First Cup of Coffee - September 8, 2023

Some exciting (though vague for now) news for me! Also a roundup of the various platforms I use for my self-published books, since I'm wide. Also how "adult" seems to mean erotic now, and how annoying that is.

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Transcript

00:01.64
jeffekennedy
Good morning. Everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.64
jeffekennedy
Ah, ambrosia.

00:20.79
jeffekennedy
Ah, today is say it with me people. It is Friday woohoo September Eighth a week into September already. So hope you all are revved to have completed. Sort of our first week of fall I'm one of those people that autumn feels like the beginning to me if I were ruling the world and I got to set the calendar I would make the new year be at the beginning of September that's just. How it's always felt to me I don't think that's maybe it's left over from school that whole feeling of classes kicking in again. Although so many schools are starting now in August that that's kind of changed. But I love the energy of autumn. You know, like when people talk about what's your favorite season I love I love the autumnal feel I love the the cooling air and the feeling everything packing and the energy. So um I got. Really exciting news yesterday which I have to torment you with because I cannot yet share I actually don't even know what the news is yet because um, I'm having a meeting today meeting.

01:48.43
jeffekennedy
I'm having a meeting with someone very exciting today and so Jim Sorenson my crit partner as soon as I found this out I'm like tagging all of my friends you know and I'm so excited to tell them and so I text Jim Sorenson and ah told him I I have a meeting with this person tomorrow. And he goes exciting and he said as as president of Sif well or as a writer and I was like ha ha ha I mean it's a fair question but um, it's actually as a writer this time.

02:25.53
jeffekennedy
so so I was looking around seeing wondering where Killian went. We've had the the coil train coming through lately a little fall batch of coil babies and they're not. Baby babies anymore. They're like um, they're like ah the well we call them juies right? Juveniles and I'm trying to think of how to tell you how big they are like maybe the size of my fist and I don't have tiny little hands but you know about that size. They're still super cute. And they get on our waterfall out front and come in for the water there. Oh there is good and they're funny because they climb up on there and they they can't quite fly yet but they have these little stubby wings that they can like use as gliders you you all? This is so super cute. So they'll like it up on the rock and they'll drink and then they leap off the rock and they kind of catch a good glide anyway, um, these are like the the popcorn of the desert they're they're kind of past popcorn stage now they're like at you know, like a. Chunky snack mix size all the predators want them all of them and the cats see them and just get electrified and they're like this is great prey juicy and young and tender and I could get 1 and we're like but may not may not um.

03:58.50
jeffekennedy
Coopers Hawk knows what time they come in to drink and I see the hawk go over and the other day the hawk was um I just seen the coil train. Go by. We call it the quail train because the parents call them along. They have this this song that goes to.

04:18.30
jeffekennedy
It's really great and that's sort of how they like tell everyone that everything is fine guide their little train of of juvies. So um, yeah, and I'd seen that. Quilting go by just recently and I saw the hawk silhouette and so I went and looked out there and the cooper's hawk is sitting down in the lower limbs of the juniper very crafty, very wily I mean I had to give it to the hawk looked like a spur of a. Dead branch down there watching the water fountains and I feel personally responsible because I'm the one who's like attracting creating the buffet I'm the 1 laying out the table so I started walking down there towards that cooper hassak and the. Hock was like you don't see me, you don't see me, you don't see me and then I finally got close enough that the the cock was you'd said. Yeah you see me and flew off. It's like well I don't know my little drop in the bucket.

05:30.31
jeffekennedy
Anyway I brought Killian back here so that he can't ah chase the Juvie quail. Um, so yeah, ah hopefully I'll be able to tell you the news. It's um, we're just sort of getting to that.

05:47.67
jeffekennedy
You know, having heaviness meeting today and hearing what they have to say and I'm really excited you guys I've been feeling. Um, so this tremendous sense of relief I feel like this is something I've been ah working really hard towards for a long time. And finally something is happening. So um, yes, more on that later. But yes, thank you for all your support and your good wishes and so forth. Um, ch. I know I have notes things that I wanted to talk about oh so this is kind of funny um on smash words I use smash words to distribute to Apple incrib a few other things but those are the 2 biggies. And because I don't upload directly to Apple because I don't have a mac and don't tell me to buy a mac so I can do it because I'm not gonna I'm happy using Smashwords to distribute. But um when I put in the keywords for twisted magic. Now available for preorder I I put in adult fantasy excuse me and they flagged it for their expanded distribution saying that my keywords.

