Alexandra Sokoloff's Blog, page 31

Letting it ride - another free day for Huntress Moon

I decided to leave Huntress Moon up for free today, following some recent advice from Joe Konrath that you should do all five promo days in a row.   Other authors who have had good results with Select promotions say that you shouldn't do more than three days in a row because your rankings will start to drop, but I'm excited to find the book is higher today than yesterday:



#3 in all Free e books

# 1 in Thrillers

# 1 in Suspense Thrillers

# 1 in Police Procedurals

# 2 in Mysteries and Thrillers

# 2 in Genre Fiction

# 3 in Fiction



And that's a LOT of exposure the book is getting, up there with Gillian Flynn,  Karin Slaughter and  Lee Child, exactly the books and authors I want the book to be associated with.  I've already given away 33,000 books. That's a wonderful number of potential readers - even though I know not all those people will actually read the book! But it's thrilling.

I truly want to thank the people who read the book so quickly and have posted reviews already.  The book's five-star rating I'm certain really helped it climb the charts, and I am thrilled that people are responding to the book so exactly as I'd hoped.  (The reviews are also giving me some much appreciated guidance for book two, which I'm in the middle of right now.)

At this point, the promo becomes a little like gambling. Maybe not "like" at all.  Do I let it ride through tomorrow and give away every book I can possibly give?  That would be my inclination. but there's also the chance the book will drop off and not be so high on the paid charts when it goes off free.  There's no yes or no answer, here, it's just hard to know.  There really are so many intangibles, too - for three days Huntress was kind of blocked from several of top spots by a group of romance writers who were doing a huge group promo. Not that Huntress really competes with those books, or vice-versa - personally I would have scrolled right by the group of them for something more to my own genre tastes.  But it was interesting to watch - obviously the pooled resources is an effective promotional strategy.  I may have maneuvered around them by changing one of Huntress's categories mid-stream - I dropped the hard-boiled mystery category  in favor of Suspense Thriller,  and that put me at the top of Thrillers.  It freaked me out to do it, too, because I'm only just learning about categories and how they work in the rankings and I was afraid I'd lose the momentum. But again, I was taking a page from Joe Konrath - who is always saying "Experiment!"  And it seems to have worked.   (Again, I'll do a whole post on Categories soon, but I need to see what happens over the next few days first so I'll have more to report on.)

You can take your book out of Free in the middle of a promotion, by the way, although it may take several hours for the book to go back to paid status.

So that's always good to know.

It's a funny thing, I am cleaning out my house to sell it and oh my God, the BOXES of promo material I have accumulated over the last few years.  Most of it going straight into recycling.  And it really is such a contrast to what promotion is now (wonderful to have everything virtual, for one thing. It completely eliminates the clutter.  At least, the visual clutter; my computer files are not for the faint of heart.

In sorting through all this STUFF, I am reminded in living color of the days that I used to race around the country to launch a book, the bookstore signings (and will I miss those?  HAH!!!!), the frantic drivebys, the blog tours, the mailings, the bookmarks, the conferences. So much running around, and how much did it help, really?  It's unquantifiable, but it feels about a million times less effective than what I'm doing today.

Okay, I'll still go to conferences.  In fact, it's weird and a little sad not to be at Thrillerfest this weekend, even though I know I'm doing much more for my career being right here doing just exactly what I've been doing over the last few days.  And besides, RWA Nationals are in my backyard next week,  and that plus TFest would have been WAY too much partying.  I mean, networking.

But throwing out all the maps and the flyers and the addresses and the tour schedules is being amazingly liberating, a great symbolic gesture that I'm entering a brand new phase of my career.

It feels good.

So, anyone out there have any advice for me on staying in or letting it ride?  Some of you have done a lot more of this than I have!

- Alex

And if you haven't grabbed your copy of Huntress yet, well, I can't promise it will still be free tomorrow... download it here.





Related posts:

Bestseller lists and Tag lists

Liking, Sharing and Tagging 

My e publishing decision 

To Nook or Not to Nook?

Day 2 of Huntress Moon launch and giveaway (Bestseller lists and Tag lists)

Well, how wonderful to wake up to find Huntress Moon on so many Amazon bestseller charts!  Thank you so much for Liking the book and Sharing on your Facebook pages - you are rock stars.



Right now Huntress is





#1 in Hardboiled Mysteries

#2 in Mysteries

#2 in Police Procedurals

#4 in Mystery/Thrillers

#8 in Genre Fiction

#9 in Fiction

#9 in all Free Books  (this list is a little weird to look at because it's the top books in ALL genres, and most of them are cookbooks!  If you knew how funny that was for me... But it's a great place to be, because some people just go directly there to shop.)





And this is where you want to get. Because now I can relax (kind of!) and let Amazon's incredible automatic marketing machine do the work for me (at least for my promo days!). 



If you are unfamiliar with the Amazon bestseller lists, you should click through all the links above and take a look.  The first thing you will notice is that the top free books are listed right next to the top paid bestsellers.  This is the most awesome part of the Kindle Select free promo. If you can make it to those charts (and that's a big IF that we will talk about in subsequent posts) you get this kind of incredible exposure for up to five days in a row (though it's generally advised that you don't do a free promo for more than three days in a row, which I'll talk about).



A lot of people use those charts as one stop shopping for their reading material, just like in bookstores people tend to shop those front table displays of bestsellers. Exact same principle. The MAJOR perk of being a bestselling published author is that your publisher will pay bookstores a great deal of money to make sure that YOUR book is on that front table.  And they don't pay that co-op money for midlist authors, which is what used to ensure that midlist authors stayed on the midlist.



But with an Amazon Select promo, you can get your book on the equivalent of that front table - of the biggest bookstore in the world - for free.  It levels the playing field in an amazing way.



Currently in Mystery/Thrillers, I'm on the Top Ten charts next to incredible bestselling authors like Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, Deborah Harkness, Michael Connelly, Dean Koontz and Gillian Flynn.  My book and my name is being associated with thriller writers of that caliber.



And these charts result in some fantastic random placements.



For example, if you look at the Mystery/Thrillers page (at this moment, it changes hourly!) you'll see Huntress right next to Catherine Coulter's Backfire.  This is a wonderful placement for me because Coulter writes a bestselling FBI series, and... well, look!  There's a new FBI series you can try for FREE right next to Catherine's!  How about that?  I think I'll just click to download that and give it a try! 



