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What are the benefits and challenges of selling direct? How can you use limited edition merchandise to add more value to retailers and make more money on a launch? Alex Kava talks about her author business.
In the intro, award-winning Japanese writer, Rie Kudan, used ChatGPT to write parts of her prize-winning novel and judges lauded the work as ‘flawless.’ [The Telegraph]; Personal news about my pivot, the Blueprint rewrite, and cleaning up the backlist; plus, I’m on The Alignment Show.
Today’s show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital to get started.
This show is also sponsored by my community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn.
Alex Kava is the multi-award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author of the FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell series and K-9 handler Ryder Creed series, amongst other books.
You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The struggles that come with traditional publishing
- Becoming an indie author and taking back control
- Direct sales as part of the author business model
- Sourcing and selling quality merchandise
- Merchandise as an extension of the reader experience
- The technical side of selling personalized books and merchandise
- Building your newsletter and marketing your direct store
You can find Alex at AlexKava.com.
Transcript of Interview with Alex Kava
Joanna: Alex Kava is the multi-award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author of the FBI Profiler Maggie O’Dell series and K-9 Handler Ryder Creed series, amongst other books. So welcome to the show, Alex.
Alex: Thanks, Jo. I’m so excited. Thank you for inviting me.
Joanna: Oh, yes, well, we have lots to talk about. But first up–
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.
Alex: Well, I’ve been in the business now for over 20 years. So I guess as a kid, I was like all the other authors, but for me, I never dreamed that you could actually make a living by writing up stories and writing books.
Both my parents were children of Polish immigrants, and they instilled a very strong work ethic. I went to college on an art scholarship, and at 26, I started my own graphic design company. I was designing anything from corporate brochures to food labels. I still remember spending a weekend in grocery stores, looking to see what colors worked best in the refrigerator sections of the grocery stores.
I still dreamed of writing. That still nagged at me. Remember, in the late 90s, there really wasn’t any other way to publish except traditional publishing. I remember somebody telling me that it was easier to win the lottery than it was to get published in fiction at that time.
So after 116 rejections from literary agents for my first novel, I put that aside, wrote a second novel, and found an agent. My first book was published in 2000, A Perfect Evil, and that quickly became an international bestseller.
I quickly learned that in traditional publishing, it’s almost as difficult to stay published as it is to get published.
You always seemed to be depending on the next contract, and the next contract, and having your publisher define what you were worth.
In the course of 16 books in 16 years, I went through nine editors, three Big Five publishers, and three agents.
Joanna: Wow.
Alex: Yes, I went through the merger of Penguin, Putnam, and Random House. That’s where I lost one of my editors who had just brought me over from Doubleday. She was literally gone a week before my first book with her came out.
So that was the second time that I had been orphaned at a publisher. The contract had just started for three books. It was a major contract for $600,000 for three books, but that doesn’t mean anything. You know, we always thought that meant something, that they would take better care of you.
Finally, in 2016 at the end of that contract, my publisher said to me, “Well, we’re going to have to pay you 20% less this time because paperback distribution just isn’t what it used to be.” That’s in 2016, and I’m thinking, “Really, paperback distribution suddenly isn’t what it used to be?”
The deal breaker for me was that they wouldn’t drop the non-compete clause.
So I couldn’t even go write a book for someone else, or indie pub anything to make up that loss of income. So by everybody’s standards, they were offering me still decent money, but they wanted to split it in five payments, which made another difference.
They held onto the non-compete clause. I just walked away. My literary agent thought that I was crazy. I decided that I’m going to trust my readers to tell me what I’m worth. That was in 2016. I released my first indie book nine months later, and I have never looked back.
Joanna: I love that because this is actually very common. Like you said, you’ve been doing this a long time, like 20 years. It’s not a surprise that you went through various mergers, you lost various editors, and agents changed. I mean, that’s actually quite normal.
Some people might think, oh, well, maybe there’s something wrong with you, all of that change. I mean, in reality, this is what happens, isn’t it, when it’s out of your control. It feels like–
You got sick of things being out of your control.
Alex: I think it’s becoming even worse now than it was then. I remember when I was orphaned at Doubleday, my editor had to retire because she had some health issues unexpectedly, and they were not going to pick up my option at the end of the contract.
So I was writing my Maggie O’Dell series, my FBI profiler series, I was probably in book 10 or 11, doing very well, and my agent’s solution to me was, well, we’ll go write a standalone. I remember asking him, “Okay, and then what happens?” And he said, “Well, we’ll let the publisher decide.” That did not play very well.
I mean, this is what I see, and I have friends who have been down the same route. You’re absolutely right, it’s not unusual. Their solution is to go write a standalone, go write a new series, because they don’t want an old series if they don’t have the backlist.
So you’ll see authors, oftentimes in traditional publishing, constantly reinventing themselves, constantly coming up with a new series to see if this one will click this time, and never having any control. I tell authors now —
The only person who is going to care about your career is not your editor, it’s not your agent, it’s you. You have to take charge.
Joanna: Yes, and I mean, they might care for the time that you are doing well, but even the most successful author can’t stay at the top of the charts forever. Then it’s someone else’s turn, and that seems to be when things happen.
I am interested, though, because I feel like the other thing that happens, I mean, I feel like this now after 15 years as an indie, is a creative confidence and more of a self-confidence.
So when you’re a new author, you really just don’t have that. You don’t have the understanding of your craft. Like you said, I’ll get my readers to decide. It feels like you made mature creative decisions. If people now are just starting out as new authors, they don’t have that creative confidence, I guess. What would you say to new authors starting out?
