March 15, 2003

Dear Authors:

Success breeds success because it finally gives you some conception of what it takes to be successful. Everything you do before you hit that mark is just wild shots in the dark, hopefully, but not necessarily, educated ‘guesses’.

We finished out 2002 with our first serious growth spurt in three years, showing almost a 50% increase in gross sales over the previous two years. With still two weeks to go before the end of our first quarter of 2003, gross sales have already reached more than three times the same period a year ago. This is exiting news for us—our biggest growth ever--hopeful news for our authors, because while we’ve seen some rise in overall sales, the bulk of this boost in sales can be attributed to a handful of books/authors.

The success of these books, however, is proof that our educated guess was pretty much on target and we hope to roll this over to make bigger profits for all of our authors.

I discussed some of this with the authors I met at EpicCon, but, naturally, due to the commitments of the conference we really didn’t have the chance to fully discuss possibilities.

Distributor sales of print books have begun to rise again after they pretty much bellied out last year. I feel sure the rise is due entirely to our authors’ hard work and promotions. Thank you and congratulations, the efforts are making a difference—small to be sure, but a difference nevertheless that will hopefully increase as time goes on. We will be looking in to the possibility of making some mass sales this year, now that we’ve got many of the problems ironed out, equipment that will stand up to high production over an extended period, and we’ve increased direct sales sufficiently to do so without overextending too badly—distributors pay very slowly. We can not afford to commit too much capitol without running the risk of failing.. and failure for us is failure for everybody.

Before I go further, I need to address one serious problem that frequently rears it’s ugly head in this business, particularly when I try to talk shop to our authors—jealousy. I do understand that this is something that is a part of some people’s nature, hard to control and hard to combat. However, it is a totally useless and unproductive emotion. If it empowered a person to strive harder, then it would have some use. I’ve yet to see that—I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but in general it just causes problems.

Set your jealousy aside. The plain, hard, indisputable fact of life in publishing is that you are an entertainer. Sometimes your ideas appeal, sometimes not. I wish I knew the exact formula to produce highly successful books every time, but no one knows that. Even authors who regularly sell well occasionally write one that flops, and usually some that do not perform as well as others—this isn’t an exact science and it is useless to try to compare your books to anyone else’s.

Now, having said that, I want to give credit where it’s due, Autumn Dawn ‘lucked’ out by writing a wonderfully appealing book, effective promotion, and being in the right place at the right time with the right story. Word of mouth about Teasing Danger brought us a tremendous increase in direct customers, many of whom seem to be voracious readers. Teasing Danger earned a ‘spicy’ rating and is a futuristic romance. Something Wild (the sequel) has performed equally well, but has a ‘sensual’ rating.

The moral here is that Futuristic Romance is hot right now.

Other recent bestsellers that have shown strong indications of matching or surpassing Ms. Dawn’s success are: Untamed (Fantasy Shapeshifter Romance), Bride of Atlantis (Paranormal Romance), Winter Thaw (Historical Romance) –Strong contenders have been One More Tomorrow (Vampire Romance) Sex Philes: Haunting Melody (Paranormal Suspense) and Ride the Stars (Futuristic Romance).

Sensuality ratings are an issue with a lot of authors, probably the majority. No one wants their books labeled as porn and no one wants to be associated with such sites as Ellora’s Cave—even the authors who write for them prefer to remain anonymous. However, I want to point out that ALL publishers, both traditional and ebook, have been begging for more sensual books for several years now…the reason being that the sensuality level can have a strong bearing on sales…it’s what your customers are asking for… no, demanding, because the majority take their business to where they can get what they want. This creates an obligation to writers to supply what is demanded of them as an entertainer—always assuming you consider yourself a professional—amateurs work for fun, professionals work for money.

Andrea worked up the sensuality ratings of the books and generally judges the level of sensuality on most of the books. I’ve been suffering confusion. Some of you probably are confused as well so, just in case, I’m going to explain them as they were explained to me.

Sweet: Little or no sexual tension, nothing more than a chaste kiss, behind closed doors type sex.

Sensual: Some sexual tension, one or two love scenes that are more flowery than graphic—a little on the purple prose side.(typical of the majority of romances)

Spicy: A lot of sexual tension, two or more love scenes that are more graphic than flowery in description. (Think of the daring love scene in Slow Heat in Heaven by Sandra Brown- or something close to Dara Joy’s books)

Carnal: A lot of sexual tension, two or more love scenes that are graphic, possibly explicit to the point of being offensive to some readers, some frank language.

The above descriptions are for future reference, but not exclusively. Please study them, consider if we have your book rated incorrectly and notify the appropriate editor if you feel any of your books do not have the correct rating. Moving your book to the appropriate page could make a difference in your sales.

Regarding the sensuality rating of your book: A porn has little or no plot, lots of very graphic/explicit sex that has no bearing on the story, and a considerable amount of gutter language. Please note, this does not appear in the description of our ratings. It is also not necessary to sell books. A high level of sensuality can help, but the right story can be merely ‘sensual’ and still sell well. Please also note that the lower the level of sensuality, in general, the fewer the sales, whatever category the book falls in to.

For the sake of future success in your writing endeavors, please note the ratings and also the story types that are selling well. If these fall inside your area of interest, we will be thrilled to get these stories from you. Since it’s important to everyone to ensure that we keep these customers we’ve recently gained coming back—because they shop while they’re visiting to purchase a specific title—anyone with a proposal should contact their editor as quickly as possible. We have created slots for books that fall in the above mentioned categories, particularly if they are also spicy or carnal. Since these categories are also highly in demand, they will be priced higher and will earn a higher royalty percentage.