When I ran Book of Shadows for free last month, I consistently ended up right on the same lines as Stephen King and Suzanne Collins.  And this month the book is still on several paid Top 100 Bestseller lists next to those same names.  I am being associated with those authors, and my book is being bought (and recommended, and praised, and passed on - because, remember, you have to start with a good book.) 



Do you see how that works?  And this exposure is to hundreds of thousands of avid readers - and moreover is AUTOMATICALLY AND SPECIFICALLY TARGETED to readers in YOUR genre.  The chances of that kind of reader (who is there specifically to buy books to begin with!) at least picking up your book to look at it (in a virtual sense!) are fantastic.



After that, it's up to you - your blurb, your reviews, your first chapter (or first page...)  But the rest of it - Amazon does for you, for free. 



No number of time-intensive blog tours is going to get you even close to that kind of exposure. No way that blogging on your own is going to do it. Your Facebook posts? Well, there's a potential of going viral there, but I'm not convinced it's worth the time that you should be spending WRITING YOUR NEXT BOOK.



Also Amazon doesn't just target to your genre.  It targets to your specific SUBGENRES.



And that's where categories and tags come in.   I'm not going to go into categories yet, I'm still experimenting with my own and compiling information.   But let's just do a little more on tagging, today.



Now, I know some of you really did try the tagging exercise I asked you to do yesterday, because I saw the numbers were up on my tags this morning.  Thank you.   I have just recently understood that tagging a book will move that book higher up on a whole other set of lists, the Tag lists.  You may not even know these exist.  In fact, chances are you didn't tag my book, yesterday, because your eyes were already glazing over with information overload.



So we're going to do this again today, and this time DO IT, because what I explain next about tagging is not going to make any sense to you unless you have a basic familiarity with tags. So again:



Tag the book on the Amazon page



Go back to the Huntress Moon Amazon page
and scroll down, past the book photo, past the reviews, past my photo
and bio, and a bunch of tiny bookcovers to the section that says  Tags associated with this product.  In that section are lists of a bunch of descriptive phrases listed like fbi series, female killers, mystery and detective, police procedural
with little boxes beside them. Click on each one of the little boxes 
next to the key words and phrases you agree with (up to 15 of them) to
identify the book as being about those subjects. . Or you can add tags of
your own in the bigger box below the tags, or as the instructions say,
by pressing the T key twice to get a box, and just entering a string of
phrases like (fbi series, female killers, female serial killer, suspense
thriller, serial killer, mystery and detective, police procedural, hard
boiled mystery, psychological thriller ) etc.  



That moves the book
higher on a list of books about those subjects.  Try this now - click through some of the tags to see the book lists that those tags take you to.



Clicking on Female serial killer  will take you to a top ranked list of books about female serial killers.  Well, look at that!  Huntress Moon is #1!  So anyone who searches for books by tags and is looking for female serial killer novels will find my book first.




If you click FBI series,  Huntress Moon is #4, right at the top of the line.  Fantastic!




If you click beach mystery, Huntress is #1.




Now,  you only get 15 tags for any one book so you must choose wisely, and this can get obsessive.  You have to have SO many tags to show up on the Top 100 tag list for police procedurals, for example, not to mention an overstuffed category like "thrillers", that you may want to use that tag for something more specific where you have a shot at getting better placement on the list. But I would love it if when you click on tags for me, you include "suspense thriller" and "psychological thriller", which will give Huntress a better placement in those very competitive categories.  Remember, tags are not about you RATING the book, they're just about identifying what the subject matter is.




Also, you can go back and change your own tag selections any time you want, so don't worry, there's no pressure here!



We
will have a WHOLE post on tags and how important they are, and you
should definitely do them for your own books, and any other book you
like. But first, go through the above and tag, so that you know how to
do it and will hopefully remember it's important.  




So that's enough for this post, I think - I probably tried to cover too much yesterday!




If you need to catch up, though, here are related posts on e publishing:



Liking, Sharing and Tagging 

My e publishing decision 

To Nook or Not to Nook?




And please, ask questions.




And obviously - Huntress Moon is still free today and tomorrow, if you haven't downloaded your copy yet!




- Alex

Huntress Moon - new FBI thriller out this week!

This week I'm launching my new thriller  HUNTRESS MOON  as an e book: US, UK, and worldwide.



















FBI
Special Agent Matthew Roarke is just closing in on a bust of a major
criminal organization in San Francisco when he witnesses an undercover
member of his team killed right in front of him on a busy street, an
accident Roarke can't believe is coincidental. His suspicions put him on
the trail of a mysterious young woman who appears to have been present
at each scene of a years-long string of "accidents" and murder, and who
may well be that most rare of killers: a female serial.  




Roarke's
hunt for her takes him across three states... while in a small coastal
town, a young father and his five-year old son, both wounded from a
recent divorce, encounter a lost and compelling young woman on the beach
and strike up an unlikely friendship without realizing how deadly she
may be.




As Roarke uncovers the
shocking truth of her background, he realizes she is on a mission of her
own, and must race to capture her before more blood is shed.  





$ 3.99






Amazon

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT





(And that great cover is by the megatalented Rob Gregory Browne!)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I said I was going to get practical here about practical aspects of e publishing and e marketing, and some of my readers have been pretty rabid about wanting me to do a whole e workshop-type thing on e marketing.



So I'm going to take you through some of this today. Unless of course you CAN'T WAIT to read the book, in which case this post will still be here tomorrow!



First, I've already done my Kindle Select free promo to launch the book, which is no longer free but still a deal at $3.99.




But here are the ways that you can help me today in just a few minutes, even without buying the book (although I don't mind if you do!)



And if you're an author, these also happen to be some things that are vital for YOU to understand, print out, file someplace you can always access them, and better yet, memorize - because you're going to have to ask your own friends and readers to do them when YOU do a Kindle Select promotion.  So go through these steps now for me, and you will know and understand what YOU will need to do with your own book.




And if you're a reader, these are also the ways that you can support your favorite authors in just a few seconds and actually in the long run do much more for them than buying their books - because these simple little click-to-share actions create what really makes an author a living:      



Exposure.



