30 Days of Hell - The Road to Winning Kindle Scout and Getting Published, Part Three

Kindle Scout took quite a bit of flack for posing as a hybrid publishing outfit. While claiming it was seeking to be reader powered publishing that would allow it to market indie authors whose works would go completely unedited, it was also posing partly as publishing outfit that would put its advertising power behind the books that were chosen (complete with a cash advance to published authors). This put Amazon into what was an awkward position in the press; it claimed its authors were independent yet they had the Amazon advertising budget behind them. That meant Amazon's brand was on the line, and that meant the sales giant felt the need to step in and provide editing assistance with manuscripts.

Not that the winners had badly written manuscripts. A brief survey of the winning authors revealed a number of previously published authors as well as novices with a fair amount of experience in other writing venues. In other words, almost all knew the rigors of self-editing and the value of a copy edit. It also became apparent that the winners were helped by previously established fan bases, since many were able to appeal to readers of their previously published books. In my case, having developed a fan base for Floor 21 through my various writing groups, I was able to multiply my votes by making simple requests to supporters who in turn passed those requests to others that were interested in the genre. I also benefited from taking out select advertisements. In this case I used Facebook to target friends of people that had already supported my author page; in other words, my ads were going to friends of supporters, and specifically they were targeted at fans of young-adult science fiction with a dystopian twist. This guaranteed the correct audience was being found and my click through rate was fairly decent. I never felt disappointed in my ad selection and responses.

The thirty days of voting was nerve wracking and I found myself checking my standing every hour of every day up until the final week. Over that time frame I never saw Floor 21 fall off the Hot List for more than hour before rebounding.

Books placed for selection on Kindle Scout are sorted into a variety of categories including Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery, and Romance. However, those books with the most votes on an hourly basis move into Amazon's 'Hot List'. The Hot List is important because it is the first set of books a visitor sees when they arrive on the Kindle Scout splash page. This is consistent with sales and marketing in general; be first, be loud and be present. People like winners and think they're sitting at the top for a justifiable reason. If a book's on the hot list, it must be because lots of people like it. This inclines them to vote for yours first. Even during periods when I wasn't advertising or wrangling my supporters into votes, I was constantly shuffling through the Hot List.

It's worth mentioning that the Hot List doesn't seem to be a 'ranked' list; books with the most votes aren't necessarily at the top of the Hot List. The sorting seems randomized, so generally it's just important to be on there. Being on the list shows you're getting votes, and if you're on the list even when you're not marketing it means that people are arriving at the Kindle Scout page, seeing your book and voting for you even if they've never previously seen your work.

You also don't need to be on the list every day of the week or even the entire month. While my book remained on the list for 30 days, other books that were on the list for perhaps two weeks were selected. This is because a flood of votes only fast tracks your book for consideration by Amazon's editorial board, which then makes decisions on whether to choose your book or not. Several books on the Hot List consistently for the majority of their time in the program were not chosen while other books that vanished after two and a half weeks were selected. The decision by Amazon's selection team is not only based on votes but also based on whether Amazon thinks it can sell your book.

At any rate, after 30 days you're notified that your book has finished its campaign and that now it's in the hands of the selection team. That began the next few days of waiting... days that created even more hell for me. 

30 Days of Hell - The Road to Winning Kindle Scout and Getting Published, Part Two

I originally heard about the Kindle Scout program in early November and at that time decided to submit my book, The Dream Map, to see if it would get a shot. Unfortunately I'd already set it to sell through the standard Kindle system and so it was ineligible. Of course rejection wasn't a new phenomenon in the world of writing. Though I'd found success in academia and doing short stints for Blizzard Entertainment, a fully published novel still eluded me. As far as my experience with Kindle Scout, I assumed at the time that my relationship with it was over. Brief, experimental and completely nondescript, it was much like an unmemorable movie or inoffensive book. Simply state, it was not something that would stay in my mind either way.

I flirted in the halls of NaNoWriMo groups that November month, engaging with others in discussions of technique and style. I had more experience than some others, including time negotiating with agents, dealing with editors and the like. At its worst I was bored by repetetive questions and authors unwilling to understand the rules before attempting to break them. At its best I was intrigued by story concepts and found myself in lengthy discussions of 'why' we write.

However, it's important to remember that I never actually started writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. I had no reason to. After all, I'd never had any difficulties motivating myself to write and I already had books I'd completed, though they lingered unpublished. I had no reason that simply write another novel just for the purpose of saying I 'won' NaNoWriMo. No, Floor 21 started for completely different reasons.

