Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 315

Reader Question Day #64 – SOUL OF SWORDS and free books

Cheryl asks, concerning my recent adventures with BookBub:

I love having a Kindle and being able to download free books. I’m curious how anyone can make a living being an author if they are giving away the books for free all the time?

That is a good question with a one-word answer, and that word is:

Sequels.

Giving an ebook away for free, by itself, might be a nice thing to do, but it doesn’t translate to sales down the road. If you give people a free ebook without any sequels, they’ll read it and say “oh, that was nice” and go on about their lives, and eventually forget about the writer and the book.

But if you have a free ebook, and that book has sequels, and people like the free book…there’s an excellent chance they’ll go on to buy the sequels. I have four free ebooks – DEMONSOULED, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS, and THE TESTING – and they’re all the first books in a series.

A few caveats – it’s best if your free book is a complete story, and not a cliffhanger. People get annoyed by cliffhangers, especially at the end of free books. The ideal is a complete story that nonetheless has allows for the characters to continue to have adventures and emotional growth. Additionally, it’s best that the free ebook not be too short. THE TESTING was both a cliffhanger and only about 1500 Kindle locations long, which really annoyed some people. (If I return to THE THIRD SOUL universe at some point, I’ll bundle up the shorter novellas and release a couple of omnibus editions.)

And that is how you make money with a free ebook.

Numerous people also have questions about SOUL OF SWORDS, the final volume in the DEMONSOULED series.

When is SOUL OF SWORDS coming out?

First week in June, barring unexpected technical difficulties. To be notified immediately when the book is available, sign up for my new release newsletter – if you’re a newsletter subscriber, you’ll get a bonus when SOUL OF SWORDS comes out.

Will SOUL OF SWORDS be available on Nook?

SOUL OF SWORDS will be available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords. It will also be available on iBooks and Sony, but it usually takes a new book a week or two to show up in iBooks and Sony.

Will there be a print version of SOUL OF SWORDS?

Yes! There is a trade paperback version of SOUL OF SWORDS, and it will be available shortly after the ebook is out. I’m afraid it will be a bit expensive, since the paperback came to about 403 pages, which mandates a certain price to cover the printing costs. But there will be a paperback version, if you want one.

-JM

The many different covers of DEMONSOULED

As SOUL OF SWORDS will be coming out sometime in the first week of June, let us take a look back at the many different covers that DEMONSOULED has had throughout the years.

Jill Bauman did the first cover for the hardback edition that came out back in 2005. There are still a few copies floating around Amazon.

After the hardcover version went out of print, the ebook version came out in 2011. This was the first cover, a classic (and public domain!) painting by John William Waterhouse:

Obviously this did not send the right message for the content of the book. After I finished SOUL OF SERPENTS and made DEMONSOULED into a free ebook, I switch to this cover, a painting by Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov:

This cover, you’ll agree, looked much better. But public domain classic artwork will only take you so far, so in 2012, I upgraded to stock photos for the new cover:

However, as the previous three covers demonstrate, I am a writer, not a graphic designer. I decided to redo all the DEMONSOULED covers for the release of SOUL OF SWORDS, and hired Clarissa Yeo to make the new covers:

Five covers in eight years. Not many books can boast of that!

-JM

ebook sales for April 2013

I’ve been so busy with SOUL OF SWORDS that I forgot to post ebook sales for April 2013! Let’s rectify that:

5,069

This is down from the 7,084 of March 2013, but up from the 3,521 of April 2012. I suspect the drop came for three reasons. First, I haven’t released anything new since March. Second, April is Tax Day in the US, which definitely puts a damper on people’s discretionary spending. Third, I suspect much of the literate public in the US spent most of their time on the Internet reading about the various tragedies, and not reading ebooks. (US sales were down, but UK sales were slightly up, actually.)

So I suspect May will be down a bit, since I don’t have anything new coming out in May. June, I hope, will be different.

-JM

SOUL OF SWORDS excerpt

I am making good progress on SOUL OF SWORDS. So let’s have another excerpt!

“I will enter Cythraul Urdvul,” said Skalatan, “claim the power of the Demonsouled for myself, and become the new Sepharivaim.”

“Will you?” said Lucan. “Malavost tried to use the Door of Souls atop Mount Tynagis to claim the power of Sepharivaim, and look what happened to him.”

