J Carson Black: A Kindle Sensation

Posted by L.J. Sellers
Thriller writer J. Carson Black has sold more than 100,000 ebooks and recently had another 80,000 downloaded through Amazon's Select promotions. She's been traditionally published as well as self-published and likes the indie route better. Best known for her Laura Cardinal series, Black also signed with Amazon's Thomas & Mercer to re-release a thriller called The Shop, which published yesterday. Here's more in Black's own words, including her experience publishing with Amazon.

LJS: You started out writing horror, then switched to thrillers and police procedurals. How do you characterize your author brand and what are you writing now?
JCB: I am a reader as well as a writer, and the more I read, the more my tastes have changed. Starting with Sue Grafton, I began to gravitate toward crime fiction and crime fiction thrillers, and my writing followed. I find crime fiction and thrillers a challenge to write—which adds spice to my life. Reading crime fiction thrillers is my passion, and writing them is my other passion.

LJS:Tell me about your series protagonist Laura Cardinal. Who did you model her after and what makes her distinct as a crime fiction protagonist?
JCB: Laura Cardinal is not one of those tough female cops with a chip on her shoulder. She’s a thinking cop, although she’s been trained to act fast if she has to—she relies on her training. Good cops know how to deescalate situations, to calm people down. As a detective she’s scrupulous and innovative. She lives on a guest ranch in the desert. Sometimes she talks to her dead partner, Frank Entwistle.

LJS: What do like best about writing a police procedural series and what do you like least?
JCB: I love the challenge of crime fiction, and I love the thriller aspect as well. All my Laura Cardinal books are thrillers.  It’s a challenge to approximate a detective’s day, to find that sweet spot between fiction and reality. It’s easy to get into the weeds and slow the story down, when you’re talking police procedure, so I mention some aspects of police work without going into detail. For instance, I will say, “After measuring the scene, Laura drove to the family’s house.”

LJS: Your standalone thriller, The Shop, has been a breakout bestseller on Amazon and was picked up by Thomas & Mercer. What do you think draws people to the story?
JCB: To be honest, I don’t know. I felt that I wrote a faster-paced story. I wanted The Shop to be sophisticated enough to please hardcore thriller readers. I wrote it in line with the books of writers I enjoy, but I had no real internal compass to follow, except for the fact that I loved writing it! I wanted the book to be interesting, to pull people along. A writer friend I really admire said to me after I’d just finished writing The Shop, “This book will change your life.” And it has.

LJS: How is your experience working with Amazon as your publisher?

JCB: I love them. They are responsive to my needs but more than that, they include me in every single decision.  They put me together with a crack editor.  I’d never been worked so hard.  She pushed me through a barbed wire fence and pulled me out backwards and pushed me through again. She made The Shop a much better book than it was. Thomas & Mercer consulted with me on marketing, the cover, the copy edits and the copy proofs, they asked my opinion and worked with me on the cover copy and product description.  They asked me who my target audience was—and listened to what I had to say! They even wanted to know my writing style so the copy editor would not alter my way of writing. 

LJS: You’ve been published by several of the Big 6, and now you’re mostly self-published. What has the transition been like for you and has indie publishing been as rewarding?
JCB: Here’s my experience with traditional publishers:

1) Agent makes the deal.  Editor calls to say, “We love you!”

2) Two months go by.  Editor asks for a handful of revisions and decides to change the title of your book.

3) Eight months go by.  Editor sends photo of the cover.  “Here it is!” 

4) Publisher sends copy edits. (Or, in Kensington’s and Dorchester’s case, just the galley proofs, and if you change more that 15% you pay for the changes.)

5) At New American Library, they gave me a publicist. The publicist writes a few lines down on one sheet of paper, describing you and your book.  She gets it wrong, so you ask her to change it, and you never hear from her again.

6) Book comes out.

7) Two to four weeks later, the book vanishes from view.

What’s not to love?

Indie publishing: My husband and I put up our books and, yes, it took a while to get traction. But we designed our own covers and positioned the books the way we wanted. It’s fun to be creative, it’s fun to go through tons of photos at Istockphoto or Dreamstime and come up with something that uniquely fits your book.

The toughest part for us is the editing.  It’s easy for mistakes to slip through.  We have a copy editor and still things slip through!  But it’s fun to position the books in the market, it’s fun to present them to the world through social media and by working with other authors, it’s great to make choices regarding price and promotions etc.  And those books will always be there, pulling in some money, big or small.  I’ve met some wonderful people in this game, and seen some astonishing results for myself and others.

