Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 14

Is Author Platform Rocket (APR) Worth It?

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Strap in for another episode of Chris Reviews a Service. A fellow author who was asking questions in my writing group is who turned me on to Author Platform Rocket/APR. At first, it sounded like something I was very interested in. I think that a perfect service would be something that manages your ad accounts and takes a healthy commission off of the sales for their hard work. You would pay for the ads and they would build/manage them so that the writer can do what they excel at: writing. This sounded like that sort of service! (That led me to the million dollar question… what does that cost?)

SPOILER: This was not that sort of service.

The page, much like so many pages promising services to us authors, is one long-form squeeze page/sales funnels which you are probably familiar with. It’s a simple formula: talk a lot about the service and tout the hyper-successful stories as case studies.

First off, I had to navigate several of those funnel pages to try and find the info I wanted. Eventually I got to a spot to schedule an interview with an agent… to get this far, I had to fill in tons of information about my books, sales figures, etc. By the time I got to the end and discovered that I had to talk to someone to get the info that I wanted (a pricing guide for their service) I had figured that this might not be the kind of service I had hoped it was, even if it billed itself that way… the fine print on each successive funnel page seemed to alter that perception, and so I closed the browser.

I received a message a few days later with a followup from one of their folks, someone named Brenda who sent a video, confused how I got so far without getting the numbers I asked her for in a response. She told me to watch a video. A nineteen freaking minute long video. That’s a lot of time I could be investing in something else… like writing or editing. How bout you just type out the price, okay, Brenda?

Maybe I’ll learn something in the video, right? Nope. Same crap as their sales funnel. Same stuff I’m already familiar with. I just want a price… and then, dear God, they start talking about selling hoodies and other custom merch like this is a vistaprint add-on service or something and how authors are leaving freemoney laying around. I tune out. I sell books. I do sell t-shirts for fun with a screen printing operation in my basement, but come on, Brenda… I’m here for a purpose, and it ain’t shirts.

I thought I’d be honest.

I didn’t see anything regarding the price in the video (aside from a 500 discount.) please be straight with me and tell me the cost. I am currently doing Mark Dawson’s courses and would rather spend my time watching those videos than trying to scour through another 18 minutes of data that I’d already mostly seen already.

Brenda thought this was funny. It’s totally expected that your business management professionals approach your money with a laissez faire attitude right? Brenda says:

LOL. If you saw the $500 you weren’t listening. Missed it by 3 min. Also, your not being pitched. If you were I’d be trying to sell you instead of testing to see if you are paying attention

Review: Before the Fall

[image error]I got an ARC of Leah Downing’s Before the Fall to review for my blog, Inside the Inkwell. It is book #3 of the Shooting Star Series.

While this is not normally my type of book (it’s in a POV I normally hate and on the more romance-tilted side of my main genre,) I found myself really enjoying this book.

To clarify my previous statement, I normally loathe 1st person POV stories… it’s usually not done with skill and we either find ourselves so mired down in a character’s introspection and senses, or the writer continually breaks POV giving us a yo-yo feel. Downing skillfully manages a perfect balance, as you would expect from a third in a series. Also, though it’s #3, Downing does a great job with the way she writes so that we can infer much about the characters and their backgrounds in previous stories based on how she presents the scenes (like how Lauren mistakes a hologram of an actor for a real person and the tone of the short conversation much of what we need to know about their previous relationship.)

The premise is interesting: a woman who is being hassled by a malicious djinn. It’s that nuanced world building that merges our world with the supernatural that I found appealing about the book. The world was both dangerous and fun, though. Kind of like Lucifer, Bedazzled, or maybe a modern Aladdin where the genie is evil, instead.

Lots of fun—pick up the series, but feel free to start anywhere like I did!

I got a free review copy in exchange for an honest review at my blog. You can check it out by clicking here.

 

Author Feature: Mark J Schultis

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Community leader. Particle physicist. International Assassin. Mark J Schultis is none of these. He wrote his first story in elementary school and has spent a lifetime keeping that childhood passion of storytelling alive, studying theatre and filmmaking before eventually earning his writing degree from the University of Pittsburgh. A perpetual night owl and pizza connoisseur, Mark was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he lives with his wife and their two children. Schultis’s Dawn Cluster series is an action-packed Military SciFi.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

In my youth, science fiction and fantasy helped me make sense of the world in ways my family couldn’t. Not only was I entertained, but the moral and ethical themes great Sci-Fi contain helped me see the world for what it was and what it could be. I was inspired to contribute and have been writing since childhood.

