All Blog Posts Tagged 'Aliens' (175)

I’m in the midst of another free giveaway promotion, this time it’s for DEGENERATES. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FFN5LY This is the first time I’ve given away one of my thrillers and you know what? It’s flying off the shelves. It’s only the second day and the promotion goes until Sunday and I’ve already given away almost a thousand books. I’m happy to do it too, because I have two other thrillers FROSTPROOF and PULP that are written in the…

As I checked my email this morning I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my novel. DROP OUT http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005FX0K7U has won today’s Indie Book of the Day award. http://Indiebookoftheday.com . I’m not too familiar with the website but it seems like it has a lot of followers. I’m also not sure who nominated the book but if that person or persons reads this blog I’d like to say…

I got another one of those terrifying e-mails from Kindle Direct publishing saying they have discovered INSECTLAND for sale at other online booksellers. And as anyone who publishes through this promotion knows, you have to be exclusive to Amazon.com for 90 days. Violating this can lead to the expulsion of your book not only from the promotion but also from Amazon and Kindle. That would be a huge blow to my market audience of Kindle and Kindle Fire owners. Worried I might lose this book, I…

Now you can find out for free! For the next two days AFTER is absolutely free on Amazon.com! Thanks and enjoy.

AFTER

When Nick Murray dies mysteriously he enters an afterlife like nothing he had ever imagined. There are rules, regulations, and beings in positions of great power. The devil craves this power and will do anything to attain it, even use his evil influence to start a global war on Earth. The devil intends to collect billions of human souls and turn them into a…

So begins one of my favorite aspects of writing a novel; organizing the chapters. This is when I take each separate character and their plotline and read it all in one string instead of being spaced out in the book. This allows me to flush out any inconsistencies and make sure the story stays true and along the proper path. I first did this when I wrote DEGENERATES http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FFN5LY. That book has so many characters and…

Okay, so here we are entering the second week of July and my sales have remained relatively stagnant since the Fourth of July. I’ve explored all the free promotion sites, and forums and threads. I’ve placed sponsorships with Kindle Nation Daily, Kindle Fire Department, Kindle Boards, and various smaller indie websites. I’ve manage to write on average three blog posts a week and have over 170 followers (thanks everyone) and almost 200,000 hits. I’m active on Authors Den, Goodreads, Shelfari,…

Lately, I’ve been contemplating the future of writers in today’s high technology society. What will become of us and the books we write? Will the paperback go the way of the compact disk? Will publishing houses disappear the way most record labels have? Will the paperback book become a lost art? I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that there will always be writers and there will always be stories to tell. What is uncertain, is what medium will sell those stories. I have several theories…

I’ve been reading a lot of posts on KND and KDP about how July sales have started out slowly. It’s not surprising considering the Fourth of July holiday. As I said in my last post, I made the biggest mistake of all by booking a sponsorship during this week. People are out having fun and spending time looking to buy ebooks takes away from some of that fun. Although I’ve sold a bunch of books already this month, I’m not going to base my monthly average on this week’s sales. Otherwise, I might…

So once again, I’ve made a blunder (I think) in my sponsorship ads. Last Friday, DROP OUT was Kindle Nation Daily’s sponsor. http://kindlenationdaily.com/2012/06/kdd-june-29/ According to their own estimates more than 150,000 readers were exposed through their means. I probably exposed the link to another twenty or thirty thousand people through my promotional…

Although I’ve figured out what sites help most with sales, and what forums to post on, and what sponsorships work best, and I’ve documented all of this on my blog, there’s still one thing I cannot figure out. What prompts sales?

For example, last month I sold many copies of INSECTLAND, DROP OUT, DREAM TRAVELER, and FROSTPROOF in the U.K. Yet, I’ve done almost no marketing for the U.K. since March. In the U.S., I sold many copies of all my books, but the two best sellers for the month…

Wanted to let everyone know that my novel, DROP OUT is today’s Kindle Nation Daily’s sponsor. Please check it out. It’s a powerful read. Thank you.

http://kindlenationdaily.com/2012/06/kdd-june-29/                                     

So it finally happened, ebooks have surpassed regular books in sales for the first time ever! What does that mean to the 21^st century writer? It means that the future of reading is here. It means that the stigma of reading ebooks has passed. It means a world-wide audience can download a book in seconds. It also means we will probably be seeing the end of traditional bookstores. Though it had been a lifelong dream of mine to see the cover of one of my books prominently…

Just wanted to announce that PULP is officially an ebook and available globally as of right now! I started the first draft of PULP back in 2002 after receiving a rejection notice for my other new ebook release FROSTPROOF. The agent liked FROSTPROOF but said he was looking for something a little weirder and more pulpy in style. Fueled by the adrenaline of rejection I started writing. I wanted to create a story that would keep people turning the page, not so much because of non-stop action,…

My newest KND sponsorship for SILENT INVASION was a total disaster. http://bit.ly/LQTPrL. As I predicted after I booked it, having a sponsorship for a middle grade novel the week schools let out was a HUGE mistake. The sponsorship yielded almost no increase over my usual daily sales. If I can offer any advice to promotional efforts for books is to make sure you take into account the world’s events when you schedule. I do have another sponsorship on…

The promotion for SILENT INVASION is going on right now. I haven't noticed too much of a bump in sales but the forums tell me that sales usually bump up later in the afternoon. I guess we'll see. I'm trying not to think about the cost of the promotion vs. the amount of sales and am spending the afternoon marketing PULP onto the various writers sites that I belong. I'm starting to think that the fact that this is the first week of school being out that the kids are not ready to sit inside and…

As I watch the price of ereaders drop, I feel the excitement of a bright future for indie authors much the way musicians must have felt when the first Sony Walkman came into existence (I know I’m showing my age). Readers can now take thousands of books with them anywhere they go; on vacation, in a plane, in a car. And now with Nook and Kindle introducing the backlight, people can read in bed while their significant other sleeps with the lights out. Just a few short years ago, seeing someone…

I’m very happy with my new cover for PULP. I’ve contacted my editor and formatter, so the process is underway for my eighth novel to be published electronically. It’s been a long, twenty-year road to get these books complete but now that I’m nearing the end of my backlist of previously written novels, I can now concentrate on future projects, namely my latest, IMAGINATION. It’s been seven months of work and I’m about seventy percent complete. The book is written and the characters and plot…

It was announced that Amazon.com has acquired Avalon books. While this move by Amazon proves that the digital publishing revolution is gaining strength, it hits me personally for two reasons. One, I think it will give new respect to indie writers who are publishing through Amazon, and two, I almost had a publishing deal with Avalon many years back. Well, kinda. It was for my novel, FROSTPROOF and it was a very exciting time. The internet had just begun to develop into the huge creature it…

Being a writer means experiencing dizzying highs and terrifying lows as a novel transforms into reality on the page. There are times when you believe that everything you’ve written is total crap and there are times when a character reveals something or does something that you hadn’t expected and you find yourself on this emotional high. This is also true when it comes to sales. Unfortunately, I’m obsessed with checking my sales numbers so my emotions can swing greatly from one day to the…

As I write this, I’ve reached a milestone in my writing career. As of last count nearly 10,000 of my books have been downloaded. Not all were sales as some were free promotion giveaways, but enough of a percentage of them were purchased that it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something. As I’ve always said, it’s all about exposure. The more people who read my books and talk about them, the more grassroots, word-of-mouth sales will grow. I just contacted my cover artist and formatter…