07:20.76
jeffekennedy
Indicated. It was a work of erotica and that I needed to ah put it in Neurotica category and it drives me crazy. It just annoys me so much because it's like since when does. Fantasy for adults as opposed to y a fantasy. Why does that mean erotica it doesn't it doesn't ah and I won't spend a lot of time ranting about it. But that's the state of the industry.

07:58.43
jeffekennedy
Um, it's just yeah there we are you know and it's one of those things where now why a young adult which you know I've talked about before why a didn't exist as a genre when I was a young adult.

08:16.45
jeffekennedy
Now it's it's ceasing to lose its meaning because so many adults read young adults which is great and fine. But a lot of young adults has pretty steamy content. So that part is changed so it's like. You know now young adult means female focused more or less right? So many. Ah female Fantasy authors talk about getting categorized as Y a when their books are not y a but if you call them adult then that means that it's Porn. So ah.

08:53.52
jeffekennedy
I Don't know I don't know what the answer is.

09:00.24
jeffekennedy
Ah, if you're on video I think you may have seen that David has been trapping pack rats and Killian just went and dug this pack rat from the trap by acting like he caught it.

09:15.32
jeffekennedy
I'm going to pause all right. That was pretty funny because I just happen to catch it on the camera as Killian went by and then out the corner of my eye. Ah well we talk about the gun I mean if you hate this kind of thing cover your ears but we have this. It's like a compressed carbon dioxide cartridge and the the rodents put their heads up in there in it. It's a very fast. It's a very painless and fast killing. But then it leaves the the little bodies behind in Killian. Is now learning that that gun is set up there. Gun is probably the wrong word for it. But you know what I mean it's yeah rodent machine I don't know. But so anyway, yeah, he wouldn't drag that great but pack ratd off of there and. Went by having to hold his head up to keep it from dragging on the ground terribly proud of himself. So anyway I like totally lost my train of thought that's autumn and Santa Fe oh I was talking about the adult fantasy thing. Yeah, so um, that's a weird thing. All right, let's see so I had other things to talk about I'm sure I'm trying to ramp back up into getting twisted magic done. Oh I know what I was going to mention just sort of as a general industry thing. You know.

10:51.50
jeffekennedy
Barnes and noble keeps trying to be relevant and and I appreciate them trying to be relevant because I would love for them to give Amazon competition and as many of you know my self-p published works are wide so they are carried by Barnes and noble. So agent Sarah the other day sent out an email saying that Barnes and noble was doing one of their preorder specials where if people preorder on barnes and noble they get 25% off on the book and an author makes same amount of money. So. It's a good deal for us and you know share on our socials and she said you know if we use the Hashtag and and tag them that they'll pick it up and reshare on their socials. So I thought okay well why not because I've got twisted magic up for preorder and I mean I don't have a lot of. Nook readers as so far as I can tell it's gone down. It's definitely gone down. Um my personal experience and it seems that people have different experiences. What's really interesting to me is different books sell better on other platforms than Amazon. Ah, and I don't understand why. But it's like they'll only sell there um like on Barnes and noble I have entire series that just like don't sell it all on there but then other things that sell only there or almost only there.

12:25.68
jeffekennedy
Which is a good argument for being wide. Oh and as an aside I just found out the other day I did not know this that on Kindle Unlimited you know authors get paid for page reads. Did you know that they do not get paid for rereads. You only get paid read for that first time I guess that makes sense. Because um, in the early days people were capitalizing you know doing that mickey people click through a whole bunch of times and getting paid for those patriots. So now you only get paid for the first time through now.

13:03.38
jeffekennedy
Ah there's been a lot going on lately with Kindle Unlimited um and the romance genre being receiving less of a percentage of the sales because it's the biggest one I guess very people people very upset about that getting paid less per page read. Them before. So anyway, um, bonds and noble preordered deal. Um I put some effort into it Wednesday morning because I thought okay I'm willing to give this a try. Ah my bonds and noble sales have been going down down down. Um. And kobo is going up and it's kind of funny because somebody somebody with a vested interest and I'm not going to say who it is but someone on another retail platform at a conference recently told me that. That Kobo was going down that Kobo was getting less of the market share and I was like not of mine. That's my sales from Kobo have been going up up up and I love it. Um, yeah, totally on board with selling stuff through cobo. So anyway, anyway, Barnes and noble.

