It was originally scheduled for publication in July 2010. A few months after I handed in the finished manuscript, that date was revised to July 2011. Then, sometime during 2010, I was advised that the publication schedule had changed again and Bye Bye Baby wouldn't be seeing the light of day until 2013. Damn and blast, I thought. Or words to that effect. Who'd have thought it would turn out to be one of the luckiest breaks I've ever had as a writer?
Barrington Stoke very kindly offered to let me have the rights back in case I wanted to publish elsewhere. I didn't, because I like what they do, and I'd enjoyed writing Kill Clock for their Most Wanted series for reluctant readers, and was stoked at the thought of Bye Bye Baby being part of the same series.
So I asked if they were planning on doing anything with the digital rights, and if not, could I have those and Barrington Stoke could keep the paperback rights. They were delighted with the idea, and so began my foray into e-publishing.
I'd observed the
success of John Rector, one of my JBA authors and one of the
self-publishing Kindle pioneers. I'd seen his US sales figures for
The
Grove and was duly impressed. But Bye Bye Baby
was a short novella, a Scottish police procedural, and the Kindle was
in its infancy in the UK, so my expectations for sales of my own wee
effort were minimal. (Plus, I'm no John Rector. Check out his books,
you'll thank me for it).
I uploaded the ebook
version of Bye Bye Baby to Amazon in Aug 2010. Between August
and November, inclusive, Kindle sales were even more minimal than I'd
anticipated. I sold 13 copies.
Undaunted (in fact, I
was extremely daunted – 2010 was not a good year: my primary
publishers on both sides of the Atlantic had dropped me,
unsurprisingly, since my sales figures were mince; and having mince
for sales figures makes it extremely difficult for a new publisher to
welcome you on board), I decided to throw everything into giving Bye
Bye Baby a real shot at selling a few copies. I was my own
publisher after all, and I should be doing what publishers do,
instead of sitting around moping.
I'd also acquired the
digital rights for Killing Mum,
a novella published in print by Crime Express in July 2009. I
e-published it at the start of December, and then started looking for
ways to sell Bye Bye Baby. First obvious strategy was the
world's oldest publishing promotional tool: price. I dropped mine
from $2.99 to 99 cents. That meant a royalty cut from Amazon (70%
down to 35%) but given that I'd been selling only half a dozen copies
a month, I was hardly running the risk of throwing away a fortune.
I spent a long time on
the various ebook forums, finding the Writers
Café section of the Kindleboards in particular a
goldmine of useful advice, stats, tips, warnings, new opportunities,
etc. I posted on the UK
Kindle Users Forum and Mobile
Reads and others. But I got most traction from a
thread on the Amazon.co.uk
Kindle forum that eventually ran to over 70 comments.
I set up Google alerts for all the successful indie authors. They led
me to new ebook-interest sites. I read their interviews. I read their
blogs. I adopted their strategies where they seemed applicable. I
sent off a lot of review copies. I gave lots of copies away. I tried
everything to bring Bye Bye Baby to the attention of new
readers in the hope that the more people who read me, the more likely
it would be that some of them might enjoy what they read and tell others. I allocated two hours a day to engage in marketing
and promotion, and I didn't rule out anything (well, apart from
Facebook: gotta draw the line somewhere!).
The result of all that
activity? I got lucky. December Kindle sales for Bye Bye Baby
jumped to 232. Quite a
difference. I kept up the marketing into January, trailing off
halfway through. By then, the Amazon recommendation algorithm had
kicked in. I was unaware of its enormous impact at the time, but my
guess is that much of my marketing efforts resulted in only a few
sales. Getting those early sales in volume during December was
crucial, though, because that's what triggered the subsequent
recommendations. (For more on the Amazon recommendation algorithm,
check
this out).
January Kindle sales of
Bye Bye Baby totalled
2071.
I did very little
marketing in February, during which Bye Bye Baby was in the
top ten in the Kindle store for most of the month. It peaked at #6.
Sales for the month were 9379.
By that point, Bye
Bye Baby was my best-selling book. And that remains the case
today, with sales of well over 35,000 copies. Killing Mum,
which I never pushed much beyond a few mentions on the forums,
reached #25 in the Kindle store. Best guess is that was as a result
of being recommended to customers who'd bought Bye Bye Baby.
Killing Mum has now sold over 11,000 copies.
If it wasn't for
Barrington Stoke postponing publication of Bye Bye Baby, I'd
never have self-published. And if I'd never self-published, I'd have
had no chance (or desire, even) to persuade Polygon, publisher of my
backlist novels, to let me sub-license the Kindle rights to Two-Way
Split and Slammer, which are now out in new, improved
editions. If I hadn't had experience in self-publishing ebooks, I
would never have hooked up with Kyle MacRae, and Blasted Heath would
never have been born. There would be no Blasted Boxset!
And a final side-effect
of publishing the digital edition of Bye Bye Baby – and the
reason for this extremely long-winded blog post – was that it
helped bring forward publication of the paperback edition. I'm
delighted to say that Bye Bye Baby is now available in print.
And a lovely little book it is too.
"a quick, taut thriller... not a word is wasted" – Ian Rankin
"a terrific read and a great premise from an excellent writer" – Stuart MacBride
"A story that moves
quickly, in short chapters of crisp prose, with plenty of plot turns to hold the
attention, and characters you can love and others you can hate... Like Guthrie's
full-length novels, Bye Bye Baby is sly, noir as all hell (more noir than some,
actually), and it just might bring a tear of pity to your eyes. It's a police
procedural filled with incident and back story, and man, what an
ending." – Detectives Beyond Borders
available from
and other fine bookshops