I have ALWAYS heard from my mega-bestselling friends about the importance of giving books away, as many as possible, always. What authors need to do to be read is to hook readers.  Come on, you know how it is. You have authors you love and will read anything they put to paper.  I know I do.  The only thing I need to see on a book cover is their name.  I am rabid about my favorite authors, there's no kinder word for it.  So the point for an author of giving books away is to trawl as widely as possible and find those rabid readers, who will then follow you and buy anything you put to paper for the rest of their lives.




Drug dealers know all about this, and always have. You have to HOOK people with freebies to get your regular customers.




And Amazon knows that, or lucked on to it somehow, and figured out a way to trawl unprecedently widely, for free.



But a second reason these Kindle Select free promotions work is that the giveaways can push you up onto the Amazon Bestseller lists. What's important about that is that once you hit the Top 100 in any category, Amazon's incredibly powerful e marketing machine kicks in to promote your book automatically.  When over the next three days Huntress Moon hit that Top 100  in one category after another, a vast number of new readers who browse those bestseller lists had my book right  in front of them, right next to, oh, Stephen King, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Harlan Coben....



Really.   



Only my book was free.  One click and it's yours.  And even if you don't download it,  your incredibly retentive brain will associate my name with Stephen King's, or someone else almost as famous and irresistible.  



And that's the WHOLE POINT of advertising, people. Subliminal association.




Which Amazon has down to a scary kind of science.



And - if enough people download a free book over your couple of days of free promotion, your book might garner enough readers to stick on the PAID bestseller list.  And that's the REAL goal.




It works. The books I've already put in the Select program over the last two months are now up on the Top 100 Paid Amazon bestseller lists right now, next to authors... well, some of which I never even considered human, writing gods like H.P.  Lovecraft and Stephen King, and others I am honored to be in the company of (not to mention I would kill to have their sales) like Dean Koontz.




Do I want my books up there next to THOSE names for tens or hundreds of thousands of potential readers to see, with a one-click BUY link right there?  Do I?  Do you?




So today, and in days and weeks to come,  I will walk you step by step, through some of the most important aspects of a promotional campaign. I am going to talk you through the things that YOU can do as a reader to help promote MY book, so you understand each step and then explain it to YOUR readers when YOU need to promote your book.




I really encourage you to do ALL of the following. Not just because it will help me, which it most definitely will, but because it will make you understand the process that you will need to explain to YOUR friends and followers.




1.  LIKE the book



When you click on this link to download your copy of Huntress Moon , before you click that orange BUY NOW button, please take a second to LIKE the book.  At the top of the page, right under the book title and my name (and right next to the book's 5-star review!) there is a button with a little "thumbs up" icon. Just click on that.  And you're done.



If you're not accustomed to "Liking" you need to get comfortable with it. This is a split-second way to support your favorite authors and friends, and it's good karma to do it as often as possible. Clicking that LIKE is a vote for the author, and believe me, it counts on these big sites: on Facebook it means exposure and on Amazon it means that author instantly moves up on the Recommended lists (which we'll get to).  You really are financially supporting authors if you do that one very little thing whenever you see a LIKE button on an author's page - or Facebook post. Every time I buy a book by a favorite author, or am just doing research and come across one of their books, I LIKE the book. You don't have to buy the book to support the author!  Just click and LIKE them!  After all, you do, don't you?



Now that you've done that, click on the orange BUY NOW button on the right of the page to get your free copy.






2.  Share the book on Facebook



Now go to my Facebook profile page or my public  Facebook page and click "Share" on the post about HUNTRESS MOON. 



You'll see the post on the left side of your screen, with the book cover and everything, and at the bottom of the post you will see blue links that say           Like     .    Comment     .     Share



A comment is always fun, and a Like counts,  but the real juice is when you Share. That means all your Facebook friends who have never heard of me — or who have
heard of me and have been avidly awaiting my next book! — will be able to
see the link to my book on YOUR wall and will hopefully be intrigued enough to download it.




And while you're on my Facebook page, you can be extra good and Like the page itself, by clicking the "thumbs up" button at the top right of the page.  (Are you starting to get the picture? Clicking a Like button for an author, book, or friend is your instant "thumbs up" for that author, book or friend.)



Also note that I've created this FB post in a way that will translate to all the major social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +.  Which means basically that the post is under 140 characters (to fit on Twitter and not annoy the other sites), it contains the link to buy the book (and on most sites will display the book cover and a short part of the book synopsis), and all people have to do is click on the link to go to the Amazon page and read more and potentially download or buy.




And there's a way to get a post like that out to ALL your social networks at the same time with one post, and that's on the social media aggregate Hootsuite.com.  (Don't worry, I'll do a dedicated post on Social Media to discuss things like this, but for those who need to know NOW, go ahead, check Hootsuite out!)





3. Share this blog post



Did you know that you can ALWAYS like and share any of the blog posts I do on this site by clicking the buttons at the bottom of the post?  Really!  



Just scroll down to the bottom of this post. First you'll see:



      Posted by


Alexandra Sokoloff




at
3:42 PM 23 comments:










 








And under that line is a bunch of icons:     M     B     T     G+     Well, you can click on any or all of those icons to Share this post by e mail or to Twitter,  Facebook,  Google +,  etc.   That's how easy it is to support authors. (And if you don't know how to add those icons and links to your own blog, then ask, and we'll talk about it!)












4.  Tweet about the book



Now, if you're truly inspired you can Tweet about Huntress Moon, too.  



First, you can Tweet this blog post (meaning post it to the social media site Twitter.com) by simply clicking the T icon at the bottom of this blog post as I just explained above.



Or experienced Twitterers can do a more dedicated Tweet through your Twitter account, like the ones below - or whatever you want to say:   



New female serial killer thriller by Thriller Award-winner Alexandra Sokoloff, $3.99 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008G14754 #ebook #Kindle #RT  



Or ----



Why do women kill? New female serial killer thriller by Thriller Award-winner Alexandra Sokoloff, $3.99  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008G14754 #ebook #Kindle #RT  



Yes, we will do a dedicated session on social media, including the mysteries of Twitter, but the basic points of the above sample tweets are that they are under 140 characters, and the hashtag (that's #) labels at the end will ensure that the tweets will be fed into the Twitter search engine, where readers and websites who are on the prowl for free books will be able to see then, which creates more exposure and possible click-throughs for the book.  