“Malavost was misinformed,” said Skalatan. “Sepharivaim is dead.”

“I see why the other San-keth consider you a heretic,” said Lucan.

“They lack vision and are enslaved to their narrow dogmas,” said Skalatan. “Sepharivaim has been dead for millennia, and my people worship the memory of a slain god. A useless folly. Instead I will become the new god and set this world to order.”

Lucan scoffed. “And you shall make yourself a tyrant as black as any of the Demonsouled.”

“Hardly,” said Skalatan. “The minds of humans are…conflicted, warring between their reason and their emotions. The mind of a San-keth is cold. Orderly. Rational. This world is a place of chaos and madness. With the power of the Demonsouled, I shall remake this world as a place of rationality and order. To the benefit of the San-keth, yes. But also to the benefit of the humans and the Elderborn and the other sapient races that live upon this world.”

“And why are you telling me this?” said Lucan. “You all but admitted that you are going to march the Aegonar south to claim Knightcastle. I assume you have a reason for explaining your entire plan to me?”

“Correct,” said Skalatan. “I wish for you to aid me.”

For a moment Lucan was not sure he had heard the San-keth correctly.

-JM

SOUL OF SWORDS first chapter

Click here to read the first chapter of SOUL OF SWORDS.

-JM

SOUL OF SWORDS – the Table of Contents

Here is the (spoiler-free) Table of Contents for SOUL OF SWORDS. Next week sometime we should have a sample chapter.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Chapter 1 – An Old Enemy

Chapter 2 – Hunters of the Dead

Chapter 3 – Visions

Chapter 4 – To Cleanse The World

Chapter 5 – Raiders

Chapter 6 – Sight and Shadows

Chapter 7 – Embassies

Chapter 8 – The Herald of Sepharivaim

Chapter 9 – Past and Present

Chapter 10 – Grinning Skulls

Chapter 11 – The Prince of Barellion

Chapter 12 – Warmoot

Chapter 13 – Gray Shadows

Chapter 14 – Black Daggers

Chapter 15 – Besieged

Chapter 16 – Liege Lords

Chapter 17 – The Guardian and the Swordbearer

Chapter 18 – An Alliance

Chapter 19 – The Grand Master

Chapter 20 – Cloaks of Flame

Chapter 21 – Roads of Ice

Chapter 22 – Urdmoloch

Chapter 23 – The Last Throw

Chapter 24 – A Homeland

Chapter 25 – The Opening of the Way

Chapter 26 – And All The Nations Shall March

Chapter 27 – A Harvest of Souls

Chapter 28 – Fooled

Chapter 29 – The Door of Souls

Chapter 30 – Cythraul Urdvul

Chapter 31 – The Last of the Demonsouled

Chapter 32 – The New God

Chapter 33 – A Final Sacrifice

Chapter 34 – Legend

Epilogue

One Final Author’s Note

Glossary of Characters

Glossary of Locations

-JM

 

Boom! Bookbub!

So right now, as of this writing, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS is #10 on the Amazon US free store. Not in Epic Fantasy, not in Sword & Sorcery, but #10 for the entire Amazon US free store. That takes something like 10,000 downloads in a day, which CHILD OF THE GHOSTS has done since yesterday.

So, how the heck did this happen?

I bought an ad on Bookbub. Bookbub is a newsletter service that sends announcements of discounted books to its readership. The idea is that you sign up for Bookbub, tick off what genres interest you (romance or fantasy or whatever), and then Bookbub sends you emails listing discounted books in your genre. I had heard other writers say good things about Bookbub, and the cost for listing a free fantasy book was $90, so I figured it wouldn’t cost too much (specifically, $90) to give a try. After CHILD OF THE GHOSTS got accepted, I filled out the form, send in the money, and forgot about it.

Then on the 15th, I got an email saying the ad was going out, and I looked and saw that CHILD OF THE GHOSTS had gone from about #2,200 in the free store to #170.

That was pretty cool.