I want to emphasize here that these are ADDITIONS to our offerings. In no way is this to be construed as ‘switching over’ to a different type of publishing house. A good portion of our customer base has been drawn by the books/authors we have been offering and we need to continue to release the variety of books these customers are used to finding on our site. However, by introducing more books in these big selling genres, and spicier books, we are bringing in more customers for everyone.

Keep in mind that I pointed out in an earlier letter to our authors that it is essential to develop lead authors who have the power to bring in customers on their names. Lead authors help everyone’s sales.

Rumor has it that Ellora’s Cave is so desperate for ‘romantica’ that they’re asking their authors to add sex scenes to previously written books. Anyone who’s been in the business for a while, and learned their craft, will know that this is a formula that will generally not click. It is the story, and the characters, that determine the level of sensuality of a book. What we are looking for, therefore, are stories and characters that lend themselves to a natural flow toward a higher level of sensuality. Medievals, more than most any other historical time period, lend themselves very naturally to a high sensuality rating. Contemporaries can. Romantic suspense can—think of movies such as Sliver, Basic Instinct, Femme Fatale, etc. And also, futuristic, fantasy, paranormal and science fiction.

Now, having said all that, I want to go in to possibilities of selling more of the books we already have. If anyone has a book that has performed poorly, but has the potential to be re-edited for a higher sensuality rating—supposing you glossed over romantic encounters – If you feel that the book could have easily been more sensual and that you would like to re-edit, please contact your editor. Again, don’t think of adding what was never appropriate to your story to begin with---but if you did the little ‘the next day’ exit when you got to the point of a love scene and want to change it to a love scene, we’re open.

Again, we have new customers shopping. This might bring you the notice you’ve been missing and boost your sales.

Other possibilities—consider turn offs and turn ons when you’re shopping for a book. If your blurb or one liner contains any information that you would consider a turn off, the blurb needs to be re-written. If your blurb does not contain anything that you would consider a turn on, it needs to be rewritten. If you’re not sure, poll some friends, family or strangers and obtain the information you need. The chances are that if you’re not making many sales then your blurb and/or one liner need some spicing up. Think short. Customers won’t read a lot. The best blurbs will tell only the hook, or conflict...same with one liners. Remember also, truth in advertising. Make it as appealing as possible, leave out any possible turn offs, but make sure your customer doesn’t feel misled either. If the book is good—and we don’t have any bad ones—then we feel comfortable and confident that the reader will be satisfied with their purchase, even if you had to trick them into buying a time period/setting that they don’t usually like.

Everyone is impatient to have the books listed in as many places as possible. What we’ve found is that the poor performers still perform poorly, regardless of how many places they’re listed. They do tend to sell better on some sites than others and/or they make a few more sales, but by and large it makes little difference. A better presentation could make a bigger difference.

Covers—A lot of authors tend to think their whole world is riding on their covers and are deeply offended when they get one they don’t like---seem to take it as a direct attack to destroy their possibilities. We know the cover art is important. We also know we have some of the best artists in the business, but consider that the artist is an artist, some good days, some bad—some days her work flows effortlessly, some days no amount of effort can turn out a special cover. We don’t use the cover, good days or bad, unless its the best the artist can come up with. If we didn’t want the book to sell, we wouldn’t take it. But a good part of the responsibility for the cover is in your hands as the author of the work. An artist MUST have something graphically appealing in order to create something graphically appealing. Keep this in mind when you’re writing. You not only have to come up with strong visualizations for your readers, you have to come up with them for your cover artist. If you’ve written a whole novel and can not come up with a single idea that would make a great cover, chances are your artist is going to be struggling to come up with something too.—there are only so many ways a couple can be depicted. You have to give us something to make your book look different from a thousand other books.

Royalty statements- I’m well aware of the problems with sending the statements out late. There are many and varied reasons for this persistent problem which I’m struggling to work out. I will have the last of the previous quarterly statements ready to send out within the next week. Hopefully, first quarter 2003 will go out on time—by the end of April. I already have most of the invoices tallied so I don’t anticipate a problem with that part of the book work. Also, the new statements I came up with after I lost the last ones works faster for me—it’s very abbreviated, contains no history, but only current sales. I’m probably going to be using this quick tally hereafter since I can do it faster. It also has the benefit, I think, of being easier to understand, but you’ll have to refer to your collective statements to come up with your collective sales hereafter since these won’t be appearing on the statement.

Work on the new office has come to a halt due to weather. We are experiencing monsoon in this area—rain EVERY day and generally lightening storms that make progress impossible. Weather and money permitting, however, we expect to complete the project later this year. The office complex will contain three private offices for editors, an accounting office and three to four work stations for editorial assistants on the second floor. The first floor will be divided into a print shop, shipping area and reception. Once the office complex is completed, and we’re able to staff, most of the problems that have been plaguing us should be resolved.

We will be planning a local area promotion to ‘celebrate’. Although a city of only a hundred thousand might sound small in comparison to the cities many of you live in, the Lowndes county area is a shopping mecca for five or six surrounding counties since Valdosta is one of the largest cities in the south Georgia/north Florida area. Valdosta has a Waldenbooks, Books-a-Million and the Bookrack, as well as large book areas in local grocery stores, both Wal-marts and two Christian bookstores—per capita that’s a very large reading public—one that we hope a local promotional will help us to tap into. Currently, we’re in the working stage of planning a booksigning sometime early next year. This is something that has never been done in this area, and the time of year should also be fortuitous. More details later.