5. Tag the book on the Amazon page



There's one more thing you can do that will help the book a lot and that you need to be familiar with if you're going to be selling your own books. Go back to the Huntress Moon Amazon page and scroll down, past the book photo, past the reviews, past my photo and bio, and a bunch of tiny bookcovers to the section that says  Tags associated with this product.  In that section are lists of a bunch of descriptive phrases listed like fbi series, female killers, mystery and detective, police procedural with little boxes beside them. Click on each one of the little boxes  next to the key words and phrases you agree with (up to 15 of them) to identify the book as being about those subjects. That moves the book higher on a list of books about those subjects. Or you can add tags of your own in the bigger box below the tags, or as the instructions say, by pressing the T key twice to get a box, and just entering a string of phrases like (fbi series, female killers, female serial killer, suspense thriller, serial killer, mystery and detective, police procedural, hard boiled mystery, psychological thriller ) etc.  



We will have a WHOLE post on tags and how important they are, and you should definitely do them for your own books, and any other book you like. But first, go through the above and tag, so that you know how to do it and will hopefully remember it's important.  



The above things may make no sense to some of you. But if that's the case, I implore you to just go back to # 1 and TRY the steps. The way to learn social media is just to bash your way through the steps. Repetition is the mother of skill. You don't have to Like the book before you've read it, but you can tag the book with appropriate subjects, and you will have learned tagging. You can Share this blog post, or Like my Facebook page.   Try it for the practice and if it still makes no sense to you, then ask lots of questions in the Comments and we'll talk about it! 



There are so many things that we need to cover on the e publishing front and the only way to really assimilate this kind of thing is to practice, and copy what other people do successfully.  In fact, I encourage writers to adopt the practice of Marketing Monday.  No, it doesn't have to be Monday, it's just awesome alliteration.  What it means is that you take ONE day a week and use your allotted writing hours that day to do marketing and promotion instead (which can just mean reading a book or a blog post on marketing!) My career always goes much better if I devote the time to do this.  It will focus you and get you and your books out there in ways that you never would have thought to do otherwise. It will pay off, I promise. 



So please - questions? This is my first attempt at explaining e pub issues, so if things are not clear, it's undoubtedly my fault, not yours.   Tell me what you're dying to know, and we'll talk about it!




- Alex







Related posts:  



To Nook or Not to Nook?



My e publishing decision

Huntress Moon - new FBI thriller FREE this week!

This week I'm launching my new thriller HUNTRESS MOON  as an e book: US, UK, and worldwide.

Which means, inevitably, that I'm taking advantage of Amazon's unparalleled distribution opportunity and giving away the book for FREE for the next three days:



FBI Special Agent Matthew Roarke is just closing in on a bust of a major criminal organization in San Francisco when he witnesses an undercover member of his team killed right in front of him on a busy street, an accident Roarke can't believe is coincidental. His suspicions put him on the trail of a mysterious young woman who appears to have been present at each scene of a years-long string of "accidents" and murder, and who may well be that most rare of killers: a female serial.

Roarke's hunt for her takes him across three states... while in a small coastal town, a young father and his five-year old son, both wounded from a recent divorce, encounter a lost and compelling young woman on the beach and strike up an unlikely friendship without realizing how deadly she may be.

As Roarke uncovers the shocking truth of her background, he realizes she is on a mission of her own, and must race to capture her before more blood is shed.

Click to download your free copy:

Amazon

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT

(And that great cover is by the megatalented Rob Gregory Browne!)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know some of my readers feel badly about snagging my books for free, and believe me, I absolutely love you for wanting to support me as an author. But you shouldn't feel bad about it at all, because by downloading the book you ARE supporting me as an author. This is really how it works for authors to make a living (... today, for now ...)

And that's what today's post is about.

I said I was going to get practical here about practical aspects of e publishing and e marketing, and some of my readers have been pretty rabid about wanting me to do a whole e workshop-type thing on e marketing.

So I'm going to take you through some of this today. Unless of course you CAN'T WAIT to read the book, in which case this post will still be here tomorrow!

The rules of marketing for e publishing change monthly, maybe even weekly.

But here are the ways that you can help me today in just a few minutes without spending a dime.

And if you're an author, these also happen to be some things that are vital for YOU to understand, print out, file someplace you can always access them, and better yet, memorize - because you're going to have to ask your own friends and readers to do them when YOU do a Kindle Select promotion. So go through these steps now for me, and you will know and understand what YOU will need to do with your own book.

And if you're a reader, these are also the ways that you can support your favorite authors in just a few seconds and actually in the long run do much more for them than buying their books - because these simple little click-to-share actions create what really makes an author a living:

Exposure.

I have ALWAYS heard from my mega-bestselling friends about the importance of giving books away, as many as possible, always. What authors need to do to be read is to hook readers. Come on, you know how it is. You have authors you love and will read anything they put to paper. I know I do. The only thing I need to see on a book cover is their name. I am rabid about my favorite authors, there's no kinder word for it. So the point for an author of giving books away is to trawl as widely as possible and find those rabid readers, who will then follow you and buy anything you put to paper for the rest of their lives.

Drug dealers know all about this, and always have. You have to HOOK people with freebies to get your regular customers.

And Amazon knows that, or lucked on to it somehow, and figured out a way to trawl unprecedently widely, for free.

But a second reason these Kindle Select free promotions work is that the giveaways can push you up onto the Amazon Bestseller lists. What's important about that is that once you hit the Top 100 in any category, Amazon's incredibly powerful e marketing machine kicks in to promote your book automatically. When over the next three days Huntress Moon hits that Top 100 in one category after another, a vast number of new readers who browse those bestseller lists will have my book right  in front of them, right next to, oh, Stephen King, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Harlan Coben....

Really.
Only my book will be free. One click and it's yours. And even if you don't download it, your incredibly retentive brain will associate my name with Stephen King's, or someone else almost as famous and irresistible.

And that's the WHOLE POINT of advertising, people. Subliminal association.

Which Amazon has down to a scary kind of science.

And - if enough people download a free book over your couple of days of free promotion, your book might garner enough readers to stick on the PAID bestseller list. And that's the REAL goal.

It works. The books I've already put in the Select program over the last two months are now up on the Top 100 Paid Amazon bestseller lists right now, next to authors... well, some of which I never even considered human, writing gods like H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and others I am honored to be in the company of (not to mention I would kill to have their sales) like Dean Koontz.

