Selling my soul might actually be easier.

"Your book is...special."

I have been doing a TON of reading, research and "gathering of best practices" lately, including poring through blogs and absorbing hours upon hours of podcasts. Of particular help are Joanna Penn's podcast (The Creative Penn) and the Sell More Books Show. I've also listed to quite a few Author Hangout episodes and Rocking Self-Publishing. The prevailing wisdom is to start marketing your books (or at least your "brand") long before their release, so in a sense, my marketing efforts should always be "on."

What I haven't been doing a lot of is writing. But there's a good reason--after hearing Shawn Coyne interviewed by Joanna Penn, I picked up his book The Story Grid and thought I might be able to figure out where the missteps are in my WIP. It has changed my thinking--it's really inspired me to go back and re-map out the entire novel (word-count-wise, I'm about 2/3 through, but in reality, I'd say only about 50%). Yes, it's more work, but I will feel so much more confident when it's done. I'm out outliner anyway, so I always like to know "where I'm going," even if my characters pull me off that path now and again.

I'm almost done with The Story Grid, at which point I'll pick up Take Off Your Pants! as I dismantle and reassemble my WIP. Projected release date of Spring 2016 (actual date is a secret, because it's relevant to the book's setting and theme, which will be revealed once designer extraordinaire Mike Sottong finishes my cover)!

Shifting gears, I'm ramping up promotion for my first two humorous suspense books, Ring of Fire and Battle Axe. I gave Ring of Fire a fresh edit, a tweaked cover, lopped out about 5K words, caught a few typos, and entered it into KDP Select so I could do a giveaway. After a 3-day giveaway leading into Labor Day weekend, here were the results:

Day 1: 500
Day 2: 105
Day 3: 61
Total downloads: 666

I think Satan himself downloaded the last copy just to make it work out even.

As far as promotional tools, I didn't do a lot. I've spent entire days before pushing giveaways via Facebook and Twitter, but when I saw that 5k+ downloads didn't result in a single new review, I realized those numbers are not all that they seem. So I limited it to one $1.50 paid listing on Snick's List and then using Book Marketing Tools' very handy Book Submission tool to hit 30+ sites for all of $15.

My main goal here is to boost reviews, and based on more advice (see above sources), I've added links and incentives to the book itself. Once a reader posts a review on Amazon or Goodreads and sends me a screenshot or a link, I'll send a copy of Battle Axe (where the cycle begins anew). I'd like to boost reviews of that book, too, and by the time my WIP is ready early next year, I might have something of a "fanbase" or, God forbid, a mailing list.

So there you have it. In the case of this blog, no news is good news, because no news means I'm working too hard to write about how hard I'm working. I'll try to be better about that.

When everyone is super, no one will be.

I listen to Joanna Penn's podcast regularly. She's a certifiable success and role model when it comes to indie publishing and attracts high-level talent for her interviews. I've broadened my network and likely improved my craft just in the short time since I discovered her.

In one of her recent episodes, she interviewed the designer of her fiction book covers, Derek Murphy. By all accounts, Derek seems like a very nice guy and is indisputably talented. He's designed hundreds (thousands?) of covers in the past few years and has no doubt enhanced the appeal of books that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

And now to my point: should all books be noticed? It was bad enough when the "indie movement" first took off and suddenly, everyone was an author! Then there was NaNoWriMo, which practically mandated that everyone write a novel! As someone who's been a writer for his entire career, and writing novels for more than ten years, I take umbrage with the notion that possessing a computer and an internet connection endows upon you the skills of structure, plotting, character development, dialogue.

Derek is about to start providing Microsoft Word templates so indie authors can design their own covers--halfway decent covers at that.  It's hard enough for the good books to rise above the mediocre books, and now we won't have their covers to help us distinguish between them.

The process used to be self-qualifying: if you wrote a lousy book, chances are you'd put a lousy cover on it, and we really could judge a book by its cover. I'm generalizing, of course, but I would think that really good writers, those with discriminating taste who bother to proofread and format their content correctly, wouldn't settle for a cover they designed themselves.

I'm fortunate enough to have a best friend who's not only a brilliant designer, but who listens and collaborates, too. If I didn't have him, I'd surely pay someone to design my covers, because I know how important they are, and I want the cover to be indicative of the quality inside.

I'd be willing to bet that many of the books that end up using Derek's templates will be camouflaging mediocre content with pretty pictures.

Must we lower all the barriers to entry?

Author's note: To give this post some context, the author is a 20-year advertising veteran who has seen his profession devalued beyond recognition with the advent of digital technology that makes everyone not only a writer, but also a website designer, a photographer and a videographer. Some chafing is to be expected.

Mixed--but better--results with second KDP giveaway.

My second Amazon KDP Select giveaway of Battle Axe is winding down after three consecutive days, and I must say, it's changing my mind about the program. I still don't know if it will boost my reviews or sales, but the activity has blown away that of my previous giveaway over Easter weekend.

Here's what I did differently:
1. Three consecutive days vs. two non-consecutive days (last time I skipped Easter proper).
2. Used only these paid sources:

• Freebooksy.com
• Thedesertgirl on Fiverr.com
• bookblast.co

Here's what I did the same:

1. Picked a holiday weekend

2. All the same Facebook and Twitter sources

But this time, as of 4:30 on the third day of the promotion, I'm looking at 5700 downloads vs. the meager 710 I got the first time around. I hit #2 in the free Kindle store both times in the Humor category, but this time also hit #6 in Suspense. 

My theory is that the paid sources I used this time are indeed more effective (and slightly more expensive), and the three consecutive days allowed more momentum to build vs. the two nonconsecutive days. Also, I have a feeling that Memorial Day itself is a more popular time to download books, as opposed to Easter. And my books definitely qualify as "beach reads."

Lastly, either Amazon got my scheduling wrong, or I was looking at a European calendar when I picked my dates, but the three days started not on Saturday, May 25 as I had hoped, but on Sunday, May 26 and continued through Tuesday, May 28. I imagine if the promotions (both paid and my own) and the scheduling had synced up better, my results would be even more impressive.

I'll report back with after-promotion results. In any case, this has persuaded me to enter Ring of Fire into the KDP program as soon as Battle Axe expires. Giveaways to follow.

Oh, and actual writing? That may happen again someday, too.

Choose Your Friends Carefully

What I mean by that is, if at all possible, during your formative years, become friends with someone who, a few decades later will offer to design your ebook cover as a personal favor. Make sure this person is someone who displays very little aptitude or passion for graphic design at the time, but through hard work and dedication miraculously transforms into a visionary artist and Photoshopper par excellence.

Well, that's what I did, anyway, and look what it got me.

I'm posting a larger cover of my debut novel Ring of Fire here, mainly to give it a place to live so I can send out links. My designer--the multi-talented Mike Sottong--worked with my crude notions of a concept and created what you see here. The plot of Ring of Fire involves a nefarious (and occasionally hilarious) scheme to monitor college student's purchase habits--using hidden cameras--and then exploit them. Where are the cameras? Based on this cover, where do you think? The basis of the ring on the cover was Mike's (and my) actual class ring, from the now-defunct Robert E. Peary High School in Rockville, Maryland.

There are conflicting opinions on whether ebooks even need covers, or if a cover makes a difference. That's a topic for another blog post. However, I'm also making Ring of Fire available as a paperback, and paperbacks need covers. Shamefully, I do judge books by their covers, and I wanted mine to look professional. First impressions and all.

Should you desire a cover for your ebook/paperback, Mike has graciously offered to work with select indie authors at a greatly reduced rate (possibly for free, depending on the terms). Just let me know and I'll hook you up.