Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 262

FROSTBORN: THE HIGH LORDS & MASK OF DRAGONS now underway!

I’ve started on FROSTBORN: THE HIGH LORDS and MASK OF DRAGONS this weekend. If all goes well, I hope to have FROSTBORN: THE HIGH LORDS out towards the end of January, and MASK OF DRAGONS near the end of February.

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST is now available!

Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Canada, Amazon Germany, Amazon Australia, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo,Google Play, and Smashwords.

Click here to read the first chapter.

Long ago the ruthless High Queen of the Elves conquered the nations of 21st century Earth. Centuries later, Nadia Moran is a thief and a wizard bound in service to the cruel Elven noble Morvilind, forced to use her skills and her spells to steal treasures for him.

If she does not do Morvilind’s bidding, her brother will die.

But there are more dangers in the world than Morvilind.

When rebel Elves launch an assault upon the High Queen, Nadia Moran finds herself caught between the rebels and Morvilind’s implacable demands.

One false step, and she will die…

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST book description

CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST is almost done, so let’s have the book description!

Long ago the ruthless High Queen of the Elves conquered the nations of 21st century Earth. Centuries later, Nadia Moran is a thief and a wizard bound in service to the cruel Elven noble Morvilind, forced to use her skills and her spells to steal treasures for him.

If she does not do Morvilind’s bidding, her brother will die.

But there are more dangers in the world than Morvilind.

When rebel Elves launch an assault upon the High Queen, Nadia Moran finds herself caught between the rebels and Morvilind’s implacable demands.

One false step, and she will die…

-JM

BLADE OF THE GHOSTS – Permafree versus Kindle Unlimited

Today I’m going to talk a bit about book marketing. Feel free to skip if you have no interest in the topic, or to ask questions if you’re curious!

For the last couple of years a successful marketing tactic for ebooks has been something called “permafree”. The idea is that if you have a multi-book series, you make the first book free on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the other ebook retailers. If it works, people download the first book for free, read it, like it, and then go on to purchase the other books in the series. This has worked out pretty well for me – DEMONSOULED, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, FROSTBORN: THE FIRST QUEST, THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS, and THE TESTING are all free on all the ebook platforms, and they’ve done a good job of drawing people in to the rest of the books in their respective series. In marketing-speak, this is called building a “funnel” draws people in to the rest of the books.

In the last year and a half, free books have become less effective than they used to be on Amazon while continuing to work on the other retailers. One reason is that Amazon added an additional click to get to the free lists – they used to be displayed side by side with the paid bestseller lists, but now you have to specifically click through to find them.

A far bigger reason, though, is Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s subscription program for ebooks. I don’t think predictions that KU would destroy the paid ebook market have borne out – I sell more books on Apple, Kobo, and Google Play than I did before the advent of KU – but I do think that a lot of the people who used to read free books on Amazon have shifted over to Kindle Unlimited subscriptions instead.

The logical response, of course, would be to switch the first book of the series to Kindle Unlimited. The significant drawback would be that the formerly permafree book would no longer be available on the other retailers, and it would be kind of stupid to have, say, DEMONSOULED books 2-7 available on Kobo, but not the very first book. No one starts a series on the second book, or at least not very many people.

So I thought about this for a while, and I decided to try an experiment.

I wrote BLADE OF THE GHOSTS, a short novel set between CHILD OF THE GHOSTS (GHOSTS book #1) and GHOST IN THE FLAMES (GHOSTS book #2). When CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST comes out next week (if all goes well), I will give BLADE OF THE GHOSTS away free to my newsletter subscribers for a month, but after that month is up, I’ll put it into Kindle Unlimited.

We’ll see how it does. If it performs well on Kindle Unlimited, it will stay there, and if it does not, I’ll put it back on all the other retailers. It will make for an interesting marketing experiment, and if it doesn’t work, one can always obtain useful knowledge from even a failed experiment.

-JM

editing CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST

I’m now editing CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST, so it’s time to share the cover art.

I do like covers that have a lot of fire in them.

-JM

CLOAK GAMES, Nadia Moran, & the Wisconsin State Capitol

If you’ve read the CLOAK GAMES books, you know that a big part of CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER takes part in the Wisconsin State Capitol. My travels this week took me through southern Wisconsin, so I decided to stop by and see how much of the layout I had gotten wrong in the book.