We are currently looking for new books from all of our authors to add to our schedule---If I’m your editor and you already have a book with me that’s waiting—I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. I hope to take care of all of my submissions as soon as I’ve finished royalty statements—the ones I’m currently working on and before the next round of statements. Hereafter books will be scheduled as early or mid-month. We’ve found it seems to help sales to divide the releases and send out the newsletter twice a month.

We fully intend that 2003 will be the year we break through into big sales of our authors books and to see that we meet or exceed the RWA requirements. We have succeeded, I’ve been told, in making our authors cry---(over their edits and statements). I’m looking forward to the first letter I get telling me the author cried for joy over her statement—or fainted when he/she received the biggest check ever!

Best to all of you! I’m proud to have you with us!

Madris
New Concepts Publishing

Posted January 8, 2003

Hi everyone!

We’ve got plenty of new developments going on right now, the first of which is a new page just for y’all--the NCP author lounge. It’s just a beginning, but we’re hoping to continue adding on to it as we can and want this to be a place for everyone to come together as well as get the newest NCP announcements and help. We also have a chat area so you will be able to chat with your editor(s) and fellow authors. If this looks like something everyone is interested in, we’ll probably be going to the professional chat page to reduce advertisements.

Please remember, this page is ONLY for NCP authors, so don’t give out the address to anyone else. There is no link on the main site going to the Author Lounge, so be sure to bookmark it. The address is http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/authorlounge33.htm

We’ve also updated our submission guidelines and hope you’ll take a look at the additions I’ve pasted below. We’re really excited about these new possibilities and hope to drum up a lot of excitement as well as attract new readers. This would be a great way for anyone interested in experimenting to break into a new genre or to flesh out your releases each year.

If you have any questions, be sure to let us know.

Best,
Andrea
NCP

Currently, NCP is looking to put together some new anthologies targeted to the growing erotic and spicy romance readership.

New projects we’re accepting stories for:

CAPTURED: a Romance Anthology featuring romance novellas with a SPICY or CARNAL rating and a high level of sexual tension. Novellas in this collection would fall between 20,000 - 39,000 words.

CAPTURED stories can take place in any setting, time period, or romance subgenre including: medieval, futuristic, time travel, regency, etc.

Some examples of what could be done for this anthology include: Bounty Hunter, Medieval Siege, Stolen Brides, Viking Pirate, Alien Abduction, etc. The capture can play a large or small role in the story but must include this theme as well as romance elements.

We are looking to release the electronic and trade edition simultaneously with this collection in the next few months. If you are interested in participating, or if you know someone who is, please email Andrea DePasture (subject heading: Captured anthology) with your query letter and detailed synopsis. If you are a writer unpublished by NCP, please include your first ten pages of the story.

ALIEN ENCOUNTERS: a Romance Anthology featuring novellas with a SPICY or CARNAL sensuality rating and plenty of sexual tension. These novellas would be 20,000 - 39,000 words. ENCOUNTERS stories are limitless with possibilities and can take place in contemporary or futuristic settings but must include some alien elements in their theme as well as romance.

We are looking to release the electronic and trade edition simultaneously with this collection sometime this year. If you are interested in participating, or if you know someone who is, please email Andrea DePasture (subject heading: Alien Encounters Anthology) with your query letter and detailed synopsis. If you are a writer unpublished by NCP, please include your first ten pages of the story.

DARK and DANGEROUS: a Dark Romantic Anthology featuring novellas with a SPICY or CARNAL sensuality rating and a high level of sexual tension. Novellas in this collection would be 20,000 - 39,000 words.

We’re aiming for an October release for this anthology. Stories would be similar in vein to our DARK DESIRES series. DANGEROUS stories would include the darker elements of romance and the paranormal: vampires, werecreatures, ghosts, demons, incubus, etc. These can also be gothic in nature. Essentially we’re looking for erotic romantic horror with ultra sexy heroes including some romance elements.

We are looking to release the electronic and trade edition simultaneously with this collection sometime this year. If you are interested in participating, or if you know someone who is, please email Andrea DePasture (subject heading: Dark and Dangerous anthology) with your query letter and detailed synopsis. If you are a writer unpublished by NCP, please include your first ten pages of the story.

Another anthology we’re hoping to bring out in the coming months would be fairy tales with your own personal slant, written to SPICY or CARNAL ratings. Again, these would be 20,000 - 39,000 words and would include romance elements.

We are looking to release the electronic and trade edition simultaneously with this collection sometime this year. If you are interested in participating, or if you know someone who is, please email Andrea DePasture (subject heading: Fairy Tale anthology) with your query letter and detailed synopsis. If you are a writer unpublished by NCP, please include your first ten pages of the story.

NCP is also accepting short stories (10,000 - 15,000 words) for our LOVE BITES series. This is a great way for interested authors to break into a new market and target new readers eager for erotic fiction. We also feel stories can be written fairly quickly for a good return on royalties and will be priced $2.00 - $2.50, download only. Stories can take place in any setting or subgenre but must include romance elements as well as fall under the SPICY or CARNAL rating system.

If you are interested, please email an editor with your query letter and detailed synopsis. If you are a writer unpublished by NCP, please include your first ten pages of the story.

Email Madris Gutierrez, Editor-in-Chief

Email Andrea DePasture, Senior Editor

Email Tiffany Ayers, Associate Editor

And, you should have already received notification of this, but we are accepting novella to full novel length books for CARNAL PLEASURES and DARK DESIRES. More details on the submission guidelines page at http://www.newconceptspublishing.com/submissionguidelines.htm

Posted October 12, 2002

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a new look for the webpage and I need y'all to send me a few things so I can get started. I need an author photo, about 2 inches, 150 dpi, JPG format. I also need one current bio from you, no more than two paragraphs long. The bio should not focus on one book, but on you as an author.