Do I want my books up there next to THOSE names for tens or hundreds of thousands of potential readers to see, with a one-click BUY link right there?

Do I?

Do you?

So today, and in days and weeks to come,I will walk you step by step, through some of the most important aspects of a promotional campaign. I am going to talk you through the things that YOU can do as a reader to help promote MY book, so you understand each step and then explain it to YOUR readers when YOU need to promote your book.

I really encourage you to do ALL of the following. Not just because it will help me, which it most definitely will, but because it will make you understand the process that you will need to explain to YOUR friends and followers.

1. LIKE the book

When you click on this link to download your free copy of Huntress Moon, before you click that orange BUY NOW button, please take a second to LIKE the book. At the top of the page, right under the book title and my name (and right next to the book's 5-star review!) there is a button with a little "thumbs up" icon. Just click on that. And you're done.

If you're not accustomed to "Liking" you need to get comfortable with it. This is a split-second way to support your favorite authors and friends, and it's good karma to do it as often as possible. Clicking that LIKE is a vote for the author, and believe me, it counts on these big sites: on Facebook it means exposure and on Amazon it means that author instantly moves up on the Recommended lists (which we'll get to).  You really are financially supporting authors if you do that one very little thing whenever you see a LIKE button on an author's page - or Facebook post. Every time I buy a book by a favorite author, or am just doing research and come across one of their books, I LIKE the book. You don't have to buy the book to support the author!  Just click and LIKE them!  After all, you do, don't you?

Now that you've done that, click on the orange BUY NOW button on the right of the page to get your free copy.

2. Share the book on Facebook

Now go to my Facebook page and click "Share" on the post about HUNTRESS MOON.

You'll see the post on the left side of your screen, with the book cover and everything, and at the bottom of the post you will see blue links that say

Like Comment Share

A comment is always fun, and a Like counts, but the real juice is when you Share. That means all your Facebook friends who have never heard of me — or who have
heard of me and have been avidly awaiting my next book! — will be able to
see the link to my book on YOUR wall and will hopefully be intrigued enough to download it.

And while you're on my Facebook page, you can be extra good and Like the page itself, by clicking the "thumbs up" button at the top right of the page. (Are you starting to get the picture? Clicking a Like button for an author, book, or friend is your instant "thumbs up" for that author, book or friend.)

Also note that I've created this FB post in a way that will translate to all the major social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +.  Which means basically that the post is under 140 characters (to fit on Twitter and not annoy the other sites), it contains the link to buy the book (and on most sites will display the book cover and a short part of the book synopsis), and all people have to do is click on the link to go to the Amazon page and read more and potentially download or buy.

And there's a way to get a post like that out to ALL your social networks at the same time with one post, and that's on the social media aggregate Hootsuite.com.  (Don't worry, I'll do a dedicated post on Social Media to discuss things like this, but for those who need to know NOW, go ahead, check Hootsuite out!)

3. Share this blog post

Did you know that you can ALWAYS like and share any of the blog posts I do on this site by clicking the buttons at the bottom of the post?  Really!  



Just scroll down to the bottom of this post. First you'll see:



      Posted by


Alexandra Sokoloff




at
3:42 PM 23 comments:










 








And under that line is a bunch of icons:     M     B     T     G+     Well, you can click on any or all of those icons to Share this post by e mail or to Twitter,  Facebook,  Google +,  etc.   That's how easy it is to support authors.



(And if you don't know how to add those icons and links to your own blog, then ask, and we'll talk about it!)

4.Tweet about the book

Now, if you're truly inspired you can Tweet about Huntress Moon, too.

First, you can Tweet this blog post (meaning post it to the social media site Twitter.com) by simply clicking the T icon at the bottom of this blog post as I just explained above.

Or experienced Twitterers can do a more dedicated Tweet through your Twitter account, like the ones below - or whatever you want to say:

#FREE New female serial killer thriller by Thriller Award-winner Alexandra Sokoloff http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008G14754 #ebook #Kindle #RT

Or

Why do women kill? #FREE New female serial killer thriller by Thriller Award-winner Alexandra Sokoloff http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008G14754 #ebook #Kindle #RT

Yes, we will do a dedicated session on social media, including the mysteries of Twitter, but the basic points of the above sample tweets are that they are under 140 characters, and the hashtag (that's #) labels at the end will ensure that the tweets will be fed into the Twitter search engine, where readers and websites who are on the prowl for free books will be able to see then, which creates more exposure and possible click-throughs for the book.

5. Tag the book on the Amazon page

There's one more thing you can do that will help the book a lot and that you need to be familiar with if you're going to be selling your own books. Go back to the Huntress Moon Amazon page and scroll down, past the book photo, past the reviews, to my photo and bio, to the section that looks like what I've copied right below this paragraph (Don't click on those links on THIS blog page, do it on the Amazon page!)  Go there now and find the section. Now what you are going to do is exactly what it says - click on each one of the little boxes  that will be on the Amazon page next to the above key words and phrases you agree with (up to 15 of them) to identify the book as being about those subjects. That moves the book higher on a list of books about those subjects. Or you can add tags of your own in the bigger box below the tags, or as the instructions say, by pressing the T key twice to get a box, and just entering a string of phrases like (fbi series, female killers, female serial killer, serial killer, mystery and detective, police procedural, hard boiled myster, suspense thriller) etc. We will have a WHOLE post on tags and how important they are, and you should definitely do them for your own books, and any other book you like. But first, go through the above and tag, so that you know how to do it and will hopefully remember it's important.



Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)


Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.


Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below. 


beach mystery(1)

california mystery(1)

fbi(1)

fbi series(1)

fbi thriller(1)

female killers(1)

female serial killer(1)

mystery and detective(1)

mystery thriller(1)

police procedural(1)

Agree with these tags?

See all 15 tags...


-------------------------------------------------------------

The above five five things may make no sense at all to some of you. If that's the case I IMPLORE you to just go back to #1 and TRY it. The way to learn social media is to bash your way through the steps, just like this. Repetition is the mother of skill. And you are not hurting anyone or anything if you do it wrong!