Alex: You know, it’s tough, but again, you do have control.
There are so many different things with social media that you can do to create a vibe, to create an interest to bring readers directly to you. Remember, traditional publishing is always using somebody else to bring a reader to buy a book.
That was another thing that bothered me. I was not published for very long, and they were sending me to Ingram, and to Baker and Taylor, and to Barnes and Noble’s office to have lunch with people.
I remember saying to them, “When do I get to meet readers?” They actually kind of laughed at me, like how naive I am. They said that these are the people that are going to sell your books and get your books to who needs to read them.
So they don’t have a connection to their readers. That’s probably the biggest disconnect that I see in traditional publishing that still exists. So as a new author, remember that you get to talk directly to them.
When you get one, when you get two, when you get three, start that newsletter, start that word of mouth, start building from just your readers that do come to you. That’s the best way.
I have been very fortunate because I have readers that are still with me. That’s because I built that relationship, despite my publisher not doing it.
So indie authors have a very distinct opportunity, I think, to be able to do that and to go directly to the reader. They have more opportunities to do that than ever before with social media.
Joanna: Yes. Well, let’s talk about this because I wanted to talk to you because you’re doing some awesome things with your direct store. Just tell us a bit about how you do publish. What is your publishing model? What is direct? What is wide?
Why do you like having direct sales as part of the business model?
Alex: Well, I like wide for the same reason that I like direct because I don’t ever want to be, and I’ve heard you say this too, I don’t ever want to be dependent on one source for my income like I was with a publisher, someone who can like pull the rug out from under you at any one time.
So I am wide everywhere. I’m on all of the e-retailers. I would almost said that print is a little bit different, but more and more readers are buying online, so we have the advantage there as well.
I’m a very slow writer. I mean, I was very much into the model of traditionally publishing one book a year, and that’s what I do. So a launch for us is a big deal. We make probably a chunk of our money in the first month.
We put up preorders, ebook and hardcover, still working with my narrator to hopefully someday get the audio at the same time, but he takes a little bit longer, and that’s okay. So we have those two that are up for preorder everywhere, and our website.
We have our loyal readers used to coming and buying the hardcover on the webshop.
That’s because they get a free bookmark. They get it personalized, they get it signed, I wrap it in paw print tissue paper, I put a thank you card in, I make it special for them.
They’re paying full price for that book and they’re paying for shipping. Sometimes we’ll give them like a $2 discount or something like that, but it’s not a lot. They come and they buy a premium product there, so I want to give them the full treatment. So we do that.
We did a launch in December, and we did the most hardcovers that we’ve ever done. I think we’re about 520 right now. That, I think, might be the limit. I mean, you just signed 500, right, for your kickstarter.
Joanna: Yes, but I don’t personalize, and I don’t ship.
Alex: Yes, so you understand how that works. So that’s what we do. We’ve been doing this for at least the last six or seven books. We put up the preorder and things are going really, really well.
Here’s why you sell direct.
Five days, literally five days before the book was to be released, the buy button on Amazon disappeared. A couple of hours later, the entire hardcover disappeared, and it was doing well. I mean, the ranking for the hardcover preorders was below 10,000 at one point. We normally sell 3000 hardcovers in the first two weeks through Amazon. It’s gone, and nobody has an answer.
I don’t know how hard anybody’s tried to talk to anybody at Amazon or at Ingram Lightning Source, who prints our books and distributes it, but nobody would give us an answer as to what was going on.
So we scrambled, and we got out an email to our readers and said, “Hey, this is what’s going on. I think we broke Amazon.”
You know, I kind of made light of it, and I said, “If you really want a jacketed hardcover, come to us. We’ll make sure that you’re going to get it.” We had a ton of orders, and we’re still fulfilling those now.
I have to say, I don’t do this alone. I don’t know how you do it and how authors do it that are a one-person shop. I respect the heck out of you guys.
My life partner is my business partner, and Deb is an operations person. She’s not an author. She was in the restaurant business for years before we got together.
She came up with the idea and, in hours, formatted the book for a hardcover at Amazon, which is case-bound not jacketed, but we got that up. So don’t ever assume that Amazon, and I’ve heard you say this before, that Amazon’s not going to change or that Amazon’s going to always be there. That is the best reason for going wide, and it’s the best reason for selling direct.
Joanna: Yes, so I think it comes back to what we said earlier about your need for control after so long out of control, and then things still being out of control.
Alex: Absolutely. I mean, it just drives you crazy, doesn’t it?
Joanna: It does. It’s so funny. I mean, it’s funny you say that because I was on Audible earlier, I was doing something, and I was like, where have these books gone? I don’t check these things all the time, so I’m like, what? Then they’ve disappeared from my dashboard.
I haven’t fixed this yet. This is just something I noticed earlier. I was like, oh, it’s so annoying when you have to go chase people who, as you said, it’s going to be hard to get hold of. These things happen.
Of course, it is not easy to sell direct. As you said, your partner helps you. As I mentioned before, I have not, as yet, personalized books.
I use Bookvault who do all my shipping. So when I did my signing, I went up to their factory, which is a few hours. It’s like a day trip for me. Obviously, not everyone can do that. So I agree with you, it’s quite hard to do yourself unless you are really organized and you get your process sorted.
I do want to ask you particularly about the other things. So I’ve talked a lot about books for selling direct, but you do other cool things.