Jack Lively Author Business - March 2025

Spring Time - Taking Stock

It’s a little precipitous to be speaking of spring time on the 28th of February, true. But, the sun is out and warming at the moment, despite a lingering chill. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it’s the beginning of spring.

At least mentally.

In an ambient way.

In terms of hope and optimism.

So, it’s time to take stock. I’ll go one further. It’s not yet actual spring, so it is time to begin taking stock. Taking stock will be the process.

Literally… Jack Lively STOCK!

Taking Stock

I don’t know the origins of this expression, but clearly it’s something to do with commerce. You have stock, livestock, toilet paper on the shelf, whatever. You take stock. Check out what you’ve got, how it’s been going, evaluate, count, reflect, decide.

As you know, I’m an author. I write the Tom Keeler series of thriller novels. That’s my main gig, my job. I’ve been doing it full time now for something like four or five years. I don’t have another job, nor do I want one.

I am currently writing the 7th book in the Tom Keeler series. It’s titled The Reckoning. I’m almost finished writing it, and I think it’s going to be good. How good? I never know. I always think it’s going to suck. And then they turn out fine and I’m happen in the end. That’s how it’s gone for 6 novels, and I expect that’s how it’s going to be for this one.

I’ve got a developmental editor who I work with, Edmund Pickett.

At some point in the writing of a novel, I can no longer see the woods for the trees. I’m almost there now. I think this needs to be explained.

I write by starting from the beginning. Quite literally. I just start writing without the slightest idea of what’s going to happen. I might have a first scene in mind, say a guy eating a burger at a diner in Ohio. Beyond that, no clue. The novel reveals itself slowly and surely. Sometimes I feel like an archaeologist digging out some remnant, a village or a strange animal carcass. Slowly and carefully the thing comes into definition.

Part of that process is to constantly go back and read what you’ve written. Once I’m say, 60,000 words into a novel the thing should be coming clear. I should be able to see what it looks like uncovered. At the same time, or thereabouts, I can no longer happily read the thing back. I just can’t. It becomes almost disgusting.

I’m almost there now. Not quite. I think I’ve got another read left in me. In other words, the finish line awaits. That’s the new novel. Going fine. Going to hit that deadline. I’ll get the manuscript to Edmund Pickett in a week or two and let him deal with it from there. He’ll send me back some kind of aggressive take on the book. Something blunt and direct and borderline rude. That’s why he’s an excellent developmental editor.

Then, I’ll decide how I feel about his comments and make adjustments accordingly.

At which point I will send the script out to my copy editor. Once it comes back from him, I’ll send it over to the proofreader. Once she’s gone through it, the book will go out to a select group of Advanced Readers.

Advanced Readers are like an ace in the author’s pocket. I keep the group tight, trimming out those who don’t respond in time, or don’t give real feedback. At the moment, it’s about 200 strong. It used to be 700. Advanced Readers get a free copy of the book in exchange for meaningful feedback. Some of them also leave early reviews on Amazon.

I seriously love my Advanced Readers. If I could have them over for drinks, I’m sure we’d have a great time. Alas, those days are over for good. These days we’ve got THE INTERNET.

So, that’s the situation with my current novel, The Reckoning.

Product Placement

I have no idea how other authors do it. I see some of my peers out there with like, four books a year. Never actually read more than a chapter of those books so I can’t say anything about them.

I did read that independent author guru Mark Dawson got done for plagiarism relatively recently. Which explains his hyperactive productivity somewhat. Personally I have nothing against good plagiarism. Plus, Mark Dawson’s author biz course was pivotal for me. So, if he had to cheat a little in order to get those excellent courses out and at the same time “be” a famous author, no probs.

What Else Does an Author Do?

This is likely to be boring to those of you uninterested in the life of an author. You can just skip to the end. Sign up to my newsletter or follow me on BookBub or Amazon or something and you’ll get a notification when the new book’s out. Go back to the easy chair and don’t forget the gin and tonic. I envy you. I’m with you. I’m your friend.

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These days, an Independent Author like me does everything. This is sadly the case even for the majority of authors who have a publishing deal, except they make no money, the likely consequence of being locked into a shitty royalty deal. To be very clear, I never wanted to do more than just write books. Never wanted to be a book seller, or a marketer. Never wanted to self promote, like some underwear model. LOL.

