Screenwriter and author John August

Spelunking the Kindle market, cont’d.

February 2, 2012 Books, Follow Up, Snake People, The Variant

I’ve written several times about my experiments with self-publishing on the Kindle, mostly concerning my short story [The Variant](http://johnaugust.com/variant), which briefly hit #18 on the overall bestsellers list.

Overall, I found Amazon’s ebook tools satisfactory, but the price structure was [frustrating](http://johnaugust.com/2009/spelunking-the-kindle-market):

> Amazon doesn’t distinguish between free and paid content on their Kindle bestseller list. In fact, 19 out of the top 50 books are free. There’s nothing wrong with free, but it’s a semantic and tactical mistake to include them on a “bestseller” list.

They’ve fixed that.

Free books are now listed separately, and with the introduction of the KDP Select program, self-publishers can finally price a title as free for up to five days. (Before this, only major publishers could set the price at zero.)

After reading [David Kazzie’s post](http://wahoocorner.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-kdp-select-saved-my-book.html) about his experience with KDP Select, I decided to try it out on another one of my short stories, [Snake People](http://www.amazon.com/Snake-People-ebook/dp/B004H8GF0U/), which had gotten nice reviews but never achieved the traction of The Variant.

To enter KDP Select, you have to promise that the title isn’t available for sale anywhere other than Amazon. Unlike The Variant, I wasn’t selling Snake People as a PDF, so there was nothing to take down.

Dropping the price is handled through a pop-up box called the Promotions Manager. The only option listed for me was “free book,” but the system seems to be designed for more-extensive campaigns. You’re allowed to be free for up to five days total, divided however you want.

Snake People went free yesterday (February 1st), and as of this writing sits at #20 on Kindle’s free [short stories list](http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/157087011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_kstore_2_4_last), with 75 copies “sold” in the last 24 hours.

The list is everything
—

From our experience with [Bronson Watermarker](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson), we’ve learned that where you fall on the lists has a huge impact on sales. The higher you’re ranked, the more people see you. The more you’re seen, the more you’re purchased. Winners keep winning.

The pure ranking matters, but even more important is where the page breaks.

For Bronson, we made the front page of the Mac App Store in the “New and Notable” section. For the two weeks we were there, our sales were ten times normal. Once we fell to the second page of “New and Notable,” we quickly regressed to the mean.

I realize that writing about Snake People while the experiment is still running will inevitably corrupt the data. Some readers will click and buy it because hey, [it’s free](http://www.amazon.com/Snake-People-ebook/dp/B004H8GF0U/ref=zg_bs_157087011_20).

And that’s okay. I mostly want more data to answer correlation questions: If 75 copies lands a title at #20, how many copies is the #1 short story “selling?”

In my initial experiments with The Variant, I was able to estimate how much Stephanie Meyer was bringing in off of her Twilight books. (A lot.) I’m curious what the numbers mean in Kindle’s new free ecosystem.

So if you haven’t checked out Snake People, [go get it](http://www.amazon.com/Snake-People-ebook/dp/B004H8GF0U/) before the promotion ends on Friday. I’ll publish a follow-up on Monday with numbers.

Warners adds 28 days of hassle

January 30, 2012 News

In a move that will help absolutely no one, Warners has apparently convinced Netflix to make their site [slightly worse for users](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/01/warner-bros-netflix-deal-includes-delay-in-queues.html):

> Under a new deal between the two companies, Netflix users won’t just have to wait 56 days to rent Warner Bros. movies on DVD. They’ll have to wait 28 days to add the movies to their queues. […]

> Beginning Feb. 1, when the new agreement goes into effect, Netflix customers won’t even be able to add Warner movies to their queues until four weeks after the DVDs go on sale, a knowledgeable person not authorized to speak publicly confirmed. They would then have to wait another four weeks until Netflix starts shipping the discs.

Granted: Netflix would love to get out of the DVDs-by-mail business anyway. But taking away a basic feature that users have come to expect hurts the company’s reputation.

(Maybe that’s why they wanted to be called Qwikster.)

Shine on, you Kubrick theorists

January 26, 2012 Directors, Follow Up

When I [criticized](http://johnaugust.com/2011/cinematic-geography-and-problem-of-genius) Rob Ager’s analysis of spatial impossibilities in The Shining, I didn’t realize the extent of [wild theories about Kubrick’s film](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/movies/room-237-documentary-with-theories-about-the-shining.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=movies):

> “Room 237,” the first full-length documentary by the director Rodney Ascher, examines several of the most intriguing of these theories. It’s really about the Holocaust, one interviewee says, and Mr. Kubrick’s inability to address the horrors of the Final Solution on film. No, it’s about a different genocide, that of American Indians, another says, pointing to all the tribal-theme items adorning the Overlook Hotel’s walls. A third claims it’s really Kubrick’s veiled confession that he helped NASA fake the Apollo Moon landings.

Of course, we’ll never know Kubrick’s true intentions, because he’s dead.

*Unless he isn’t.*

Smug ignorance

January 23, 2012 Rant

I haven’t said much about SOPA/PIPA, largely because the whole thing makes me so depressed about the industry I work in and the lawmakers who are too stupid or too lazy to understand what they’re voting on.

As [Mike Davidson puts it](http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2012/01/sopa-and-the-new-gatekeepers):

> If you want to pass any sort of bill that affects the internet, you better vet it with the people who control the internet. […]

> It would be like the EPA trying to sneak through a law that automobiles get 100mpg by year’s end without even talking to the car companies first.

But that’s just what Congress did, and was shocked when freedom-loving citizens and giant corporations — never best buds — rose up together in protest.

When you stir stupid and lazy together, they form a toxic compound called Smug Ignorance. It’s non-partisan and always fatal. The symptoms are phrases like, “I don’t know much about computers, but…” or “Look, no one knows if climate change is real.”

Senator, someone knows. It’s your job to ask.

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