Try it, and if it still makes no sense, ask your questions in the comments and we'll talk about it.  It really isn't that hard once you get the hang of it; there are a few specific things you have to learn how to do and the only way to learn them is to do the clicking and ask LOTS of questions!  How, why, where, whatever.

There are so many things we need to cover on the e book front, and the only way to really assimilate this kind of thing is to try it.

In fact, I encourage writers to adopt the habit of Marketing Monday (no, it doesn't have to be Monday. What it means is that you take ONE day, Monday makes great alliteration and jump starts your week, but really whatever day, one per week, to spend only on marketing.  My career always goes better when I dedicate the time to do this. Spending just one day, meaning giving up your allotted writing hours for that day to do marketing instead (which can mean just reading books or blog posts on effective marketing!) will focus you and get you and your books out there in ways that you never would have thought to do.

It will pay off, I swear.

So I hope you download and actually read Huntress Moon, but if you're just here to learn how to publish your own book and couldn't care less about mine, it will still benefit you immensely to try the steps above. At least for the immediate future, this is an incredible FREE way to sell books.


So please - questions?  This is my first attempt at explaining some e pub issues, so if things are not clear, it's undoubtedly my fault, not yours. Tell me what you need to know, and we'll talk about it!

- Alex


---------------------------------------------------------------------



Related posts: 


I know I'll get some flak for going exclusive with Amazon, even if it's just for the next three months (you wouldn't believe some of the hate mail I've gotten on this issue). I explain why I did it here:

To Nook or Not to Nook?

And you'll see there I do have several of my books available on Nook, actually for less than I sell them on Amazon.

My e publishing decision.




>

My e publishing decision

I'm sure those of you who follow this blog have noticed more and more e book posts creeping in alongside the craft ones. Not that this is new in principle; I'm always very much about being practical about craft. I think writing is a marvelous hobby, everyone can benefit from doing it, and I strongly believejustwriting is just fine. But if you are going to go through the agony of writing an entire book, a real, finished book, don't you want at least the possibility of getting it out there in the market, for others to read and experience and for you to make money for your labor?

So I am introducing more blogs about publishing and e book issues.  Partly because it's astonishing to me how many writers and aspiring writers still have so many misconceptions about e publishing - and there is a LOT of misinformation out there. (As my last workshop class knows, I was outraged enough about this to teach an impromptu e publishing seminar in the middle of our writing intensive last week!)

The fact is, a very large number of the authors I know who started out in publishing at about the same time I did (2007) have made the leap and are now e publishing directly - either exclusively so or in conjunction with traditional publishing contracts. My friends and wonderful authors Blake Crouch, Brett Battles, Rob Gregory Browne, CJ Lyons, Elle Lothlorien, Zoe Sharp and JD Rhoades are just a few who are doing VERY well with e publishing. Friends who started even earlier are doing even better (Scott Nicholson, Diane Chamberlain, Sarah Shaber and of course Joe Konrath, whose Newbie's Guide to Publishing is a must-read.). In a few short years, e publishing has filled retirement funds for older writers and elevated midlist authors to bestselling - or rock star! - status.

And now that I have several of my traditionally published backlist titles up as e books and the sales numbers are coming in, it's clear to me that at least THIS YEAR, e publishing is the right choice for me.

How do I know this? Well, one of the amazing things about e publishing, for those of us who are used to the cryptic and essentially useless sales reports that we get quarterly - maybe - from our traditional publishers - is that now we can see exactly how many copies of each book we're selling and exactly how much money we're making per month. This is a VASTLY easier way to ensure that you're making a real living, and it takes huge amounts of anxiety out of the process.  Plus you get paid every month, instead of when your publisher gets around to it, which is a vastly easier way to keep up with the bills, if you see what I'm saying.

E publishing has made making a practical living a much more realistic proposition for authors who are not (yet) bestsellers in traditional publishing. I don't know how long that will realistically last, whether it will get better or worse, but by now, for now, it's unignorable.

So this month I will publish my new thriller, HUNTRESS MOON, directly as an e book.

(This great cover is by the megatalented Rob Gregory Browne!)

Lots of thought and agonizing went into this decision.

First, I know that some people who have not yet succumbed to the rapture of e readers still want to hold and touch and smell their print books and get peanut butter on them and all that. I feel you. I have a real pang about this as well. But it's not a very realistic pang.

The book is the book, whether there's a paper cover on it or not. And I can publish it this month and get it into the hands of thirty thousand readers in a week (Based on my numbers for Book of Shadows, The Harrowing, and The Price.)  Even if I never sold ONE book after that, that exposure alone would be worth it. Because exposure sells my other books.

But based on the numbers I've compiled with my other books,  I will sell thousands, and very quickly.

If I went through traditional channels, the book wouldn't even hit the shelves until a year and a half from now. How can I possibly think of giving up the tens of thousands of readers I will be able to reach with this book starting NOW?

Plus, I'm already almost halfway through my first draft of the sequel to HUNTRESS MOON (this is a series, my first-ever!).  I'll be able to publish that one in the fall. No longer do authors have to hold to the glacial timetables of their publishers, or worry about the possibility of the publisher deciding not to publish at all (which has happened to several of my friends, recently).

I can have two books out this year, with a guaranteed income. What that income will ultimately be, well, I don't know, but traditional advances are way down and, much worse than that, most publishers are demanding e rights in perpetuity in traditional contracts, which seems to me an insane thing for authors to give up in the current climate. That alone pushed me in the e publishing direction.

Please hear me. I am NOT saying this is the way to go for a never-been-published author. Be warned: it is not the Gold Rush that it was back in, oh, January - there's a lot of competition out there. I - and the other authors I listed above - know the benefits and drawbacks of traditional publishing because we've lived it; there's no Holy Grail mystique about it. To me the choice between the (waning) prestige of having a print book in stores and having an army of dedicated readers is a no-brainer. Someone who doesn't have several years of actual sales numbers to compare and crunch is not going to be able to make the same kind of decision that I am doing, it would be much more of a leap of faith. That doesn't mean don't do it, it just means it's riskier.

Also, going through the gauntlet of traditional publishing prepares an author to e publish like bootcamp prepares a soldier for war. I KNOW how much editing it takes to come up with a clean and readable book.  I KNOW how much time I'll be spending marketing, and I have some idea of how and where to do that.

But even if you haven't had the benefit of that kind of trial by fire, you do need to know that there is an opportunity here that was never available to an author before, and that - is nothing but good news.