Posted October 1, 2002

Subject: Marketing: Part I

Dear Authors:

Time is something no one has much of these days, and we are no exception. Like everyone else, since it’s our most valued and limited commodity, we try to use it carefully. For years now I’ve tried to write to everyone periodically to encourage and inform, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that, to a great extent, my ‘letters to the authors’ generally cause more unrest, more confusion, more resentment and more mail, which we have less and less time to answer.

Nevertheless, I realize that it’s time to make another stab at it. I’d appreciate it if, once you’ve read through, if you feel you don’t understand, please read through again before emailing any questions. Since I’ll be sending out several letters regarding different areas, I’d prefer that you read each and every letter carefully before you decide to write. Your questions might well be answered in the next letter to authors…or even this letter, if you read it carefully enough to understand what I’ve written here.

I think I can safely say that absolutely EVERYONE who has entered the ebook business, authors, publishers and other affiliated businesses, did so with an unrealistic outlook. Many new people are still coming into the business with an unrealistic outlook. There was an excuse, of sorts, in the beginning. It was as completely new an area as anyone is likely to see in our time, no experts, no data, nothing to base assumptions on but the magnitude of the market, which, even when we started out was already impressive. Anyone coming into this today with an unrealistic outlook just hasn’t done their homework.

Market/marketable books - Marketable books are books that have a wide appeal and, basically, sell themselves. Although many of our authors had previous publishing experience in the traditional market, some with many years and many fans, like a gun, the internet is the great equalizer. Time has proven that previous careers have in no way insured better sales. Even previous marketing experience has to be adjusted for the internet, because a lot of tried and true strategies simply don’t work at all, or don’t work nearly as well as they worked in the traditional market. It has been a long, trying, tiring, absolutely frustrating experience for many of us, authors, publishers, booksellers, etc.. It’s only human nature, I realize, to look for someone to blame, to take out that frustration on, but expressions of temper only make people want to take a step, of five or six, back from you. It solves no problems, whether it is a stress reliever or not.

We have been accused, in various ways, of ‘not doing our job’. While I admit it has not always been possible to do as good a job for every author, or every book, as we could have done if we’d had millions of dollars at our disposal, or a staff of 20 or 30 people, we do the best we can as we can. Common sense, as Mark Twain pointed out, isn’t at all common, and yet logic, reason should be enough to make ANYONE realize that we accept books to sell because we HOPE to make money on them. When you don’t make money, we don’t make money. We are a business. We NEED to make money.

As I said, everyone entered this business with unrealistic expectations. The internet, and ebooks, are a huge POTENTIAL market. At this stage, it’s still a potential with great possibilities that NO ONE , even companies with millions of dollars to invest and dozens, or even hundreds, of employees, have realized. We, like they, stay in it and continue to strive because we have invested so much time and money in it already that it makes more sense to continue forward than to throw away what we’ve achieved.

The market that has been built to date is a small one, but a clearer understanding of the market should help most everyone improve their sales, and conserve on their valuable resources of time and money by focusing on more effective promotions. To this end, I’m going to explain, in the simplest terms possible, what your market is so that, hopefully, everyone will be able to see where they went wrong, why their sales are minuscule and what they can do to turn things around toward a more successful career.

Think of our market as the little town closest to where you live. This small town has less that ten thousand residents, total. In the center of town New Concepts Publishing sits on one corner. Across from us sits Hardshell. Up and down the street are the establishments of the other, newer epublishers and ebook shops. Now, while it’s true that everybody has their favorite spot to shop, a good portion of this little town’s population shops at first one store then another, looking for the type of books that are their particular favorites. Occasionally, out of towners see or hear something that piques their interest and they decide to come over and have a look at the wares we’re all selling. Some decide they like it and come back. Some decide it just isn’t their ‘thing’ and go away again.

This little town, Ebookville, sits on the outskirts of the huge city of Traditional Publishing. The inhabitants of Ebookville moved here because they found it was a cheaper place to live and it offered something different than the eternal sameness of Commercial Blvd., where the Traditional Publishers reside. Another city close by is Palm City. Palm City residents are mostly unaware of the other little towns around them because they have a device they use for work and play. The population of readers who live in Palm City is still unknown. Though the numbers are probably fairly small, they seem more inclined to shop at Traditional Publishing for their books. Between Palm City and Tradition Publishing lies the small city of Ebook Readers. The population of Ebook Readers is somewhere between 10 and 50 thousand. Their residents mostly shop at home, on the street where Gemstar/Softbook, Mobi, Franklin, etc., have their little stores.

What this means to authors is that you will almost certainly find that your book will sell very little better, or no better, or maybe even worse if you decide we don’t have your best interests at heart and pull your book and take it to the next ‘shop’ down the street. Because, while it’s true we very likely have our own little clique of customers, the MAJORITY of the customer base is SHARED. I realize that I’m probably wasting my time to point this out, because once an author becomes disenchanted they generally don’t believe a word I say ..However, please feel free to consult with authors that habitually house hop. Most of them have become disenchanted with every publishing house they’ve hopped to because they simply refuse to accept that the fault of poor sales lies at their own doorstep. This is not always to say that their book is mediocre, or bad. We have some absolutely wonderful books that just don’t sell. The fault is not always with the book, or the author….it’s not the cover art, the blurb or the fact that we just aren’t trying hard enough to sell the book because we have evil intentions and choose books so that we can hide them away so nobody can buy them. In many cases it’s simply the available market.

