Drawn To The Deep End

So, a novel that I've been working at, on and off, for seven years is finally available for public consumption. Yes, seven years. More than five writing it, in fits and starts. A year of editing and reviews. Nearly a year trying to find an agent and/or publisher. You might infer from my failure to do the latter that the novel isn't very good, and you're entitled to your opinion. I think it's alright. Not very marketable, perhaps, and a bit downbeat for some, but alright, nonetheless. You'll have to buy it and make your own mind up. Here are the links you'll need for that:

Paperback

Ebook

If you like the book, it'd be lovely if you could leave a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads, or wherever you write your reviews. Feel free to blog or tweet about it, if you like.

If you don't like it, well, silence is golden, eh? Or better yet, come on over to this blog or Twitter and let me know off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush ;)

My children need wine!

I self-published my first title, Dark Steps in August 2011. Since then, I have sold some books. Here's a graph to prove it.

You'll note that I have removed the scale from the Y-axis, but essentially this equates to just over 300 sales across five titles. In the same time period, I have given away, completely free, over 9,000 copies through various channels, nearly all Amazon Kindle Select promotions.

Giving books away for free is fine, I guess, and, barring miracles, writing is never going to enable me to give up the day job. That's fine, I accept that. Fortunately, that's not why I write. But, you know, <plug class="shameless">if you wanted to buy a book sometime, well, that would be fine too...</plug>

Footnote: wondering where the title of this post comes from? Wonder no more. And yes, Euro Itchy & Scratchy Land is a perfect metaphor for sales of my books.

Don't get any big ideas - they're not going to happen

Regular readers might know that I recently hatched a scheme (for which, read desperate attempt) to crack the Amazon.com Top 100 Free list with one or both of the titles I currently offer under KDP Select. The theory goes that if you can crack that Top 100 list, even if only for a short while, a significant sales "bump" follows.

So I notified every "list your KDP Select promotion here" website I could find (and I found plenty). I blogged my plan wherever I could. I tried to build some Twitter momentum. I called in favours. Hell, I even posted to Facebook, something I am usually loath to do.

But I didn't spend any money.

A couple of Kindle author forums seemed to both suggest placing ad's with BookBub as a sure-fire way of cracking the list... but those ad's start at $70, and I had a promotional budget of precisely zero.

So, the promotion ran last weekend. What happened, I hear you ask?

Turn Around Where Possible got to #748 briefly on Saturday. Cold didn't even crack the top 2,000.

Aside from new levels of circumspection, what have I learnt from this? Firstly, that unless some of the big boys (ENT, Pixel Of Ink, and so on) actually run your promotion, it doesn't matter how many free "list your KDP Select promotion here" websites you notify. Most of the rest are small-fry, by comparison. Secondly, if you're running a two-day promotion you need to achieve in excess of 2,000 downloads to get close to the fabled Top 100 list. I managed a shade under 400 in the US.

There were some positives. I logged my first downloads in India which is great, as Amazon.in is surely a massive potential marketplace. I made the US Top 10 Free Short Stories list (indeed, I sat at #9 on that for much of the weekend). Oh, and Turn Around got as high as #652 on the Canadian Free list on the strength of just nine downloads. Yes, nine. The rewards from cracking their Top 100 might be a lot smaller, but equally making their chart without spending any money might actually be achievable.

Before I close, can I just quickly take this opportunity to publicly thank all friends and acquaintances you helped, retweeted, liked, posted, forwarded and, ultimately, downloaded? Thank you all. And if anybody has $70 to spare, I'll place a BookBub advert next time, save myself going to all this trouble...

Footnote: the title of this post comes from here. But then you knew that already...

The Last Crusade...

... in which I pursue the Holy Grail (geddit?)

Getting onto Amazon.com's Top 100 list is a big deal, I reckon. A lot of Kindle owner's check that on a regular basis. I'm not talking about genre-specific lists, I'm talking about the big guns: Amazon's top 100 paid-for Kindle books and the top 100 free.

It's a big deal because once you're on there, lots of downloads follow and, presumably, book sales of other titles too. That's the theory anyway.

I run two titles under Amazon's exclusivity programme KDP Select, namely Turn Around Where Possible and Cold. Periodically, I give these away free. The nearest either has ever got to the top 100 list was when Turn Around... peaked, for a few short hours, at #113. To get that high, more than 2,200 free copies were downloaded.

What's all this building to? Well, I'm going to have one more crack at the Holy Grail, the top 100. I've scheduled for both titles to be free on Amazon, simultaneously and worldwide, on the 31st of August and 1st of September. I've submitted my promotion's details just about everywhere I can think of. I've given plenty of notice to untold Twitter book promotion accounts. I've scheduled a number of promotional tweets myself on a (hopefully not too annoying) regular basis. And now I'm blogging about it.

So I need your help. If you have a Kindle, Kindle app or Kindle for PC, you can download either or both of these short stories. I hope you do. I think you might like them. But also please tell your friends. Maybe flatter me with a retweet when you see me plugging the big push. And if you run or write for a book review website or blog, please let me know and maybe we can do something.

Think of this as an experiment. Can a little known indie author crack the top 100 free list with a self-published short story or two? Let's find out...

EDIT: I should add that I have no promotional budget for this: zero, zilch, zip, and other words beginning with zed. So to those that have suggested I place an ad with Bookbub (starting price $70), well, it's a nice idea and everything so thank you, but no...)

Halloween... and I'll scratch your back, etc

As a writer with a couple of titles enrolled in Amazon's KDP Select programme (which gives the retailer exclusivity), I am able to offer those titles for free every now and then. The idea, I guess, is that the rush to download a freebie leads to a "bump" in downloads, a momentarily higher profile and then residual sales in the aftermath. To be fair, that has been my experience, although I should point out that the law of diminishing returns certainly applies - after four or five freebie weekends it seems that pretty much everybody who wants your story on their Kindle already has it.

Having said that, I'm planning one more freebie, and am writing about it here in advance in the hope of maximising the take-up. Turn Around Where Possible, my old-school horror yarn, will be available for free on Amazon on Wednesday, 31st October. Yes, a horror story free on Halloween. I'm nothing if not original.

Anyway, since I'm not only giving you stuff for free but also giving you plenty of prior notice, can I ask a favour in return? Two of my short stories, the aforementioned Turn Around Where Possible and Cold, are eligible for Wattpad's Watty Awards 2012. No, me neither, but hey, an award for a story would be nice to win. So can you help me get in the mix? It won't take much of your time, just a few mouse clicks really.

You can vote for Cold here: http://www.wattpad.com/8276776-cold

And for Turn Around Where Possible here: http://www.wattpad.com/8276710-turn-around-where-possible

If you don't have a Wattpad account (which I'm guessing is most of you) you can use your Facebook credentials to exercise your right to vote - exercise is good for you, right? And enjoy Turn Around Where Possible for Halloween.