Now is the time. Things may change within months. But I'm not excessively worried about the current system collapsing, because no matter what happens out there; I can still write books. Or scripts. I've always figured out how to make a living with writing. And I've been doing the figuring once again, and this is how I can do it right, right now.

So first, I want to hear e publishing stories, and of course questions.  Are you doing it? Thinking about it? If you're not, what's holding you back?

And second - I'm giving away 50 copies of HUNTRESS MOON for potential reviews (Amazon reviews are what I need the most, but am glad for any, anywhere!). You DO NOT have to review the book - I just ask that you be open to posting a short review if you are inspired to do so.

e mail me at  alex AT alexandrasokoloff DOT com for a copy in whatever format.

Here's the story!






HUNTRESS MOON


FBI Special Agent Matthew Roarke is closing in on a bust of a major criminal organization in San Francisco when he witnesses an undercover member of his team killed right in front of him on a busy street, an accident Roarke can’t believe is coincidental. His suspicions put him on the trail of a mysterious young woman he glimpsed on the sidewalk behind his agent, who appears to have been present at each scene of a years-long string of “accidents” and murders, and who may well be that most rare of killers: a female serial.

   

Roarke’s hunt for her takes him across three states... while in a small coastal town, a young father and his five-year old son, both wounded from a recent divorce, encounter a lost and compelling young woman on the beach and strike up an unlikely friendship without realizing how deadly she may be.


As Roarke uncovers the shocking truth of her background, he realizes she is on a mission of her own, and must race to capture her before more blood is shed.


----------------------------------------

I am not launching the book officially until July 11, but it's up in online stores starting today so that I can collect some reviews.

E mail me at alex AT alexandrasokoloff DOT com for a copy in whatever format.

But if you just feel like reading, or want to support me and this site, of course you can buy a copy! $3.99 on Amazon, $2.99 on Nook

Amazon

Nook (will be available later today)

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT


A note to Nook readers - Huntress Moon will only be available for Nook for the next two weeks, after which it will be exclusive on Amazon for the next three months at least. I'm truly sorry to have to do it that way, but it's unavoidable (read more on that here.)

Thanks for reading!

- Alex

Perfect words to create suspense (or anything else!)

I always ask readers of this blog who privately e mail me questions to post the questions in the comments section and I'll answer them here, in public.  (Or if you don't want to be identified, I'm happy to post the question myself without using your name, and then answer it.)

This may be annoying or possibly enraging to some of you.

But here's the thing. I have this unalterable belief that if anyone is getting anything out of my workbooks, workshops and blog, it's because I was a dance teacher - and theater director - for so many years.

Any dance teacher I ever had was ALWAYS saying - "If I talk to any person in this class the rest of you should assume I'm talking to YOU, and DO IT."

That makes total sense to me as a teaching/learning method. Because who couldn't benefit from paying attention to the teacher/choreographer/director's corrections and doing that extra bit of polish?

So I got a question from a reader and writer this week about how I am able to use "perfect words" in my novels to create suspense and scares and atmosphere, and I wanted to answer it on the blog, for everyone who wants to to learn and discuss.

For me, there are three issues going on here and they are symbiotically entwined: the visual, the emotional, and the thematic. The words only work if they are conveying ALL THREE.

What I really encourage everyone here to do is to start thinking like a production designer.


In film (and theater) every movie has a production designer: one artist (and these people are genius level, let me tell you) who is responsible, in consultation with the director and with the help of usually a whole army of production artists) for the entire look of the film – every color, costume, prop, set choice. A production designer designs the look, but with acute understanding of how the visual can convey an emotional and thematic impact.

With a book, guess who’s the production designer?

You are.

Take the Alien series. I could go on all week about what a perfect movie the first Alien is structurally as well, but for the purposes of this blog - it’s a perfect example of brilliant production design. The visual image systems are staggering. Take a look at those sets (created by Swiss surrealist HR Giger). What do you see? Sexual imagery everywhere. Insect imagery, a classic for horror movies. Machine imagery. Anatomical imagery: the spaceships have very human-looking spines (vertebrae and all),intestinal-looking piping, vulvic doors. And the gorgeous perversity of the design is that the look of the film combines the sexual and the insectoid, the anatomical with the mechanical, throws in some reptilian, serpentine, sea-monsterish under-the-sea-effects – to create a hellish vision that is as much a character in the film as any of the character characters.

Oh, and did I mention the labyrinth imagery? Yes, my great favorite: you’ve got a monster in a maze.

Those are very specific choices and combinations. The sexual imagery and water imagery open us up on a subconscious level and make us vulnerable to the horrors of insects, machines and death. The combination imagery also gives us a clear visual picture of a future world in which machines and humans have evolved together into a new species. It’s unique, gorgeous, and powerfully effective.


Obviously Terminator (the first) is a brilliant use of machine/insect imagery as well. And sex, right? Let's not forget that Arnold, in his prime, landed on earth completely naked.

I know I’ve just about worked these examples to death, but nobody does image systems better than Thomas Harris. Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon are serial killer novels, but Harris elevates that overworked genre to art, in no small part due to his image systems.

In Silence, Harris borrows heavily from myth and especially fairy tales. You’ve got the labyrinth/ Minotaur. You’ve got a monster in a cage, a troll holding a girl in a pit (and that girl is a princess, remember: her mother is American royalty, a senator). You’ve got a twist on the “lowly peasant boy rescues the princess with the help of supernatural allies” fairy tale: Clarice is the lowly peasant who enlists the help of (one might also say apprentices to) Lecter’s wizardlike perceptions to rescue the princess. You have another twisted wizard in his cave who is trying to turn himself into a woman.

You have the insect imagery here as
well, with the moths, the spiders and mice in the storage unit, and the
entomologists with their insect collections in the museum, the theme of change, larva to butterfly.

In Red Dragon Harris works the animal imagery to powerful effect. The killer is not a mere man, he’s a beast. When he’s born he’s compared to a bat because of his cleft palate. He kills on a moon cycle, like a werewolf. He uses his grandmother’s false teeth, like a vampire. And let’s not forget: he’s trying to turn into a dragon.

Now, a lot of authors will just throw in random scary images. How boring and meaningless! What makes what Harris does so effective is that he has an intricate, but extremely specific and limited image system going in his books. And he combines fantastical visual and thematic imagery with very realistic and accurate police procedure.

