Elliott Turner's Blog - Posts Tagged "promotion"

The "Best Of" eBooks for my blog, Futfanatico, are available for free on the Amazon Kindle until Friday, July 6th. I enrolled them in the Kindle Select Program, and, as a reward, Amazon let me give them away for free for five days.

The eBooks contain my ten favorite blog posts, guest columns, and free-lance articles from 2009, 2010, and 2011. They include my writing at Run of Play, Dirty Tackle (Yahoo Sports), In Bed With Maradona, the Equaliser, Fox Soccer, and other great sites.

Check them out here:

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Ki...

Hey folks-

I know that normally September/October/November are dead months for booksales, but I still was too sad to see my two eBooks dwindling in the single digits week after week. I also wanted to expand my pool of readers and respond to market forces - Jimmy Burns has a book about Real Madrid on sale for $3. Three dollars.

Thus, I reduced the price for both the Illustrated Guide to only $4 and the Real Madrid/Barca history book to only $4.

You can snag the Madrid/Barca book for Kindle here and for iPad here

You can grab the Illustrated Guide at for Kindle here and for iPad here

I also don't want to get folks too excited, but I'm finally making progress of an audio-version of the Spanish soccer guide. A Christmas launch date looks like a distinct possibility.....

Hey folks,

as many of you know, I do a "Best Of" eBook each year for my blog Futfanatico and my soccer writing at other sites/journals/quarterlies. I pick my ten favorite pieces, slap them together with a minimalist cover, and sell it all for a buck on Amazon.

I'm glad I've done this because, frankly, the universe is a cruel place. Especially the interwebs. Some of my favorite articles from years past have disappeared when editors move on to new sites, stop paying server fees, and domains go unregistered.

You think it will never happen to you, but then, bam, one day PitchInvasion ceases to exist.

As part of my dark covenant with Amazon, the "Best Of" eBooks are only available there BUT I can give them away for free for a limited period of time. That time is now. From today until Saturday, you can snag for free the:

Best of 2009 (Highlight: Kuyt El Capricho at Run of Play)

Best of 2010 (Highlight: Junito, Lies, White Lies & Leche Sin Chocolate)

Best of 2011 (Highlight: the Texas Lower Division Shuffle at 200%) and

Best of 2012 (Highlight: Amazing Real Life Moments in Jaded Soccer Hipster Fandom)

Get them while they're hot (and free)! Just remember - if you like them, rate them a few stars and say some nice words if you have the time.

Hey folks,

after much work, the audiobook (narrated by me) is available for An Illustrated Guide to Soccer & Spanish via audible. It's just under seven bucks, and you can finally learn how to properly pronounce tee-row day S-keen-ah. See how easy that was?

Enjoy it here. And spread the word!

When I wrote my two nonfiction books, I had no fing clue about the book promotion/marketing/publicity game. I did invest and experiment with PPC ads at GoodReads, Google, Reddit, and even Facebook. For the record, GoodReads is a pretty sound investment. Google even did decent numbers, but then everybody jumped on that gravy train, key words got expensive, and major publishers priced me out.

(Shakes fist).

As you may have gathered, The Night of the Virgin, has already appeared on iTunes for PreOrder and is even here at GoodReads. If you've been reading my monthly Tiny Letter, you'd have read some fun facts about my reading habits and, more importantly, that NOTV is basically done. After 10 months of editing and hiring a pro editor - formerly a senior editor at Bloomsbury - it's printing press ready.

So why the wait?

Reason number uno: super unscientific beliefs held by me. Namely, that novels and most books sell better when published at the start of summer. I don't envision NOTV as a bestseller or a beach read, but the English-speaking world loads up on books in May and June.

Secondly, and more scientifically: reviews. Press. Publicity. For my nonfiction books, I had no clue just how powerful and influential book reviews were. Thus, I've been tracking down cool sites, be they blogs, medium-sized sites, niche sites, or major news orgs, to whom my agent-publicist will send advanced copies in January/February.

I've actually already sent a few copies to cool people at cool sites - NOTV is about 80,000 words long, and I assume people have a 'to read" queue as long as mine, so I wanted to ship out copies ASAP.

I've also sent a few copies to readers that I know on Twitter and GoodReads; folks who have liked my writing for awhile. I know that seems a bit slanted, but there are so many "paid for" positive reviews in this world (which I flat out reject), that I don't feel bad zipping advanced copies out to longtime fans. I can only send so much.

Yes, I am pirating my work in a sense. In a bigger sense, though, I write to be read. I'm not hurling sentences and grafs out into the void just because I can. Also, most major publishing houses have a special email listserv for beta readers and blog reviewers. In a sense, I gotta compete with the Joneses.

Thus, between you and me, would you like an eBook version or paperback of NOTV to read and review on GoodReads (honestly preferred - no need to kiss my ass)? If so, message me here on GoodReads by the end of September. I only have so many copies left of the paperback to dish out, though. And a tiny mailing budget. And I probably can't send any more copies to spots outside the US.

Please keep this offer to GoodReads and I"ll also post it on my private, invite-only subreddit. No Twitter. No Facebook. It's not that I'm embarrassed - it's that I can't really hand out a whole shitload of copies per se. I'll have to start saying no, and that's no fun.

EDITOR'S NOTE - Still have a few copies, so I plugged it on Twitter.