From the time we started NCP back in 1996, we have chosen books on the basis of a good story, well told. A good story, however well told, does not sell well if the customer base a publisher is drawing from doesn’t like that type of book. We had NO customer base when we started. We had NO idea of what would sell, what wouldn’t sell, what would make small sales, what would make huge sales. In choosing a lot of really good stories, well written, we also ended up choosing a lot of really hard to sell stories because they just don’t have a wide enough appeal. In some cases it’s because we have chosen books that are so easily and readily available in the existing, traditional market that there isn’t enough incentive for readers to cross over to ebooks. If you promote but your book is not selling well, has never sold well, then the obvious conclusion MUST be that you are writing stories for a market that just doesn’t exist at the moment. Nobody’s FAULT, yours or ours, just a matter of the time required to build a market for it, and, possibly, a matter of inefficient promotions due to a poor understanding of the market you’re facing.

I don’t know how many of you tried to sell in the traditional market before trying the e-book market, but for those who did, your book was not rejected because it wasn’t good enough. It was, quite possibly, rejected because it wasn’t COMMERCIAL enough, meaning experience in their market told them they could not expect to sell this type of story to a very large number of people. Since they deal in millions of sales, a book which has potential sales of less than, say 10,000 copies, is of no interest to them.

We don’t have the same situation. With ebooks, because the cost is so low, I figured if we could sell even five thousand copies, we could make a reasonable return, and with the percentages we were offering our authors, they would earn at least as much as they could earn in the traditional market, with expectations of earning far beyond that as the market grew. Given the several million people who were online when we started, this didn’t seem like an unreasonable possibility, but of course we all know now that it’s a lot harder to come up with 5000 buyers than anyone anticipated. It took several years of HARD promoting just to attract 5000 buyers to Ebookville. Even though this is slowly creeping upwards and probably now hovering somewhere around 10,000, no one can expect to sell their book to every single resident. With the right story, and the right promotions, however, you can look to sell to a good percentage of the available market. However, this is not going to be an ‘overnight’ job. Even with the internet it takes time to reach, and court, everyone.

Solution #1: If you are absolutely serious about your writing, love the type of book you’re doing and don’t want to switch to writing just for a paycheck, then stop looking for someone to blame and focus your attention on building name recognition and building a market for the type of book you like to write. The readers are out there, waiting for you to cultivate their interest. But you have to go after them. We are doing our utmost to help you out, to bring in as many ‘out-of-towners’ as we can, but we can not do single-handedly in one night (or seven years) what has taken other publishers 50 or a 100 years to do, build a customer base that is so huge that there are thousands of potential buyers for every single book in every single genre we publish. When you consider that it took upwards of 4 or 5 years just to inform the general public that there was such a thing as an ebook, and what an ebook is, then the REAL market building has only been going on for two or three years.

Solution #2: If you are absolutely dead set on making money and don’t care what you write so long as you make some money, then take a look at the books that are selling well in this tiny market and write something in one of those genres.

What sells huge, in internet ebook terms? Sex. Period. Tasteful, raw and raunchy….as far as we can tell, any genre, though fantasy seems to be the hottest of the hot, at least at the moment. From the moment we decided to rate the books on sexuality, we began to see a noticeable difference in sales in the sexier books. Why? A lot of reasons, I’m sure, but primarily it’s because we’re providing something not as readily available in the traditional market. Although many of the traditional publishers have added a LINE of sexy romances, they are generally specific to a sub-genre, limiting reader choices.

Let me point out here that we do NOT want raw and raunchy. We do NOT want pure porno. None of NCP’s editors want to edit sick, nasty, raunchy or disgusting ‘books’. I’m sure, given what we’ve seen, these would make us all rich, but it is not something any of us are willing to do for money. I have absolutely nothing against gays, lesbians, or the folks who go both ways, but neither I, or NCP’s other editors feel that we could properly edit such books. Otherwise, feel free to stretch the boundaries if that’s your inclination.

For those of you who love what you write and only want to write what you love, don’t feel comfortable with a lot of sex, or love scenes, you have two options. Pursue your career in the traditional market, with it’s own frustrations, or pursue your career with us, realizing that some genres are harder to sell and will take a LOT of time and effort. We have every intention of standing by, and continuing to support and promote your careers to the best of our ability even if we, also, have to wait a year or two before we begin to see a return. Regardless, we simply can not work together if you can not accept, understand and work with us on the inescapable fact that YOUR ebook market is down the road, not today.

For those of you who are great story tellers, and have a really good writing voice, but write books which no one seems terribly drawn to, expect continued frustration. A marketable book might seem as boring to you as bacon and eggs every day, but these are the books with customers WAITING. If you write off-the-wall, you will have to build a market exclusively for yourself. I’m not saying don’t write what you love to write. I’m saying, you MUST have realistic expectations about the sales potential of a book beyond the beaten path. This type of book has been known to have blockbuster potential, but it takes a LOT to get noticed in the first place! In general, since these types of books can’t be categorized, it requires word of mouth….Like Lord of the Rings, someone has to buy, read, absolutely love it and convince everyone they know to try it.

I’ve thought long and hard about this situation, not because I have doubts about any of our authors or their books---- I KNOW good when I read it----but because I, also, get tired of pushing books that make few, if any sales, and all the work that goes into making few, if any, sales, and more importantly because I am tired to death of catching flack about books that don’t sell. Should we simply begin accepting ONLY those books we know we can sell because we already have? Should we simply do as other publishers have done and dump authors who write books for a market we haven’t been able to build yet, before they vent their frustrations on us and leave us holding the bag, having spent hours, days and weeks on trying to market their books? I don’t want to do the first…limit the choices of readers….and I don’t feel comfortable with the second, because many, if not all, of those authors are trying just as hard as we are. There is NO easy solution.