Tell us about your stories:

I have found that themes of truth, trust and annihilation tend to seep into everything I write, and The Dawn Cluster is about all three. Although on the surface it’s a story of survival and retaliation, each character is grappling with either a secret or a mystery that has and continues to shape them.

What kind of success have you had?

Well I set out to tell the best story I could, a love letter to all that inspired me, and my readers seem to have picked up on that.

What books/authors are your greatest influence?

In high school I came across Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and in college I began Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles. I’d say these were my earliest inspirations, but Timothy Zahn and George RR Martin’s writing styles have had the most impact on me..

Give us an insight into a time you wrote a scene with feeling.

Without spoiling anything, I’ll say the finale of my third book, Destiny. Everything coming together? Brought a smile to my face to be sure.

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Check out this book by out FEATURED AUTHOR.

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The Power of the Amazon Author Central

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One of the tools that authors easily overlook is the Amazon Author Central page. We often hear about the importance of establishing our brand, blogging, social media, and personal web presence and when we get to Author Central it’s easy to look at it and go, “meh, I’ve already got pages that do all that stuff.”

However, there are lots of critical reasons to engage with Author Central, and if you haven’t done anything at all with it, or have just used it to go through the motions (by adding your books and bio so readers can see the bare minimum about you) then you are missing out on some powerful features and leaving a lot on the table.

First, you’re going to make sure you’ve claimed your books to your author profile (if you don’t have it yet, get it at http://authorcentral.amazon.com/ ). Also fill out your biography. You will want to do this whether published independently or traditionally.

If you have a blog, you can also set it to automatically push to this link where people can find it. You will not need to republish it or copy/paste it to anything new. You can sync your AAC blog to a feed you keep elsewhere (like wordpress, etc.) My articles automatically pushes from my wordpress blog to my Goodreads profile, Amazon Author Central, and both Twitter and Facebook using RSS feeds and wordpress tools. There are many articles out there on how to sync these depending on your platform.

If you have a book trailer, you can add that as well under the videos section. If you’ve overlooked trailers in the past (like I also did) you can get a high-quality one made for very little money on sites like fiverr. I think the key is, make sure that you get something that is well done. Something that is cheesy, tacky, or unprofessional will reflect negatively on your book. My video ad has been my lowest cost, most effective advert.

Use the Editorial Reviews section to highlight reviews for your book. This doesn’t have to  be from the NYT… it could be from a local newspaper or blog tour, or any other source of good reviews that have not made it into your reviews section on behalf of a reviewer (or that has and you want to draw attention to it.) It can be a snippet from your favorite review left by a reader, even.

If you do lots of events and have a local following, you can use it to track your travel calendar as well.

If you have written your book’s description within KDP and then published you may have noticed that every time you press enter for a clean line break, it didn’t show up on your amazon page and you just got a big block of text. You can add text formatting elements (even bold and italics or change the size) by accessing your book details via AAC. You can change your description here for all versions (except audible) without having to re-save the book in the KDP system.

Also in the book details tab you can include additional information about each book in From the Author… which is a good place to put series information.

Additionally, the help feature can put you in touch with a live Amazon agent. This is the only method of reaching a human at the Zon which I am aware of. Yes, you can actually talk on the phone and get transferred to the appropriate department for your amazon account.

The AAC profile also has other uses if you know what to look for, such as targeting advertisements based on your “also boughts” which will appear on the user side of the account (helpful to target authors and titles readers like and cross-pollinate your advertising targets with authors that have been proofed by readers as relevant.)

Your AAC page does not span across the world, however, and you will want to consider claiming a profile in each of the areas where you will have a presence. Amazon is constantly expanding, but here are some of the major areas you will want to mirror your AAC profile to.

France: https://authorcentral.amazon.fr/
Germany: https://authorcentral.amazon.de/gp/home
Japan: https://authorcentral.amazon.co.jp/gp/home
UK: https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/home
US: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

 

Review: Boxer Earns his Wings

[image error]Boxer Earns his Wings, by Douglas Van Dyke Jr. has a certain flair to it. It opens by putting you smack dab in the middle of action and Van Dyke does a great job of continuing the level of excitement throughout the book. It was an easy read and not overly long which is nice, but also promises more in another fun realm Van Dyke writes in.

His other books are fantasy and have a very Forgotten Realms kind of feel to them, this one is more steam-punk, and his characters and settings feel very much like Han Solo in a western/steam kind of world. Boxer felt very much like the first two books of A.C Crispin’s Han Solo trilogy, which I absolutely loved (and was one of the few books I eagerly awaited new installments of, checking for new releases each time I visited the stores—before we could follow authors on the internet.)

If you’ve got a taste for steam and adventure, pick up Boxer Earns his Wings! I received a free copy for review at my blog, Inside the Inkwell.

