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Authors as Entrepreneurs: Bella Andre, Hugh Howey, Jasinda Wilder (Part 5)

Sramana: Hugh, in your case is Amazon’s algorithmic promotion driving the bulk of your following?

Hugh Howey: I would say that my following has driven Amazon’s algorithms to drive my book to new people. It has to start with a readership which is word of mouth. One person has to read something they love, and then they tell 10 people about it via social networking. Once that happens, the book explodes. That has happened in all three of our cases. When you do something well it will get people chatting.

It is hard to do with one book. When someone reads a book that they like then they will want to see more material. They are going to look at your back list and read something else. Social media has made it possible for things to go viral instantly. You have to put in the hard work which is giving you the lottery ticket, then you have to hope your number comes up. >>>

Authors as Entrepreneurs: Bella Andre, Hugh Howey, Jasinda Wilder (Part 4)

Sramana: Bella, it sounds like your book release schedule is almost like soap opera seasons.

Bella Andre: In a way it is. My books don’t have cliffhangers, but I would call them family sagas. That is a pretty good description of what I did with the Sullivans. My readers know there are eight siblings, so they knew they were going to get a love story for each of the siblings. Then when I finished those, I introduced five cousins. It is a nice way to follow through.

Sramana: So you are able to satisfy your readers by following a schedule with a book series. I think that is a very interesting approach. What do you do on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads?

Bella Andre: The schedule really helps. I am a huge reader; I will read a book a day when I can. I have my favorite authors, and I will be waiting for their next book. I get a feel for their publishing schedule. I definitely tap into that schedule when it comes to my readers. >>>

Authors as Entrepreneurs: Bella Andre, Hugh Howey, Jasinda Wilder (Part 3)

Sramana: Hugh, let’s go over your background. What is your story?

Hugh Howey  I had one book out with a small publisher and learned about self-publishing by watching a small press publish my book. They were using print-on-demand technology to create space and they were uploading to e-book distributors like KDP. The reason that Jasinda and Bella are so successful is because they work so hard at this. I had the same desire to control the cover art and layout. I was spending time waiting on a publisher to do stuff. I would send them emails telling them that they could just send it to me and I would do all of the work.

It occurred to me, after the first book went out, that I could do what they were doing and not have them take their cut. I realized I could maintain artistic control of the entire book, from the layout of the book to the price. I could control the release date and everything else. When I got my offer for my second book, I decided that I would try it on my own. I jumped into self-publishing as a way of getting my book out to the 20 people who were waiting on it. >>>

Authors as Entrepreneurs: Bella Andre, Hugh Howey, Jasinda Wilder (Part 2)

Sramana: When did you start this self-publishing adventure?

Jasinda Wilder: We started writing under this pen name a year ago. We started self-publishing in April of 2012. We started with our poetry collection that my husband and I had just to test the waters and see how easy it would be to get the manuscript uploaded and the cover in place. We were surprised to find out how easy it was to get the book uploaded.

Sramana: You have identified quantity as being one of your key strategies, meaning you want to have a lot of material out there. How important do you think that was to your overall success?

Jasinda Wilder: There were a couple of things that were keys to success, and that was one of them. We also worked hard to figure out what was selling. We could sit down and write about anything. At that point we really needed money. Of the top 100 on Amazon at the time, the majority of the titles were romance. >>>

Authors as Entrepreneurs: Bella Andre, Hugh Howey, Jasinda Wilder (Part 1)

In 2008 I wrote an article for Forbes, How Amazon Could Change Publishing, talking about the drastic need for disruption in the book publishing industry.

Since then a growing number of authors have turned to indie publishing platforms such as Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to launch their businesses. Today indie authors are becoming brands and businesses unto themselves, too. This article highlights three such authors.

Jasinda Wilder spent most of her life studying, performing, and teaching music, theater, and dance, so the transition to writing fiction was a natural one for her and her husband and writing partner. Self-publishing was a choice born of necessity for the author team, who found themselves in a financially dire situation and realized they had to turn their lives around fast. From their research, they felt Amazon had reinvented the notion of self-publishing via KDP. Jasinda’s first book, “Big Girls Do It Better,” struck a chord with readers and the couple quickly earned enough to save their house from foreclosure. Their breakout title, “Falling Into You,” quickly reached #1 on Amazon and #5 on the New York Times list and, within the first six weeks alone, they hit more than $1 million in sales. On June 19, 2013, they published the sequel, “Falling Into Us,” which skyrocketed to #22 on the Kindle Top 100 list in just one week and continues to climb.
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Built to Enjoy: Aptify CEO Amith Nagarajan (Part 7)

Sramana: What is the distribution of your workforce between the US and India?

Amith Nagarajan It is almost exactly even between the two.

Sramana: What is the deal with your New Orleans operation?

Amith Nagarajan Essentially my wife and I decided we did not want to raise our kids in Washington D.C, and since she is from the south we started migrating southwards. We stopped in Nashville for a couple of years just because it seemed like a great place to raise kids. We visited New Orleans all the time which is where she is from and after a couple of years we decided to just move to New Orleans. >>>

Built to Enjoy: Aptify CEO Amith Nagarajan (Part 6)

Sramana: Where is the company headquartered?

Amith Nagarajan I started the company in college and then moved it to San Jose. In 1996 I moved it to Sacramento to get out of the Valley because it was so insanely expensive. In 2002 we consolidated operations, and I moved our headquarters from California to Tyson’s Corner in Washington D.C. because that is where more than half of the associations market is at.

Sramana: Let’s talk some about your team-building process. How do you go about building a team ?

Amith Nagarajan For us, everything is about the culture of the business. We started to realize that our culture was not clearly defined in 2002. We had a lot of good people doing good things, but nobody talked about why we did what we did. We talked about how we did it, but not why. We stepped back realized that we had to articulate a core purpose to our team. Today our core purpose is changing the world one client mission at a time. We then talk about our values, which is how our team behaves and why. From there, we have a very open environment. Our first core value is flexibility. >>>

Built to Enjoy: Aptify CEO Amith Nagarajan (Part 5)

Sramana: What was in the association product portfolio?

Amith Nagarajan Associations are an interesting animal. They do a lot of different things, but in spite of that even the largest global associations are fairly small by commercial standards. Our largest customers today might have 200 million dollars of revenue which is considered small or medium in the business world.

Associations are also complex. A large business might have one or two lines of business whereas an association that are 10 or 20 million dollars in revenue might have 7 or 8 lines of revenue evenly distributed across. Associations are best known for having members. That means you have dues, membership fees and processes. They are also very well known for events which means you have speakers, conferences and attendees. Associations are very well known for being industry standards bodies. That means there is a lot of collaborative processes which requires unique software. >>>