So for those of you who simply can not grasp the market and what it means to your particular sales, who are too impatient with working and waiting for success to come your way……Any author who has fulfilled the terms of their contract, who has seen little or no sales, who has decided to pursue other avenues or just to give up on their dream altogether, we will not harbor ill will if you do not want to renew the contract. I’m not going to be happy about it simply because I see it as a failure, or accusation of failure, and because I have seen, time and again, authors pull up stakes and flee just about the time their books FINALLY begin to pay off, but I completely understand that some people just don’t have it in them to keep getting back up and trying again. When I say we will not harbor ill will, it means that, in the future, when we have built a huge company and a huge market, and we WILL, you are welcome to submit to us again and your work will be considered.

Any author who has NOT fulfilled the terms of their contract, or in any other manner behaved unprofessionally, been verbally abusive or just uncooperative, who demands the release of their book, may or may not be given permission to withdraw. If money has been exchanged and/or time and effort put into marketing your book, we might then decide NOT to release you from your contractual obligations. It’s entirely up to you whether or not you wish to hire a lawyer to regain the rights. If we do decide to relinquish the rights, and state as much via email, do NOT expect to receive further written confirmation just to make you comfortable. We will not go to any extraordinary lengths to soothe your fears. You are not welcome to submit again at a later time when we have managed to build a market and your work will never be considered again by New Concepts Publishing.

For those of you who’ve been in the business long enough to have a firm grasp of the market, or simply have enough understanding of human nature to realize change comes slowly, we thank you for your continued support and understanding. For those of you who really don’t understand but appreciate the fact that we’ve given you the opportunity to try to build a successful writing career and don’t want to bother us because you know we’re busy, we very much appreciate this consideration since it allows us to work without a lot of interruptions that slow us down or distract us and cause us to make mistakes. For those of you who don’t understand and get nervous when you don’t hear anything and want to be continually updated on any and all progress… I’m sorry, but we just don’t have time to hold hands right now. Please repeat this mantra…..NCP is a business with much work to do. As long as the website is there, they are there. If the phone is busy, it’s a good thing. If my emails have not been answered it’s because they are busy doing the work publishers do in order to stay in business and sell books. I am not being ignored because I’m not important, or because they’re thinking about dumping me. They are busy and I am allowing my fertile imagination to conjure paranoia.

Otherwise, keep in mind that your reputation is our reputation and our reputation is your reputation. If NCP is thought well of, then our authors have status as our authors. If our authors are thought poorly of, then NCP is not considered a good publisher. Whatever doubts or anxieties you might have, when you make NCP look bad, it makes you look bad. Watch what you say, where you say it and to whom you say it. Don’t share your hysteria, anxieties or disappointments. Don’t play the blame game. Whether you realize it or not, YOU always get tarred with that feather.

I realize that people are either confident, or not. Nothing anyone can say or do can build confidence in those who lack it. Everything anyone says or does can further deteriorate a fragile confidence. However, I am sick to death of hearing ‘we’re not as good as’ NY, or any other publisher for that matter. It IS true that we are not as COMMERCIAL as the traditional publishers. We do not contract on books based on previous sales, or try to edit books to make them more ‘alike’. While traditional publishers are trying to gather ‘corn flakes’ from as many different places as possible and process them so that they can’t be distinguished from the other ‘corn flakes’ they’ve bought, WE are trying hard to find new flavors. That makes us DIFFERENT, not inferior. So, for those of you who harbor this terrible fear that you’re going to be denounced as inferior, I suggest you put a lot of thought into non-aggressive come-backs to fit any situation. Practice them. Memorize them and when anyone blurts out something antagonistic regarding the inferiority of ebooks in general, or NCP in particular, your practiced come-back will flow naturally from your mouth, set them on their heels, shut them up, and give them something to chew on. You may feel inferior, but a facade of confidence, or even a slight superiority, will make everyone who comes up against it re-think their opinion. We will NEVER earn general acceptance, and a huge market, until we convince everyone who resides in all the cities and towns around us that we aren’t just as good as anyone else. We’re the BEST!

Best!

Madris

Posted October 1, 2002

Dear Authors: Marketing on our Side:

This has been a learn by trial and error business, for us as well as authors. But, just as the real market building has barely begun, so too has the useful learning experiences. In the beginning, pretty much everything seemed ineffectual. No matter where we, or our authors, went, it was EBOOKS! In the same tone, maybe, as ROACH! Or Ebooks? Suspicious. What’s that? Or..ebooks! Oh yeah! The ones you listen to? As often as not it only provoked a blank stare.

Following that came the ebook wars….or Revolution. At this point mentioning ebooks to anybody else in the business generally meant setting up battle lines. This was the period of ‘any exposure is good exposure’. Most of it was bad, but amazingly enough, despite all of the bad publicity, ebooks have emerged as a definite, if small, market that shows every indication of not only staying, but growing.

At first, like all the other epublishers, as soon as a new site went up selling ebooks, we raced to convert all the books to the newest format and sent them over. As I stated in my earlier letter, time has proven to us that we are, basically ALL dealing with the same customer base. With the very definite exception of Gemstar, none of this running about and converting titles has helped much at all insofar as increasing sales. Gemstar is the exception due entirely to the fact that Gemstar ALSO aggressively markets their reader, they aggressively campaign continuously to increase their customer base. Some of their customer base visits our site fairly regularly. We know this because of the number of customers who buy html versions of the books, but, to reach the bulk of their customer base, we still must convert the books and send them over. Although sales through Gemstar initially dropped following their withdrawal from B&N, this has more or less evened out now and is showing signs of rising once more, at least marginally. We are currently trying to ‘catch up’ on books that need to be listed.