You can check it out here!

State of Writing

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SUCCESS. I finished my audio recordings and I also completed the next Dekker’s Dozen story, The Seed Child of Sippar Sulcus… editing has already begun. It’s similar in length to my last installment, which means there ought to be a compilation book of the Armageddon Seeds coming this spring! I’m quite pleased how the book turned out, over all, and I’ve got extensive notes for another full-length installment, Dekker’s Dozen: Austicon’s Lockbox (the title is a huge hook if you’ve read any of Seeds books other than Arbolean Moon.)

This week I’ve got lots going on, but hope to revise another draft of DD:SCSS while doing some of the background work necessary for my new ACX installment (Wolves of the Tesseract 2). If I can get audio uploaded for WotT2 this week I’ll be happy. That, plus getting some prelim copies of Dekker’s Dozen into beta hands would be great.

Author Feature: Nix Whittaker

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Whittaker’s Lady Golden Hand is a steampunk/gaslamp set in the 1830’s with a lady detective who has a prosthetic mechanical hand. She is investigating a murder of a conman and the main suspect is a dragon.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I’m Nix Whittaker and I live in the shadow of an active volcano on an island. I got into writing because I ran out of books to read. Which might seem strange to some because I’m also dyslexic. But I was lucky enough to have a lot of supportive people who taught me some tricks to reading and I got addicted. Still can’t spell very well but meh who needs to with technology in this day and age.

Tell us about your stories:

I write science fiction romance mostly. My latest novel Lady Golden Hand came about because I was making premade covers and I just fell in love with one of the characters on the cover. So I had to write her story. It did mean having to do some research as it is set in the 1800’s but with the introduction of dragons I could change things a little. The dragons are from another planet and used string theory and entanglement to travel across planes. It is fun adding in fantasy elements with science.

Lady Golden Hand is not the first book I’ve set in this world. I have Blazing Blunderbuss which is set earlier and follows a tinker who accidentally steals an airship in order to rescue a dragon.

What kind of success have you had?

The day I finished my first novel. I would call that my biggest win. I write a lot, I mean I have like a thousand stories I’ve started and that have gone nowhere. So when I actually finished something it was amazing. Especially since now I regularly finish writing novels. Lady Golden Hand will be my tenth book and I already have seven more planned for this year. There are so many people out there who talk about writing a book so to do what others only dream is literally a dream come true for me.

Are your characters pure fiction or based on something/someone?

My female characters are often a blend of friends and family. A little bit of a cousin mixed in with a best friend. So a lot of them can see themselves in them. The guys are a little different. You know how most people have a type, well I have a couple of types and those are my guys. My dream boat honeys and I just recycle them around in my books. Lady Golden Hand is the clever geeky type who is the eternal optimist. Annoyingly persistent but with the patience of a saint.

Give us an insight into a time you wrote a scene with feeling.

I always enjoy writing the first kiss scene. And of course the thing that pulls them apart. Dragons are collectors and Lady Rayne is worried that the dragon is only interested in her because she is unique. In this case missing a hand which is replaced with a mechanical hand. It is a bit of a roller coaster when you go from a bit of steam to a cold shower when you realize he is only in it for the cupboard love.

One of the things I love exploring in my stories with the dragons is the dynamics between men and women. The old fashioned values of considering women as chattel and how that can be abusive versus mutually owning each other. Where the other is always first and by that you become more than the sum of the parts.

Check out this book by out FEATURED AUTHOR.

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Mailing lists: what is this newsletter swap thing i keep seeing?

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I’ve been pretty keenly interested in getting better at promotions lately. To that end, I’ve enrolled in promo author-guru Mark Dawson’s SPF course and been working on his ads for authors package, especially the Facebook side of things. I’m working though it slow, and dealing with newsletter signups, etc.

I have a mailing list and I set up my triggers to auto-send mail every so often so that my system is in place… before I start spending money on ads, though, I have begun seeing lots of authors talk about newsletter swaps and looked into it.

So after some research, I’m kind of sold on the idea.  Basically, two authors agree that in their next email blast they’ll include a link and info to the other author’s book/mailing list. This usually includes the other book’s cover image and blurb as well so that readers can get a better feel for it. This is essentially a grassroots version of how things like BookRiot work (you can check out my Bookriot experience at the end of February when it goes live under the “Chris Reviews Services” tag.)

As an author, you should be talking with other authors. Hopefully you are involved in some kind of community and keeping in touch with your tribe. If not… get on that ASAP, for the sake of your sanity. It’s best to already have some sort of following to begin with, probably a few hundred strong. An author with 2,000 readers isn’t going to want to swap with one with only 50 readers. There is a certain economy to it.

