Okay, NOT that I'm pitting my authors against each other because all my authors appreciate each other--but I've been concentrating on work count lately. Naturally I wondered what my authors PUBLISHED word count was for 2013. So below I've got the low down. Remember, this is for 2013 published works. It's also an estimate because I quickly ran through the word count of the whole book--legal wording & all. ACTION ITEM: Tell me your word count for 2013! Author Patricia A. Knight Affectionately called: PAK Titles: 3 Hers To Command Hers To Choose Hers to Cherish Total Word Count: 215,378 Author Carol McKibben Affectionately called: Mom Titles: 1 Luke's Tale Word Count: 60,827 Author John Daly Affectionately called: My etiquette guru Titles: 1 The Key Class Word Count: 47,024 Author SNMcKibben Affectionately called: SNM Titles: 5 Lady Alene and the Widower But For You, Yes Cougar Bait in the Coffee Shop The Demon Inside Me Escape To Vampire Dam Word Count: 46,791 Author ULRIKE Affectionately called: Ushci Titles: 2 Inspire Your Day The Seeds Will Sprout Somewhere Word Count: 13,824
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So, I did another Free Days on Amazon with 3 different books. Hers To Choose got on BookBub and the downloads were amazing!! Of course sales for HTChoose have withered but what made this promotion work is the other two books PAK has out {Hers To Command & Hers To Cherish} that's the real reason I did BookBub. Had I submitted Luke's Tale...I think it would have just been a free book and withered sales with no sequel to propel. Thus, we did the Author Marketing Club Free days submissions as we did before and got a great beginning, a steady middle and a fantastic push from our most awesome PR guru ~ Travis. We scheduled the books to go free at the end of the month and I think that made a huge difference in sales and free download numbers. The third book was not a novel but a short story. It's KDP did as well as a short story would do as if treated like a red-headed step-child. I still believe in short stories, and I'll continue to write them and publish them, but I've noticed a trend in my writing to where I want to write longer and longer stories. So perhaps my short stories will become novellas and then to actual novels. I have two full length novels that are being prepared to come out in 2014 and hopefully I won't pull them back this time. But, what I've learned from this Free days are a few things: 1. Use the big guns when you have at least 2 other books available to buy ~ preferably in the series. 2. Use all the free promotions and a little bit of paid promo to have decent download counts and sales after the free days for 1 or 2 books by an author. 3. Kindle free days works if you use it like a genius {like me~not} and prepare for it ahead of time. 4. Keep the momentum going. <-- more on that later!! ACTION ITEM: Only use KDP Select wisely. You might snort at me and say "what's wise?" Spend money when you have 3 or more books, don't go overboard when you have only 1 - 2 books. Today is Carol McKibben's birthday! We'll be celebrating and having her favorite Ms. Field's cookies because in her words..."Screw cake! I want cookies!" So while we roller derby with our very first published author here at Troll River, you can steal away with the chocolate!
So I can't praise my author's enough...we found this article in the Mountain View News: http://mtnviewsnews.com/v07/htm/n28/p14.htm 1. It’s the story of a couple’s journey to find lasting love, and the dog who shows them the way. 2. The central message is unconditional love. The message is clear. We all place conditions on others whom we love. It is up to us to remove those conditions and love unconditionally. If we do, the world will be a better place. 3. The book is narrated by Luke, the Dog. 4. Just like faith, one must suspend disbelief in order to believe… in a dog who can have the thoughts of a human being. 5. The man and woman in the story are flawed. 6. The dog pretty much stands for GOD spelled backwards, but this is not a book about religion. 7. We can only find our way when we are open to facing our past and then leaving it behind us. 8. The book is not about blindness or cancer. Luke’s blindness and Sara’s cancer are only present to test the conditions that Ashlundt places on them as barriers to love. 9. Carol McKibben has had many spotlight's in magazines about her book, Luke's Tale. Including Authors Tour and Mountain News. 10. Life tests all of us. It’s not so much how we handle it but what we learn from it. 11. Many people find it a sad story, perhaps because it hits very close to home. It is meant to show people the way to lasting relationships. 12. Luke's Tale has received 40 five star reviews out of 48. 13. Carol works with a local rescue and has fostered a few dozen dogs and has found good homes for all but one. 14 Luke was a real life dog Carol owned and much of what happened to him is portrayed in the book. 15. Luke had 8 other brothers and 1 sister. 16. Carol was awarded one of the Top 12 Spirited Woman's book award of 2013. 17. Luke's Tale was Carol's first published fiction book.