Amazon at a glance, SEEMS like the very best of places. It isn’t. We’ve been selling through Amazon since 1997. We have NEVER had more than a smattering of sales and what’s more they have to be dunned for the money over and over and over……with the discount we gave them, billing repeatedly and waiting months and months to get paid ate up more profits than they were worth. We still sell through Amazon, but BookIsle handles our Amazon sales now. We are no longer allowed to deal directly, but it seems to be working out as well, or better, than before.

Overdrive has also proven to be a bust. In their case, however, it’s because of, amazingly enough, prejudice against ebooks. They have cultivated a customer base for cross-over authors. Only a handful of their more obscure customers (bookstores) will even allow epubs in the door, so that, too, has become a waste of our most valuable resources….time. We continue to convert to MSReader, but this is primarily for our own site, and done as we can get to it…..we don’t have a huge demand for MsReader at this point, and those who buy seem to be willing to take other formats if they want the book and it isn’t available in MsReader, so we don’t feel that slow conversions is costing us, or our authors, in sales.

We have obtained, finally, a contract from FictionWise. FictionWise requires yet another conversion and, despite the rumors of astonishing sales, we are not convinced that this market will prove any better than any of the others we’ve tried, Palm for instance. That being the case, we will probably only send over a few books at the time and wait to see what transpires. Rest assured if sales pan out to be anything even approaching the rumors…..worth pulling man hours from other projects to perform conversions, then we will get ALL the books up as quickly as we can. In the meanwhile, I will NOT appreciate being badgered by authors anxious to get their books over. Most likely we will choose a cross section, from the best selling to the poorest, to adequately judge the possibilities.

However, due to the absolutely ENORMOUS amount of time involved in conversions and listing, most of which DO NOT pay off, we have decided to focus on aggressively increasing our personal customer base.

This is not to say that we won’t continue listing books with Gemstar….we will. Or that we will never list with another site. It means that, before we completely disrupt our publishing schedule and damage customer relations by focusing our resources on another huge listing, we will do our best to study every angle to insure that it’s actually worth the time.

As I stated before, we are in the process of aggressively pursuing an increase in our personal customer base. No matter how badly everyone wants to see their books sitting on bookstore shelves, direct sales are going to make us, and you, more money so this is definitely worth pursuing. This is to be on two different fronts---ebooks and print books. As soon as we changed over to our new delivery system, we launched a summer sale and at the same time launched an email ad campaign. Thus far it’s brought us a number of new customers, approximately a 10% increase, most of whom are already repeats. Shortly, we will have another company handling an email ad campaign, this one to a more targeted audience, which will, hopefully, prove even more successful. We have a banner ad going up on a women’s site. We will also have a contest going with a teen ezine and will be advertising with them and probably others if the promotions seem reasonably effective. Beyond that, we will be paying yahoo for a prime listing which will insure that NCP is on the first page that loads whenever anyone looks up books, ebooks, etc. If this increases our traffic, we will be looking into buying prime spots on other search engines.

For the print books, we will be doing magazine advertising periodically. At this point, we still have a fairly meager advertising budget so we will still be looking for co-op advertising. I’d like to offer a little ‘more’ however, from this point forward. We’d like to divide this into ‘spots’, maximum number of participation by eight per full page ad. But anyone who can afford to, and wants to, would be able to ‘buy’ more than one spot to display their book more prominently. For example, if we do a full page, divided by eight and someone buys two spots, then their cover would appear approximately twice the size of the singles, and so forth. I say approximate, because we will need room to maneuver in layout, but the larger would get more focus. Otherwise, we’ll also be doing some mailings, send out catalogues, flyers, etc., trying to build more bookstore connections, but still the main focus will be on direct sales.

We have not put a great deal of emphasis on bookstore listings until recently. The main reason being...complaints. Not customer complaints, author complaints. We’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of 98% repeat on our print book customers, including the new customers we’ve added who came specifically for print books, drawn by our ads. The ONLY customer complaint we’ve gotten, at all, has been the infamous one which the ‘lady’ posted on the web. The author complaints have ranged from valid and important to remedy, to the ridiculous and/or impossible to correct. Now that we’ve either ironed out most of the problems, or everyone has gotten tired of complaining…..I’m not sure which, we’ve begun, again, to actively pursue bookstores.

In our trial and error learning phase, we’ve discovered that listing with bookstores, particularly chains, will require not one, but many distributors. Baker &Taylor only barely scratches the surface. We’ve had a request from another small distributor similar to B&T, who also supplies libraries and small independents which will probably increase sales somewhat, but as I said, we will need to pursue distributors before we can get to many bookstores.

We have a new binder coming which should be up and running before the end of October. I know everyone will be as thrilled as we are, maybe more, to know that not only will this binder bind 200 books an hour, it will be a ‘perfect’ binder, of the type commonly used by the printers who supply the ‘big publishers’ so it will no longer be necessary to use the cement we currently use, which is powerful, but causes the pages to ‘crackle’ because the fumes permeate the paper and also, occasionally, causes ‘bubbles’ to appear at the spines.

This will also tremendously impact our production capabilities so that we can safely turn our attention to trying for one of the larger chains.

Please do not write to inquire who, what or when….or even to suggest where we start. We will start at the point that seems most likely to prove successful, and we will very happily announce any success to our authors. Unless anyone has a particular craving for dismal news, I see no point in announcing who we tried that didn’t go through.