LJS: What are your predictions for the next big changes in publishing?
JCB: I think ebooks are here to stay. I think the Big Six will go more and more in that direction. The horse is out of the barn, so to speak. I have a wise friend, Scott Nicholson, who sees Amazon’s dominance should last at least another five years. He’s a deeper thinker than I am, so I’ll go with that prediction.  Amazon is way ahead of everyone else, and is consolidating its power. 

The problem for book publishers, as I see it, is the fact that their one big selling point—distribution—has been taken away from them. They had special deals with the chain bookstores and no real competition from small publishers or the guy selling books out of the trunk of his car.  But distribution has changed with the wireless age, and Amazon has quietly and systematically taken over.  So the publishers woke up one day and realized, “We’ve been occupied!”  I would never underestimate Amazon. They are in it for the long haul, and they know how to plan strategically. Right now they’re out there destroying the competition. One thing I do see coming: the opening up of foreign markets. That’s where the real boom will be.

LJS: Which authors inspired your writing originally and who are your favorites now?
JCB: There are four writers who have taught me to become a better writer, although they don’t know it. I call them “my boys.” They fit with my comfort zone. I will get their latest hardcover books and mark them up (even though my mother told me never to mark up books) and study what they do—how their stories flow, how they write effective scenes, etc.  My Boys are: Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Jonathan Kellerman, and T. Jefferson Parker.  But I purely adore Sue Grafton, J. A. Jance, John Lescroart, Lee Child, James W. Hall, C.J. Box, Harlan Coben, Lori G. Armstrong, Randy Wayne White, James Lee Burke, David Baldacci, Joe Finder, Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen—the list goes on and on and on. There are some wonderful indie authors on that list as well.  You, Michael Wallace, Scott Nicholson, M.H. Sargent, Carol Davis Luce, Michael Prescott—I know I’m missing a ton.

If you have questions or comments, please leave them.

Do you Want to be Rich or do You Want to be Happy?

By Andrew E. Kaufman

Confession time.

When I’m not busy being a control enthusiast, I tend to be a little suspicious of things. Well, not just a little, I guess. A lot.

So when my debut novel, While the Savage Sleeps, went to number one on Amazon, I thought something had to be wrong, that it was a mistake, that there was a ghost in the machine, that…well, something. I mean, passing up Nora Roberts and Stephen King didn’t just seem surreal—it seemed damned near impossible.

The truth was, it did all of those things, and in addition to that, the book remained on the bestsellers list for the year that followed, at which point I knew the machine wasn’t broken.

But something else was.

Because once the euphoria dissipated, I began to panic. It suddenly dawned on me that I needed to write another book, and fast. Not only that, but I needed to write a damned good book, one that was better than the first. After all, my readers were waiting, and I was scared they’d compare my next novel to the first. There were also the sales to consider. Could I keep the momentum going while I worked on the next one? Could I hold on to my readers? Would they forget about me? Being an author with only one book to my name, these seemed like valid concerns.

It appeared my dawning had blossomed into a full-blown obsess-fest, and it wasn’t the least bit pretty. I spent the next year second-guessing myself into a frenzy. Nothing I wrote seemed good enough, and it always came back to one central theme: that I was turning out crap, that the first book was better, that my success was a flash in the pan, a one-time fluke. The readers were anxiously awaiting my next book, and there I was, losing self confidence and beating myself to a pulp.

Then, a revelation—well, not really that, more of a self-initiated kick in the pants—and a question: Do you want to be rich, or do you want to be happy?

I realized I’d become so caught up in the success of my first book that in that process, I allowed my reality to become drastically skewed. My priorities got all mixed up.

See, here’s the thing: I don’t write just to make sales. It's not about the money. I write because I have to. I mean I really have to. For me, writing is like breathing, and life without it wouldn’t be life at all—it would be something less than. It’s all about the journey I begin each time I look at that fresh, blank page.

I'd somehow forgotten that.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sharing my work with the world, love connecting with my readers—and putting food on the table and gas in my tank are definitely priorities. But that's about survival, not about why I write. I write because it’s an essential part of who I am, because there’s this raging fire inside me that I can’t put out. I think if you follow your fire, your passion, then the rest will fall into place naturally. That’s what happened with my first book. There were no expectations at the time, just me and my words, and that, I believe, is why the novel found its own success. Because my passion came out through my words.

Once I got on track, I felt an enormous shift within me. The words began to flow, and—surprise—my second novel was born, one that I know is better than my first.

So tell me, gentle readers: What about you? Money? Happiness? Or a little bit of both?