to negotiate from a position of strength. Which is not to say that this is easily-replicable, though — looking at Howey’s career, you can clearly see he is driven to do the work needed to succeed, above and beyond the writing (securing foreign rights, for example). That drive is the critical element.

He’s got an interesting article on self-publishing up on Salon.com today, where he posits that it’s actually easier for a writer to make a nice mid-list living, paying a few bills every month, as a self-publisher than via traditional methods. It’s worth reading, and echoes the last installment of these Insurgent Creative posts, “Nobody Gets Rich But Everybody Gets Paid.”

Howey’s article stands as a rebuttal of sorts to a Salon piece earlier this week by a self-professed Self-Publishing Failure, who appears to have done little more than dropped a book into the world, and hoped that it did well. The author in question, John Winters, made no attempt at self-promotion (he currently sits on two separate twitter accounts, neither with more than a dozen or so followers), or much of anything else beyond writing the book — yet somehow expected the sales to come pouring in. Too many people read the huckster-ish One True Way-filled posts of self-appointed gurus like Joe Konrath and expect that is all it takes.

It takes far more.

It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. There’s a bunch of extra work, beyond the creative side, that you have to be willing and able to do. For those that are wired that way, though — who look forward to challenges like that, who enjoy throwing themselves fully into learning new skills and using them — it’s worth doing.