18. Luke was a real life therapy dog and was one of twelve therapy dogs admitted to critical hospital patients for both children and adults. Today is the first day of Luke's Tale KDP promo! Click the picture to get your download! And while I love Amazon and the Indie tools they provide, I can't help but feel that this type of promo is getting more difficult for new authors to use successfully. In January, I was still confident in the KDP Select program. I still felt it was a good deal being exclusive and having a promotion to plan. I believe the KDP program still works, but for relatively known authors. Somewhere between January and now, the KDP Select program seems to have shifted to give better known authors a chance to gain more readers. When I signed on, KDP Select still gave new authors the edge to get known. But here's what I've noticed. ~ I can't find the FREE eBooks section on Amazon even when I search. ~ Free ebook lists have cut down on the number of free books they'll feature. ~ There are tons of books going free and uploaded to Amazon every day. ~ There are more books that are free than one can read in a lifetime. ~ Free seekers aren't necessarily your market. ~ It takes about 20,000 downloads to make a bump in sales. (And that's not easy anymore.) I know you're thinking I'm getting down on KDP Select, but what I'm saying is, this type of promo has changed. I see free as a viable marketing promotion because I know it works. It's how I got hooked on Sylvia Day, Michelle West and a few others. But, the free thing needs to be done wisely. I'm still in. I'm still experimenting and I'm still waiting to see what this promo retrieves. I'll find out! For now, click on the picture and get your copy!
Photo Credit: J.P.Robertson via Compfight cc
Word of warning: this post is all over the place! I've been watching some of my authors and I've noticed a bit of the frazzles coming out their ears lately. So today's post is dedicated to them. Okay, so all my posts are dedicated to them. I write these things specifically for them. Ever hear of the advice write to one person? Well, I am directly writing to my authors, but everyone else gets to see the benifits--or stumbles. We have a lot going on this month! Patricia's first book comes out in June and we're doing everything to get it finalized. I've been tempted to tell you that no one will buy it so you don't get frazzled over sales. That might sound harsh to the rest of ya'll but my authors get my sense of humor.
What I'm really saying is we're in it together. You've spent time and money, I've spent time and money, we believe in your story and truthfully it had to be available to the public! There was no way I was going to let that one go into obscurity. I feel the same way about Carol's book. It was not allowed to go into obsurity. And Luke's Tale will finally be available free the first week of June. Luke's Tale also goes on virtual blog tour the last week of the month. KDP is a hit or miss for people and we're going to see what happens. It doesn't matter though. Keep writing. But the reason I titled this blog the time is now is because it is. One, if you're an aspiring author, do it! Plan it, set a date and go for it! I have to tell you, I joined a program that teaches you how to become an authority in your field. I've done very little with the program because I haven't made time. Just as one of my authors put a project on hold to deal with the virtual blog tour, I've decided that this other project is something I want to do, but later. You see...it's not time. This is my backwards way of telling you that planning your goals and acting on them is what's going to make them successful. Planning is the key. Everyday I go to my phone in the morning and plan my day. I have an app for that. It's called Any.Do - yeah funny name but great app. I love it's email feature, alarm features and reminders. So do you plan your day? You might have a list of things to do, but do you actually figure out how much time the tasks take? Do you try to improve on your efficiency? Have you found any short-cuts to save time? Everyone talks about planning your day but they forget one of the reason WHY planning is so important. Plan your day, so you can review and see where you can save time. Take the extra five minutes to go back to your list and think about how you can get more done. Not in a frantic way, but in a way that give you five minutes to do some yoga, focus your brain from frazzled to focused. Deepak Chopra is running a Conscious Lifestyle blog on LinkedIn and I'm finding that he's right--focus on the here and now prevents burn out. I'm not writing when I'm walking Emma. I'm not running Amazon numbers in my head when I'm at the job that pays the base bills. When I say the time is now, I'm not only saying that right now is the time to "do", but also a reminder of being in the moment. Be here, right now. How does this post make you feel? Is your brain buzzing? can you focus on each word as an individual or are you scanning? When you're with your horse are you riding or thinking about what you have to do in the office? The mind affects the body and vice versa. Stay focused. Plan your day. Be in the moment. Bring yourself to center by connecting your palms together and breathing. Now is it time, or not? ACTION ITEM: Look at your to do list. Are there things you can do more efficiently? Are you here and now? Can you focus on this sentence? If not, maybe collect yourself and bring in the thoughts going out. (That is if you haven't scanned the sentence). :) After scrapping two pennies together and handing them over to Titan InKorp for a very special deal, I received a banner, a mobile phone site, a QR code for Luke's Tale and...the reason why I bought the package...a book trailer! Researched showed me that book trailers are somewhere in the $200 - $500 range. There was.. Just. No. Way. Book trailers are a part of marketing but I wasn't going to pay for it when I could do it in my copious amounts of spare time. (Notice how I jumped at the chance to get it outsourced) The secret to book trailers is...do them yourself. You're a writer, your creative, you can do it--I believe in you! And here's what I was going to do for Luke's Tale before one of my lovely connections offered this special: 1. Pick out photo's of Luke, the actual (dog) inspiration for the book. 2. Write a script. Carol and I did and that's what you'll see in the trailer. 3. Plug everything into a video manager (I had flip in mind but their no longer in business) including music, photos and script. 4. Voila--book trailer! Now, I was hoping for something a little more homey, but when you're paying 50 cents for a video, you can't beat what I got! Will book trailers sell books? Probably not. But, it's a good promo piece and people love videos! With no further ado, may I present to you, Luke's Tale the book trailer! The package I purchase also included a banner... A QR Code... And a mobile phone link complete with Amazon link to but the book!