Likewise, you ought to find authors whose genre is a fit. It’s a wasted effort if the audience is an automatic “no thanks” out of the gate and the sharing author might even lose some credibility with his list. It’s a bad idea to pitch your friends SciFi to your 50,000 reader romance list. Even if all of those subscribers sign on for his list, that’s 50,000 folks to try and pitch who aren’t very likely to be receptive to a future sales pitch based on genre preferences. This will translate to a lot of wasted energy and disillusionment from the author.

Many authors have signup forms for their peers to make such requests. An online group that I’m active on has a dedicated post for newsletter swaps ever weekend. Some authors don’t do the regular email, but instead use blogs (I go that route.) I offer a blog to feature authors here no more than once a week and let writers borrow my platform. (Here is how I take submissions). Like the others, I use a google forms tool which was super easy to set up.

Much like I am setting up for my future email campaign list, you ought to put some attention into the efforts first. You don’t want to look like a hack later. Put together your promo package and have a written marketing plan and goals before you start doing swaps. I have a set of 5 different books I give away in increments to subscribers and I have Mailchimp autodeliver them on my behalf. Cut down your busywork to avoid burnout and automate whatever you can.

There are lots of great ideas out there. But here’s the take away:

You ought to be doing something to both develop and utilize a mailing list that you own (so, not a social media list such as twitter… that is a different ball of worms)
It doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant
It doesn’t have to be difficult

Get out there and find your tribe… both in terms of readers AND fellow writers.

For some great insight, check out this video:

State of Writing

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I ALMOST met my goals last week. It was a busy one to be sure, but most of them really are. I did write well past the half way point mark of my newest SF book. I’ve been promising a new installment for Dekker’s Dozen for a while and said that I would have a new print book in 2019 for my fans to buy at conventions. My novella series (called the Armageddon Seeds) will be available this year—but I have another 10k-12k left to write in it (of a projected 80k or so total) and I hope to be done  with the last 25k novella by the end of next week.

I got about 3.5 chapters of audio recorded last week. I had some time budgeted for it, but my mic began picking up a 60cycle hum and I didn’t want to keep recording until I was able to get a clean input. I’ll try again this week. I really want to complete the audio recording of Wott2 by the end of the month as well. I’ve got lots of projects with notes pending and I’d love to jump into them, but these come first.

Also, convention plans are booked—come hang with me at comicon and lets talk fiction!

Author Feature: Thomas Webb

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Thomas Webb writes Steampunk Thrillers, Alternate History, and Military Sc-Fi.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I’m a short story author, essayist, and novelist. I’m a prior service Marine who resides in Richmond, VA, with his wife and two kids. When I’m not spending time with my family or writing, I like lifting weights, running, and choking my friends via the fine art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I got into writing because I love a good story, and was audacious enough to think that I could tell a few myself.

Tell us about your stories:

Right now I’m doing final revision on my latest book, entitled Vindication. Vindication is Book 3 in my Clockwerk Thriller. As the subtitle alludes to, I consider these works to be, primarily, thrillers. But the series has strong elements of steampunk, alternative history, and science fiction as well. I like to describe it as “Vince Flynn meets Jules Verne, with a dash of Assassin’s Creed thrown in for good measure (because people love those types of commercial comparisons, don’t they?).This book is the last in a planned trilogy with Cobble Publishing. I’ve also got a completed first draft for another sci-fi novel, as well as several fully-fleshed outlines. Not to mention a slew of short stories (both published and unpublished), which I’m hoping to compile and release sometime as a collection late next year. So I guess you could say I’ve got a few irons in the fire.

What kind of success have you had?

In 2017 I scored a three book deal with a small press. So I’d definitely consider that a win. In 2018, I authored two full-length novels, and managed to get almost half a dozen short stories published. Id consider those wins. And I learned a ton of invaluable information around the business of writing (all of which I plan to implement in 2019). I consider that last one the biggest win of all.

Tell us about your influences.

There are a couple. Vince Flynn, for sure-100%. No one does thrillers like Vince did-he was the best, hands down. Stephen King, of course-simply a master storyteller. Neil Gaiman-the gold standard of the short story (and his long form fiction isn’t half bad, either). Maya Angelou, who laid her magnificent soul bare, from joyous heights to darkest depths on every single page.

Give us an insight into a time you wrote a scene with feeling.

I wrote a short story called “The Evac” (which you can read for free, right now if you like, at a website called littlebluemarble.ca). The ending was rough (emotionally speaking). The editor of that one told me that her colleague cried real tears when she read it.

Check out this book by out FEATURED AUTHOR.

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