Dear Mark Coker
(Owner of Smashwords)
To: Mark Coker Owner Smashwords
Many of today's best selling independent authors are using (or have used) Mark Coker's Smashwords channel either as a sales outlet or (as in my case) a distribution center for our book publishing. I can't speak highly enough of the advancements Smashwords has given the independent authors of the world. As proof of that, read today's Smashwords Blog in which Mark talks about the 120 high school students at Los Gatos High School who published a unique book of poetry by the students. It's an awesome, very unique concept that I hope will expand for more and more young and upcoming authors of the future. But that's not the point of this letter today. Today, I want to talk about my fear that the technology is about to do serious harm to the concept and future of Coker's unique Outlet Center for Indy Authors. I hope he will enlighten my fears (or alleviate) on the matter one day, but for now, let's get straight to my point.
I'll use my own situation and setup as an example. I have written dozens of books in my lifetime. Twelve of them are on the markets as we speak, eleven are with Smashwords (and all the related distributors there on Prime) and the only other outlet I have is with Amazon. That's where my most recently published twelfth book is located and under the exclusive KDP contract. (Slap me silly: What am I doing on that system?) Ok, the truth will set me free.
This year I watched Sony die a slow and painful death. My sales there were modest but seemed to be growing so the loss was not a major disruption in my present day profits, (per se) But the future? I think I got my butt kicked in future sales that I was hoping for (and yes, expecting) from Sony.
Then, in almost the same death throe as Sony, Diesel Books died and closed the digital doors for good. The truth will set me free? Ok, my total sales from both Sony and Diesel are less than $500 for the year 2013, and when Sony closed, I was showing 13 sales for this year.
Yes, I and many of you, panicked and started heading to the big dog, Amazon, for the security some feel operating inside the KDP Select program there. The truth will set me free? Before I pulled the plug on my Smashwords and distributors, I decided to go to the man I trusted and find out what was going on. So, I caught Mark Coker on his blog one day and asked (in the open Comments Section) for his response to these closings and especially for his vision of the future. He replied and (my opinion of what he said) "Don't panic. Stay the course."
The truth will set me free. I decided I better test the waters of Amazon's KDP select program just to see how it feels from the inside, but I didn't want to go all or nothing by closing my account with Smashwords so I came up with an alternative.
I have a book (Horror Genre) called 13 Strange Short Tales and since my other genre was Murder/Drama, (Whispering Pines 9 Books) I could leave those alone at Smashwords and use 13 strange Tales to open a possible escape route in case more sellers went under. At Smashwords, I unpublished the book 13 strange tales (hardest thing I've ever done as an author) and moved it to Amazon exclusively on KDP Select. That was around the first of April. (And the truth will set me free) Worse mistake of my career thanks to delayed sales reports from one of Smashwords distribution sellers, Flipkart.
We authors have been spoiled by Amazon's almost instant sales reporting. Smashwords also has instant sales reporting for anything sold in house but the Prime Distribution networks involved (iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Nobel etc) are not so accommodating. In my Smashwords sales report, Barnes & Nobel seems to report every few weeks but even those reports are relatively old and dated sometimes. (Over 14 days old) iTunes reports once a month (another delay here of 30 days or so) and then there's Kobo and the others and to be honest, I don't have a clue how often they report because it seems (to me) erratic and unpredictable. All I do know is that around the first of April, I moved 13 Strange Short tales away from Smashwords and made it exclusive KDP select at Amazon. Four weeks later, here comes one of Smashwords reports in which Strange Short Tales has sold 85 copies of said book at Flipkart before I shut them off. (That's 50 bucks my share made from those sales)
Had these sales shown up in my reports closer to when they occurred (instead of being very late getting to me) I would have never taken Strange Tales away from those readers at Flipkart. Now? Well, here I sit. KDP has zero borrows of my Select book for April and May and it's not exactly jumping off the shelves in sales either. I am furious at myself for making this truly misinformed blunder and I'm looking for someone else to blame. (After all, I'm human you know.)
We are living in a digital age where money flashes across wires at lightning speeds, sales happen in the blink of an eye, and everything on paper is now on screens. This leaves me wondering one last thing. Why do the book sellers get to hold our money for months at the time after getting it from the customer? Why do we have to wait for our share of the sales? Is this greed or is it the industry trying to keep an old dinosaur alive to make more profit? (They do keep our money a long time for no apparent reason. If you think about the amounts they keep at any given moment, it's staggering. Millions of dollars they keep using for up to 60 days (or six months with some distributors) and they get it interest free. Ok, money aside, at least let the technology report to us within a few hours of any sales even if you still keep the money longer. We authors are running a business too and we can't adjust quickly to market shifts if we don't see what sales are doing when they are doing it, not a month or months later. We need instant reports and the technology is there for it. (Amazon does it.. right?)
Bottom line: Mark Coker? I love Smashwords and preach their gospel, but improvements are needed now before things get dicey. We authors need up to the minute reports (or at least weekly reports) about sales, when and where they occur. I killed off a potential sales run at Flipkart because I didn't have the data to make a rational decision on a market strategy I applied. I screwed up, sure, but would I have done the same thing if the Flipkart sales had been reported to me within 48 hours of having occurred?