www.lukestale.mobilefriendlysite.co.uk I will admit, I'm not sure where to put this or how to use it other than maybe on here so ya'll can search your phones for it...but I have one! Also, just so you know, you can get a free QR code at http://www.visualead.com so don't feel like you have to pay for something like that. So what's a book trailer's role in marketing? To remind people about your book without you having to scream buy, buy, buy! This is a wonderful reminder and if you make a trailer more on how to solve a problem, or as entertainment than people will watch and enjoy! What's your Action Item today? 1. Decide how a book trailer will help you promote your book. 2. Ponder if you want to spend the time to make a book trailer. 3. Ask me questions on what kind of trailer you might want to do and we'll brainstorm on your project! Our first attempt at Amazon's KDP Free Days will begin with Luke's Tale on 06/03/13 - 06/07/13! Let me tell you the process was...arduous. I'm in praise of Author Marketing Club for the Submission tool! Click that link to save time! You'll find links on other sites, but you'll have to find the submission forms to offer your books free days for kindle. Author Marketing Club gives you links straight to the submission forms. What a relief. Now that I've gone through the process, here's what you need to know. 1. Be prepared to submit your dates to these sites early. 2. Be prepared to submit your dates to these sites on the day OF your free promotion. 3. Be prepared to submit your dates to these sites every day of your free promotion. 4. Save about $100 to promote on these sites for a guaranteed exposure of your free eBook. 5. Go to the Author Marketing Club tool HERE to save time on submitting your free eBook. It took me about 90 minutes to go through all the links and submit the info. I went with totally free because I have plans to promote it on Facebook. Every promotion is different and we'll find out what works. But having the links ready for me saved so much frustration. Read the guidelines for each site because some don't let you promote without four star reviews or/and a certain amount of reviews. You might want to think about paying for guaranteed exposure too. We'll see if we can conquer KDP Free days! Luke's Tale successful launch party brought to light the print version of Carol McKibben's latest release! It was so wonderful to see everyone's support in honor of this momentous occasion! We were truly humbled by the support and encouragement of everyone who came and even those who could not. We thank you all for celebrating with us! I think we all had fun meeting up with Carol and watching the scrolling pictures of all the dogs in the McKibben's lives that encouraged this very book! It was pure pleasure to help host and connect with all of you that attended. Troll River would also like to thank the author for opening her home for the event. I don't think many will forget this special occasion revolving around uncondi Troll River Publications is proud to announce it's first release in print! Now available at CreateSpace and Amazon! This was the cover in which I set out to find the tail of a blonde Labrador Retriever and found the perfect fit! The original eBook cover will always be my favorite. However, licensing did not allow for it to be used as a print cover. Lesson learned. You can see my post on the process here. Now for the launch party! This is a celebration not only of the completion of a book, but of a life. The life of the real "Luke" who inspired the story. The soft-cover will be available at the launch and Carol, the author, has graciously offered up her residence for the event. Hence, it's an invite only affair. I for one am very honored to attend. I hope to see all of Carol's supporters there! Thank you everyone for making this possible. |
Dear Reader,
My efforts are to make this a learning blog where writers can see the flip side of publishing. If you have comments that will improve your experience or have a certain topic you'd like discussed, please contact me through email - HERE. ~ Sincerley, Your Editor Stephanie McKibben Head Troll Troll River Publications Books on Kindle
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