Licensing Discoverability

The Key Word is “Discoverability.”

I have had some blogs here about the magic number of twenty when it comes to major books. There is a formula that tracks mathematically the possible ways a book can be discovered and around twenty major books the number gets huge. Talked about all that.

But I have always said that that number of books have to be done right, otherwise no mathematical number will get your books bought.

The last few days I answered some questions on licenses and how someone who wants to license your book finds you. The answer is have a lot of your books out wide all over the world.

But then back to the one point again. The books have to be done right, or no one will find or read them.

So if you have over twenty major books out wide and are still making coffee money, you can rest assured that no one with the ability to license your work will find your work either.

Discoverability of books in sales goes hand-in-hand with discoverability of books for licenses.

And no amount of Facebook ads or Amazon ads will change that if you have made your book unfindable or so horrid in presentation no one would buy it if they saw it.

But the vast majority of indie writers have no idea they are killing their own book sales. They think they are brilliant and the story will sell millions, but spend no time learning sales.

Problems on this surface level are simple. Cover art branded off genre. Tiny or small author name in the middle or at the bottom. Sales copy that is passive and tells the plot.

Those three factors are death to sales.

But one more major problem in the story itself…. Sameness.

No one who can license your work is interested in the next Brandon Sanderson or George Martin clone.

Sameness does not sell. Everything over the years that I have licensed has been very different, same with Kris. We write our own stuff and because we write our own stuff without outlining or imitating something else, we get licenses because they can find our books and then they are not the same as anyone else.

This last week I got letters from two different writers thinking of quitting because they were making no sales and had a lot of books. Both had tiny author names on their covers that could not be seen in thumbnail, bad photo covers on fiction, and sales copy that was dull and told me the entire plot of the ones I looked at.

Both were blaming their writing. No chance it was their writing because no one would ever buy their books to read their writing.

Indie publishing requires writers who want to make a living learn a lot of things. Storytelling is one aspect of it. Sales is another. And I do not mean sales like Facebook ads. I mean basic sales that will get a reader to pick up your book and want to buy it.

And if your sales start increasing around the world, so will your chances of having someone come to you with an offer for a license.