Then, a few hours later, a very excited reader pointed out that CHILD OF THE GHOSTS had shown up on a blog called Hip2Save, which is apparently one of the biggest blogs on coupon-clipping. This was a bit puzzling, but upon investigation, I saw that Hip2Save hadn’t mentioned CHILD OF THE GHOSTS at all. But they had mentioned Bookbub…on the day that CHILD OF THE GHOSTS happened to go live in the Bookbub ad, which mean the book’s cover showed up on the Hip2Save blog. Given that Hip2Save is in the top 2,000 of Alexa’s web ranks for the US, I strongly suspect that generated the extra interest to kick CHILD OF THE GHOSTS up to #10 on the Kindle free store.

So that part of it was just dumb good luck.

Another big, big part of it was the new cover that Clarissa Yeo did for CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, which was considerably more attractive than the covers I did myself. That was a big help – a pretty cover goes a long way to getting people to download a free book.

So that is what it takes to get a book into the top #10 of the Kindle free store.

Now we’ll see if anyone buys the sequel to CHILD OF THE GHOSTS.

-JM

book description for SOUL OF SWORDS

MAZAEL CRAVENLOCK is the last hope. As castle after castle falls to the runedead horde, Mazael must led his armies to victory…or the world shall fall into darkness forever.

And Mazael must stop his father’s dark plans. No matter what the cost to himself.

LUCAN MANDRAGON wields the relics of a forgotten empire, the runedead his to command. Soon he shall destroy the Demonsouled and free the world of their curse forever.

No matter who he has to kill to do it.

SKALATAN is the strongest of the serpent priests, and soon he shall become stronger still. For he shall claim the power of the Demonsouled and become the new god of the serpent people.

And then all men will bow before the serpent god.

THE OLD DEMON is ready at last.

For centuries he has plotted and manipulated kings and lords. Now he shall seize the power of the Demonsouled for himself, and become the new god.

And all the world shall be his to torment.

-JM

Sword & Sorceress 28!

I am pleased to report that my short story GHOST SPIKE is going to appear in SWORD & SORCERESS 28 later this year. It is another story of Caina Amalas.

Because THE GHOSTS series of novels and short stories developed so organically (chronologically, I first wrote the short stories, then I wrote what would become novels #2 and #3 before writing novel #1) there’s a bit of a continuity gap between the novels and the short stories. In GHOST SPIKE, Caina is twenty-nine, but at the end of GHOST IN THE FORGE, the latest novel, she’s still only twenty-one. Eventually the novels will catch up to the short stories, but that’s not going to happen for a while yet.

So needless to say, I hope to keep doing both GHOSTS novels and short stories for a while yet.

-JM

Let’s Get Visible, by David Gaughran

A couple of years ago I read David Gaughran’s book LET’S GET DIGITAL, which deal with the nuts and bolts of electronic self-publishing. The book had many useful tips and tidbits of information, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I started selling more ebooks after putting some of those tips into practice. So when I saw Mr. Gaughran had a new book dealing with ebook marketing, LET’S GET VISIBLE, I read it at once.

While DIGITAL dealt with the basics of self-publishing, VISIBLE is intended more for the veteran self-publisher, someone who has several books out. (For me, I’ll hit 40 ebooks next month.) Most of the book deals with the basics of how Amazon sells books – how the bestseller lists work, how the Popularity Lists work, the importance of selecting the right category for your ebooks, and so forth. This is all very useful information, since there are numerous myths about how Amazon’s sales rankings work. VISIBLE also offers good advice on using KDP Select, and how to best exploit free books and paid advertising.

I do wish more of the book dealt with promotion at sites other than Amazon – fully 84% of the book dealt with using marketing tactics on Amazon. That said, there’s a very good reason for that, since most self-publishers do most of their business over Amazon. For myself, I sold approximately 5,000 ebooks in April (I haven’t tabulated the final numbers yet), and of those 5,000, 50% were on Amazon US, 30% were on Amazon UK, about 12% were on Barnes & Noble, and the remaining 8% were scattered among Kobo, Sony, and the various international Amazon stores. So I suppose it makes sense that 84% of a book on ebook marketing would deal with Amazon.

But to sum up, LET’S GET VISIBLE is a good book on ebook marketing tactics. There’s a lot of bad pieces of advice floating out there, but LET’S GET VISIBLE is not one of them. If you’re brand new to self-publishing, I’d recommend starting with LET’S GET DIGITAL, but once you have a few books out, give LET’S GET VISIBLE a read.

-JM