That's the truth as I see it Mark. What do you say and what can be done from your side of this business?
Keep an eye on our sales reports in the next eight weeks. A
pleasant surprise is coming regarding timeliness.
Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords, Inc.
http://www.smashwords.com
http://twitter.com/markcoker
http://blog.smashwords.com
Thank you Mark.. keep on trucking.. I'll get my strange Tales back to the Flipkart readers soon as my KDP contract is up.
Chas Wells
They Call It Bubba's Bait, Tackle, Beer and Baptist Church
There's a small town about 15 miles from where I live in Georgia. I'm not certain if it has a legal name of incorporation or not but I am sure the people who live there, all 119 of them, could care less what you call it. After all, it's their community and they love it. For writing about it, I'm going to call the town by the name most everyone around these parts uses, and that's simply, "Bubba's" but that's the short name. The full one is "Bubba's Bait, Tackle, Beer, and Baptist Church".
The reason everyone calls it Bubba's is probably because nobody has ever given this little area of God's earth an official title of any kind. Bubba's has been around about as long as Budweiser beer and the name sort of just blended on over to the location. Bubba's is located on a two lane gravel top County maintained road and has the worldly reputation as the origination of the old joke about "don't blink or you'll miss it". Every place is famous for something and that is Bubba's eruption to fame in that joke.
Bubba's main street is about as long as a four lane interstate highway is wide. There are no city services beyond volunteer fire and county sheriff but the unspoken reputation of the area protects these people well enough. The last crime that took place there was followed a few days later by the nice funeral of the two guys from Atlanta that tried to rob the elderly Miss Josey. She dropped the first man with two rounds from her 44 Colt but it took her the other 4 shells to get the one that ran out the front door and almost made it back to the fancy car they had drove up in.
The last fire that happened was one night when Billy Joe got drunk and then got hungry so he went on home from Bubba's Bar. Now don't get all fussy about drinking and driving because Billy Joe took a cab, which really pissed off Carlton the man who owned it, but that's another story for another time. Anyhow, old Billy Joe got home and left the cab in the driveway with the motor and the meter running, then went inside his double wide trailer at 2 AM and proceeded to fry up a mess of catfish. His wife, June Ann, was sound asleep. She'd been up late watching a Honey Boo Boo marathon on TV so she didn't hear him come in. Billy Joe got the fish grease nice and hot then dropped in three cats he'd caught the day before at the river. What he did next is where the fire came from. He passed out cold on the floor in front of the stove and that hog lard grease got so hot it finally caught fire.
Fortunately, June Ann woke up smelling the smoke and realized the trailer was on fire. She grabbed her two children and some of their clothes, and then took them outside near the road to safety. She pointed a finger at them and snapped, "Now ya'll stay right here and don't move or I'll set your britches on fire, you hear me?" When the kids nodded, she went running back inside the smoke filled house where she gathered up and saved her two cats and a parakeet from sure fire death. She got them outside with the children and then back into the trailer she went again. With much great physical effort and power, she managed to drag and roll her mama's old sewing machine out the front door, into the yard, and safely away from the burning structure.
By that time, the volunteer fire department arrived and told her to stay put and don't go no place. They'd do the rest. June Ann yelled at them, "Just make sure you run down the hall to my bedroom and get my daddy's old shotgun out of there before it burns up". The fireman took off running then turned back and asked, "Is that shotgun loaded?" June Ann said, "If it ain't there's a box of shells on the top shelf so load it up before you bring it out here, okay?" Anotheer fireman yelled, "Well where's your husband, Billy Joe and what's Carlton's Cab doing parked here in the yard with the motor running?" Waving one hand toward the mobile home, June Ann said, "Hell I don’t know but I think I saw him lyin' on the floor near the stove but don't bother waking him up. He gets pretty mean after he's been drinking all night." The fireman nodded then raced into the house. One of them found Billy Joe passed out near the stove and carried him outside to safety. June Ann told him to go put him back since that seemed to be where he wanted to be but they refused. Fact is Billy Joe owed Andy (the fireman) ten bucks and he wasn't about to let that slip past.
About five minutes and a living room sofa in flames later, a medic showed up and gave Billy Joe some oxygen out of a bottle. Pretty soon, Billy Joe coughed, gagged, spit out a pile of black soot and most of the last hours worth of Budweiser. Then he looked up at his home and asked with tears in his eyes, "Can they save the tires at least? They almost brand new."
The last crime that happened anywhere near Bubba's was the night Carlton's cab got stolen right out from in front of the Bar where he parked it most days. I don't really see no need to describe that incident to the readers though. I mean, ya'll have been paying attention so far, ain't you? So that's the story behind Bubba's Bait, Tackle, Beer, and Baptist Church. Maybe next time I write about it I'll go over some of the finer points of the neighborhood. Might even talk about the world famous Redneck Games held a few miles away from there. It's interesting I promise you.
Email Charles Wells