But it’s 2025. The entire world is a fragmented self promotional zone. Each human being a marketer of themselves. My 1990s being wants to puke. My 2025 author self says: “fuck your mood, stick to the plan”.

Which brings me to the taking stock, spring cleaning part of this rumination.

An independent author has a few tools in his kit, in order to get the books out there.

1. Do nothing.

You might think that doing nothing is a great strategy but it isn’t. You can’t just put a book on Amazon and expect that people are going to find it. They won’t. Each month, around 116,000 new books are published on Amazon. 80% of book sales occur on Amazon. Amazon works via algorithm. The algorithm can’t know if the book’s any good. So, the algorithm promotes new books for some weeks, just by default. After that period, 99.99999% of books just sink into oblivion. So, doing nothing isn’t really an option, unless you enjoy oblivion.

2. Do nothing except for Amazon ads.

Amazon ads are essentially product placement. Have you walked into a book shop and seen books on tables, face up and looking attractive, like melons at the fruit stand? Product placement. Someone who likes oranges, might also like tangerines. So, the tangerines are strategically placed next to the oranges. It’s the same genre.

Publishers and independent authors pay Amazon to place their books in close proximity to other books that their readers might like. That’s Amazon ads in a nutshell.

3. Advertising on Facebook.

Readers of actual books are old. Boomers are on Facebook. Publishers and Independent authors advertise on Facebook. In a nutshell, that’s the strategy of publishing in the 21st century. You get new readers from Facebook ads. There are other vectors, like BookBub, but in comparison they are tiny.

Publishers and authors spend literally thousands of dollars per month on Facebook ads. The vast majority of them simply plug in the ads, click go, and that’s it. They never stop advertising and sending money to Zuckerberg.

Just to give you an indication of what we’re talking about here, I did a quick calculation.

Over the past four years I’ve spent $68,426.17 on Facebook advertising.

A little snippet of the Facebook ads interface…

The Problem with Advertising

The problem with advertising is that you can’t easily know if the ads are effective. Back in the day no advertiser or marketer even attempted to understand a direct connection between advertisements and actual sales. There were all kinds of theories, like the seven touches. A person is exposed to your product seven times before purchasing, etc.

With online ads things are different but the same. The difference is that the metrics are extremely targeted.

With Facebook ads, you can’t actually know if your ad is responsible for a sale. Amazon and Facebook don’t have a relationship. There is a system of Amazon attribution links, but nobody knows if they actually work. In general, the platforms won’t tell you that Mister X clicked on the ad in Facebook and then bought the book on Amazon. You need to extrapolate, guesstimate, use dodgy attribution codes.

Amazon ads give you direct attribution data. They tell you which ads led to actual sales. But, there’s a big problem with that. If someone goes to Amazon and wants to buy your book, they could easily click on a link to your book that’s actually an ad that you’re paying for!

There’s some relatively large chance that a guy comes to the store because they know what book they want to buy. They want to buy your book. You end up paying the ad cost for that, plus the metrics look like the ad is working, even though it was not necessary!

The bottom line is that data these platforms give to us is thin.

The only way to actually know anything is to go cold turkey and stop advertising. That way, you stand a chance of understanding the baseline.

The Baseline Experiment

A little over a year ago I decided to stop all advertising on Facebook. For my last book launch (June 2024) I did zero promotions, zero ads, zero anything except a steady stream of product placement on Amazon. I’ve kept it that way for the last fifteen months or so.

Now, I understand the baseline. I understand exactly how much or how little the algorithmic system promotes my books at launch and then drops the promotions after several weeks. I have a tenuous grip on the black box.

The baseline for Jack Lively books isn’t too bad. I’m one of the lucky ones. A six figure author able to make a living out of writing books.

My new book is slated to launch June 1st. For this one, I’m going to return to promotions and advertising. I’m going to strategize and calculate like a good little capitalist entrepreneur. I am also going to see if BookBub ads work. Let me know if you’re interested to know how it goes. If you’re an author or publisher that wants to get into the weeds and see the data, I might be open to that.