Based upon news reports I have watched, I expected to see the Capitol encircled in a sea of placard-brandishing protesters. Perhaps because it was a holiday weekend, I saw only one protester, an elderly bearded man who stood in the rotunda and sang about labor solidarity at ear-splitting volume while a group of Asian tourists watched with bemusement. Some of them took pictures.

Anyway, I am pleased to report that I got the layout of the Capitol mostly right for the books. Since CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER takes place three hundred years in the future, I can claim any mistakes were the results of renovations in the layout that took place after the High Queen’s conquest of Earth.

The tour of the Capitol was quite interesting (and free) and the Wisconsin State History Museum across the street was also quite interesting (and also free, though donations are accepted). Highly recommended if you are in the area, though you may want to visit when UW-Madison isn’t in session to cut down on the amount of local traffic.

-JM

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

There are many things for which I am thankful, but I will limit myself to pointing out only one. After two weeks, GHOST IN THE THRONE is still #1 in its category. Thanks everyone!

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

-JM

BLADE OF THE GHOSTS & a digression on book marketing

For the last two years, I’ve written a free GHOSTS short story and given it away for Christmas to my newsletter subscribers.

This year, though, I’m not doing that.

Instead, I’m writing a short GHOSTS novel, BLADE OF THE GHOSTS, and giving it away for free to newsletter subscribers when CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST comes out next month. It will be set between the events of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS and GHOST IN THE FLAMES. Newsletter subscribers will be able to get it for free via Smashwords coupon code for two weeks, and then it will go onto Kindle Unlimited.

(That’s the short news. A longer explanation is below, complete with a digression on the business of self-publishing.)

For a long time now, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS has been free on Amazon and everywhere else. The marketing idea behind it is people download the first book, read it, and like it enough to move on to the other 15 books in the series.  (Doing so is commonly called a “permafree” book.) This has worked out pretty well, and I bet a lot of you reading this got into THE GHOSTS and GHOST EXILE because you read CHILD OF THE GHOSTS for free. Thanks for coming along this far!

That said, free books have gradually been becoming less effective on Amazon. They’re not ineffective for marketing purposes by any means, but less effective than they used to be. Part of this is the gradual maturing of the ebook market, but a big part is that Amazon has been deemphasizing free books in favor of Kindle Unlimited.

The downside of Kindle Unlimited is that a book in KU can’t be on any other ebook vendor – no iTunes or Google Play or Kobo. I seriously considered putting the first nine books of THE GHOSTS (CHILD OF THE GHOSTS through GHOST IN THE SURGE) in Kindle Unlimited for Christmas, but decided against it since the series has been doing well on Kobo and iTunes lately. Amazon might have been deemphasizing free books in favor of Kindle Unlimited, but free books still work pretty well on Barnes & Noble and Kobo and iTunes and Google Play.

So that is the crux of the dilemma – put books in KU in favor of greater Amazon visibility and lose out on sales on other platforms, or keep the books available on other platforms and be at a disadvantage against other books in KU. (As of this writing, GHOST IN THE THRONE is #1 in its category on Amazon US, but of the top 20 books in that category, 11 of them are KU books.)

Therefore I decided to split the difference and write BLADE OF THE GHOSTS. Since it’s set between CHILD OF THE GHOSTS and GHOST IN THE FLAMES, it will be an excellent place to start the series. I can put BLADE OF THE GHOSTS in KU and use it to promote, while leaving all my existing books available on all the other ebook platforms.

It will be an interesting experiment. And if it doesn’t work, no harm done: after three months I can always put BLADE OF THE GHOSTS on all ebook platforms! Subscribers to my new-release newsletter will get the book for free no matter what, so be sure to subscribe now.

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST is finished!

The rough draft of CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST is finished! On track to come out in mid-December, I think

Now I’m working on Chapter 2 of a short novel called BLADE OF THE GHOSTS. I’ll post a little bit more about that tomorrow.

-JM

Office 2016 & Preview

I upgraded to Word 2016 today.

It’s very blue, as the image shows.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice a preview in the screenshot for something that I intend to release next month.

-JM