14:18.50
jeffekennedy
Ah, you know I actually invested in doing this I made a graphic I encouraged people. You know if you read on nook preorder my book here I shout out on all the socials I tagged Barnes and noble like I should have um before I began this this was on the sixth it's going the sixth to today I had 1 preorder for twisted magic on Nook which I'm I'm gonna say is typical I mean this, there's a reason why I don't look at my barnes and noble sales reports much I gauge how something is doing by looking at Amazon. So. Um I don't have tons of preorders on Amazon yet I've got something like 150 so far which is great because that's enough to pay off my investment in it and I know it'll continue to increase. Um. Usually I have more pre-orders by this point because I'll have the pre-order link at the end of the previous book right? So as soon as people finish the book they can click to preorder the next one and I simply wasn't ready when rogue familiar came out in April I didn't do it I have since. Uploaded a new version with the link in the back but the you know the pre I expected pre-orders to be slow, but so 150 on Amazon versus 1 on barnes and noble so I did this promo push. Ah and as of the end of yesterday guess how many Barnes and noble pre-orders I have.

15:51.54
jeffekennedy
I have 2 2 so that was a fair amount of work to try to pump up for 1 more pre-order and have they shared on my so on their socials have they reshared it now not that I've seen. And I should get tagged right? if they have maybe they only do it for big important books. 1 thing I've noticed is I could do the print preorder unbars so noble and I maybe should I'm going to tag my cover designer. Um, because well first of all I have to write the back cover copy but in order to do the preorder on Barnes and noble. You have to upload the print cover and I don't have the print cover yet. Normally my process is is once the book is done ah and it's. Formatted I send it to my formatter. My formatter tells me how many pages it is because my cover designer has to know how many pages it is in order to design the back cover because the spine width is going to vary depending on how many pages it is. So. That's usually my very one of my very last steps is to do the print preorder. So I'm going to ask her if she can do a generic one for now to allow me to do the preorder. However I do need to give her that back cover copy. Um.

17:23.89
jeffekennedy
I'm at about 12000 words on twisted magic I really need to accelerate. But um, you know it's it's really great having this meeting today and feeling like things are moving and I feel so much less pressure and it's just ah. Fabulous extraordinary I think 1 thing about being an indie author and I've talked to many friends about this um is that there is a sense of unrelenting pressure.

17:59.67
jeffekennedy
To get that next book out so that you can kick the algorithm and get the sales back up again in order to keep that income coming so you can like pay the electric bill. It doesn't help when we're you know. In this period of inflation where things are getting more and more expensive too. So the thing is though is it's yeah it it becomes kind of this hamster wheel right? where you feel like you're constantly working to you know, get the book out and. You know, write the next one and all of this and I knew this year that I was really getting myself in a little bit of a fix by pursuing these traditional publishing deals because I have 2 books that I've written that. You know haven't been producing many for me yet, right? They're not out in the world and so it's um, it's nice to have this feeling that like maybe I can relax a little bit and I think it's really hard to disconnect myself from the idea that. How much I work every day is directly related to how much money I'm bringing in that if I don't work I am somehow sabotaging my income I have enough of a backlist now that I do have a fairly steady income from that.

19:25.46
jeffekennedy
Know what my baseline is. It's very interesting when I don't have a release in a while and I haven't had a release since April so that's a long time. You know the the people who analyze such things really say that after sixty days on Amazon the algorithm starts working against you if you haven't had a new release. And so I've been um, you know may June July August I've been twice that right? So and next willies will be twisted magic in October and I really want to hit that october date right? obviously but um.

20:04.46
jeffekennedy
Yeah, it's it's really interesting. What I don't have that my sales fall to a very predictable steady level. Um what I would love is I could get that very predictable steady level to be about twice what it is but so far. No, although I will say that my diversification really has worked that the income from other places like Kobo we love kobo um bines a nobook get your f freaking act together. Why why doesn't this work I don't understand it. Maybe they're just so focused on print. I don't know all right? Well anyway, that's um, sort of my weekly wrap up. Um, thank you all for your support and excitement and I will give you news as soon as I have it, you all take care have a great weekend go out and enjoy this. Oh. So gorgeous weather here. You all take care bye bye.