It was a late Sunday and I was catching up on episodes of The Walking Dead when I saw a young woman rappelling down an elevator shaft. At its bottom awaited hordes of zombies but if she could only make it through, she'd find her way to freedom. The girl had been imprisoned by hospital authorities for weeks and this was her moment to flee. As I saw her working her way down into a pile of broken and zombified bodies, I wondered to myself: What if she had always lived in that building? What if this wasn't her returning to her group? Instead, what if she'd always lived at the top and had no idea what awaited on ground floor?

That was the initial inspiration of an idea, and I quickly typed out a 1,200 word 'recording' of Jackie. This writing exercise was experimental for me since I'd never attempted to write in first person, never attempted to write a female protagonist and was attempting to write it as if she was leaving recordings behind. That idea, of leaving recordings behind, was taken from a staple of horror conventions used in horror video games from Bioshock to Dead Space. But somehow it just worked and the premise was intriguing. I posted the sample to several writing groups, including my NaNoWriMo group. And you know what?

It exploded.

Just about everyone who read it had an overwhelmingly positive response to the material and the character. Inspired by the response, I worked furiously that week. It was Thanksgiving week and my workload was light since students were not holding classes (I run a small tutoring agency). Within the week I was done; I'd written 50,000 words in a week, finished the first draft of Floor 21 and inadvertently won NaNoWriMo.

Now all I had to do was get it published. Enter Kindle Scout.

30 Days of Hell - The Road to Winning Kindle Scout and Getting Published, Part One

A bit about me. 

My name is Jason Luthor and I am a former writer for Blizzard Entertainment. During my time as what was essentially outsourced writing talent, I worked with the writing team to develop Protoss storylines that at the time were going to be part of the Protoss campaign for Starcraft 2. I'm not saying I was the greatest writer, but I was good enough to get paid working for a really well established entertainment company, and I had fairly solid mastery of the short story writing form.

In 2012 I was completing my Masters Degree. During what I can only call a hectic hell on earth situation, I was splitting time as a full time Masters student and a high school teacher. It wasn't glamorous and I was exhausted all the time, but one thing I did learn along the way was the importance of editing. For a few years, since my time with Blizzard, I'd been trying to get a book out the door. However I, like many short story writers, did not 'get' what it took to take a short story and keep it interesting over the length of a novel. A lot of my problems would have been solved with just some decent editing.

The major problem was that the graduate program was so writing heavy that somewhere I lost my passion. That summer, with my Masters degree in hand, I was sparked by the movie Man of Steel to start writing some Superman fanfiction. I had great reviews and decided to try Batman fanfiction and again, great reviews. One of the constant comments was that they loved my characterizations and that I'd nail the personalities.

That part's important, because it's exactly what I didn't do when I tried my hand at writing a book again. My next novel, The Dream Map, had an intriguing plot that got interest from agents. In fact I went through a lengthy process, and still maintain a close relationship with, an agent in Los Angeles. One of the greatest pieces of feedback he gave me during the editing process was this: "I can't tell your characters apart."

Something he mentioned to me that always stuck was that he could flip to any page in a Harry Potter book and tell who was speaking without having to be told by the author. That, he said, was why my book wasn't sticking. I started to think about that and realized that the successes I'd had in fanfiction were assisted by the fact that my characters had been per-developed for me. It was easy for them to each have their own voices because I'd been hearing those voices on tv, in movies, or reading them in comics for years.

Giving characters their own voice is, in my opinion, one of the greatest problems amateur writers face. So many people come up with intriguing concepts or plots, and put so much into world building, that they forget to make their characters really come alive as individuals. As one fellow writer told me, "Disney doesn't sell original stories, it sells characters." This was exactly what I'd been missing for years. I'd nailed it in short story form where you didn't need to pay so much attention for such a long span of time to characterization, and my novel length fan fictions came naturally because the comic world was hammered into my subconcious. But me? Coming up with my own characters with their own voice? Even going back to rewrite The Dream Map, I was discouraged because I realized I'd have to tear it apart root and branch to really invest it with snappy dialogue and character moments. I just didn't have it in me.

So from the verge of abandoning my individual writing entirely, how did I end up here, with people praising the character of Jackie and with my book, Floor 21, on the verge of publication?

Let's just say thank God for NaNoWriMo and the digital age of book publication. But more on that soon.