Best!

Madris

Dear Authors: Marketing II: Books that will sell

I’m proud of NCP’s authors. I felt, from the first time we looked at each book that each book was a ‘winner’. One of the things that made me comfortable with the idea of delving into publishing was the confidence that I had a ‘taste’ for good books, that I could trust my judgment to lead me to the books that would please the widest number of people.

Despite the fact that we’ve had no HUGE successes in sales, I’ve never doubted that ability. The fact that, in the seven years we’ve been in business, we’ve collected, and kept, the vast majority of our customers is, to me, proof positive. We have great books. Month after month, year after year, the same customers return again and again. New customers come, get hooked, and they, too, come back thereafter.

We do have a problem, however. Despite the vastness of the reading community, which numbers in the millions, there are still relatively minute members of that community who will even give ebooks a chance. Obviously, just having good books isn’t going to bring them around.

Our prices are great too. Despite the rise of the cost of living, and thus our expenses, we’ve kept our prices very competitive. That has certainly attracted a good portion of those who’ve ‘crossed over’, but we’re just not making a deep enough cut into the market that’s out there.

We must make adjustments. We need to bring books out that are either REALLY creatively different, or that are hard to get in the traditional market. As I mentioned earlier, sex sells.

I like the variety of books we have to offer, from sweet, to hot and sexy--- from horror to children’s. Because we offer such a wide range of books, the customer base we’ve developed thus far is one that LIKES a wide range of books. So I am by no means suggesting that we make a transition to one type of book. I AM suggesting that its time our talented authors, at least some of them, delve into other possibilities, emerging genres or sub-genres that seem to be taking off. ANYTHING that we can add to our book base that is in short supply in the traditional market, but highly desirable, is going to increase traffic to the site as a whole, and increase sales for many of our authors. According to the surveys we’ve been polling among our customers, the books most often requested are fantasy, paranormal, futuristic, and historical…..romances. Preferably very sexy. Given the fact that some of the most popular TV shows and movies are paranormal, it’s obvious interests are leaning in this direction. This is one area where the traditional publishers are failing to keep up with reader demand, and thus would be a huge pull for us.

We’re proposing to start a new line of hot and sexy books. One would be called Love Bites. This would be novella to short contemporary length, sexy books, length 30 to 65,000. They could be dark, gothic, paranormal, fantasy, thrillers, historical, regency or medieval ….the heroine could be seduced by multiple partners---captive, forced seduction, ‘bondage’ type scenarios, or other. The novel length would be 70 to 100,000 plus, rules of romance genre could be bent, if not completely broken, strong conflict a must, strong sexual tension a must. You would need to come up with a plausible reason why they can not consummate their mutual attraction immediately. We DO want these to be, basically, romances where the hero and heroine eventually find true love. We DON’T necessarily want them in bed on the first page or chapter, or by chapter three…..Sexual tension that leads, eventually, to one or more very hot love scenes is what we’re looking for. Love scenes could include oral sex, kinky or unusual positions, ‘rough’ sex (nothing that sounds brutal), silk scarves, hot wax, teeth (no vicious biting unless it’s a vampire) , adventuresome sex (to the reader), voyeurism, mutual masturbation. Basically, you should create an escapist fantasy for your reader….something they don’t usually encounter.

These books would be priced separately….love bites around the price of current offerings…full length books higher priced. Authors to be paid in the same percentage as now…which would translate to the same or more in royalties as current listings. Many of our authors like to write about strong alpha males….this would be a very good place for that type of heroes.

I DO realize that not everyone would be comfortable writing this type of book, or might, but wouldn’t feel comfortable putting their NAME on this type of book. You are welcome to invent a new persona for this type of book, and if you so desire, your real name will not appear ANYWHERE on the book. It could be copyrighted under the assumed name.

If anyone is interested in working out plots in this genre, please contact your editor.

We would ALSO like to launch a line of what is currently referred to as ‘chick lit’. Most of you, I’m sure, know what I’m talking about, the ‘modern woman’s romance’, similar to shows like ‘Sex in the City’ and ‘Ally McBeal’, and Bridget Jones’ Diary. .though the heroines don’t necessarily have to sound like Bridget Jones, or Ally McBeal. These would be fairly short, along the lengths of the short contemporary….younger people would be the target audience, teens and twenties, and this group seems more inclined toward short books. Naturally, your heroines would be in the late teen to mid-twenties. Also, these are often written in first person, but this isn’t a hard and fast ‘must’. The world you create would be their world, Goths and raves, high fashion and punks. Even today, young girls find ‘bad boys’ very appealing. A good place to research would be magazines like Vogue, Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan ….who review this type of book, to see what’s selling. The girls who read this type of book want to BE the type of heroine you’re to create, big city, glamorous job, summer in the Hamptons, fabulous wardrobe …..So this would be a creation of ‘dream fantasy’ in so far as backdrop and situation, but down to earth, common dating/mating problems of today’s young people. Otherwise, story themes could be those typical to traditional romances.

We are anxious to introduce books in these two genres as soon as possible, so new slots would be created to accommodate these releases. We’re looking to do one or more in both or either of these lines.

I never make promises I might not be able to keep. However, I do believe, for those of you looking to try something to give your career a healthy boost, or just looking to make a little extra cash, a book or books in either of these new lines would meet with promising success. It always comes down to the story line regardless, which means that some will do better than others, but I know we already have a market for the sexy books, and believe the chick lit could be an easy market to build also.

Again, anyone who is interested, please contact your editor with any story ideas you come up with.

Best!

Madris