I know, all of these examples are horror, sorry, it’s my thing - but look at The Wizard of Oz (just the brilliant contrast of the black and white world of Kansas and the Technicolor world of Oz says volumes). Look at what Barbara Kingsolver does in Prodigal Summer, where images of fecundity and the, well, prodigiousness of nature overflow off the pages, revealing characters and conflicts and themes. Look at what Robert Towne/Roman Polanski do with water in Chinatown and also, try watching that movie sometime with Oedipus in mind… the very specific parallels will blow you away.

So how do you create a visual/thematic image system equivalent to what I'm talking about in film and theater - in your books?

Well, start by becoming more conscious of what image systems authors are working with in books and films that you love. Some readers/writers don’t care at all about visual image systems. That’s fine – whatever floats your boat. Me, with rare exceptions, I’ll toss a book within twenty pages if I don’t think the author knows what s/he’s doing visually.

What I do when I start a project, along with outlining, is to keep a list of thematic words (in my project notebook!) that convey what my story is about, to me. For my ghost story (or maybe not!) The Harrowing it was words like: Creation, chaos, abyss, fire, forsaken, shattered, shattering, portal, door, gateway, vessel, empty, void, rage, fury, cast off, forgotten, abandoned, alone, rejected, neglected, shards, discarded… I did pages and pages of words like that.

For The Price : bargain, price, deal, winter, ice, buried, dormant, resurrection, apple, temptation, tree, garden, labyrinth, Sleeping Beauty, castle, queen, princess, prince, king, wish, grant, deal, contract, task, hell, purgatory, descent, mirror, spiral…

Some words I’ll have from the very
beginning because they’re part of my own thematic DNA. But as the word lists
grow, so does my understanding of the inherent themes of each particular story.

Do you see how that might start to
work? Not only do you get a sense of how the story and specifc setting can look to convey your themes, but you also have a growing list of meaningful words that you can work with in your prose so that you’re constantly hitting those themes on different levels.

When I do short workshops, this is my absolute favorite quickie exercise to make a big group do:

Brainstorm for just two or three minutes on thematic words for your story.
People get SO EXCITED about this - I have had people stand up in a workshop and shout - "I know how he killed her! and "I just figured out my final scene!" after just two minutes of this brainstorming. You are seriously missing out if you don't just TRY it.

At the same time that I’m doing my
word lists, I start a collage book, and try to spend some time every week
flipping through magazines and pulling photos that resonate with my story. I
find Vogue, the Italian fashion mags, Vanity Fair Premiere, Rolling Stone and of course, National Geographic, particularly good for me. I tape those photos together in a blank artists’ sketchbook (I use tape so I can move the photos around when I feel like it. If you’re more – well, if you’re neater than I am, you can also use plastic sleeves in a three-ring binder). Other people do collages on their computers with Photoshop. I am not one of those people, myself, it's too much work.

However, I do have a new obsession with the social media site Pinterest, where you can create boards and use the Pinterest button to build a visual image system for every one of your works-in-progress.  It's instant online collaging and I LOVE IT.


See what I mean here: http://pinterest.com/axsokoloff/

I'm in the process of creating image boards for every one of my books, past and current. It’s another way of growing an image system. And it doesn’t feel like writing so you think you’re getting away with something.


Also, I know I'm constantly going on about this, but know your world myths and
fairy tales! Why make up your own backstory and characters when you can tap
into universally powerful archetypes? Remember, there’s no new story under the
sun, so being conscious of your antecedents can help you bring out the
archetypal power of the characters and themes you’re working with.


So of course you know my question for the day. What are some books and films which to you have particularly striking visual and thematic image systems? What are some of your favorite images to work with?

And - are you on Pinterest? Are you as obsessed as I am?
- Alex
=========================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)

- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

To Nook or not to Nook...

Okay, the Nookers have guilted me into putting some of my newly re-acquired backlist up for THEM. So at least for the next few weeks, here you go:



For Nook: $2.99
On Amazon:  $3.99

Five troubled college students left alone on their isolated campus over the long Thanksgiving break confront their own demons and a mysterious presence... that may or may not be real.

Bram Stoker & Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel.

"Poltergeist meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an ancient evil entity. Plenty of sexual tension... fast pace and engaging plot."

     -- Kirkus Reviews



For Nook:  $2.99
Amazon:    $2.99

A Boston District Attorney suspects his wife has made a terrible bargain with a mysterious hospital counselor to save the life of their dying child.

"Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre."

      -- The New York Times Book Review




For Nook:  $2.99
Amazon: $2.99

Two psychology professors and two exceptionally gifted students move into an abandoned Southern mansion to duplicate a controversial poltergeist experiment - unaware that the entire original research team ended up insane... or dead.

Based on the real life, world-famous parapsychology experiments conducted at Duke University by Dr. J.B. Rhine.

"Sokoloff keeps her story enticingly ambiguous, never clarifying until the climax whether the unfolding weirdness might be the result of the investigators' psychic sensitivities or the mischievous handiwork of a human villain." -- Publisher's Weekly


I have to say this Nook thing is a bit of an experiment.

One of the amazing things about e publishing is the sheer control authors now have over pricing and venues, and the infinite flexibility of choices we enjoy (or dread, depending on your point of view!). We can change the prices of our books literally overnight, and play with where we choose to make our books available, to determine what is the most profitable for us.

And when I say profitable, what I'm really talking about is exposure.

There's an ongoing and vehement debate about the effectiveness of e publishing for Nook. The big problem is that Amazon is so incredibly effective at marketing that enrolling in the Kindle Select program, which makes your book exclusive to Amazon for three-month periods at a time, has been for some time now more profitable for authors than making books available on multiple platforms (including Nook).

The two reasons for this are:

1) The ability in the Kindle Select program to promote your book for free for five days of those three months, an incredible marketing spike, and -

2) Any book enrolled in Kindle Select is made available in Amazon's Lending Library, and authors are paid a certain amount per borrow (about $1.70 for a $2.99 book, but it fluctuates.)

So the math that authors are being forced to do is - "Can I reach more readers and make more money with Nook sales or with borrows from the Amazon Lending Library?"

And the answer seems to be - "It depends on the book."

Thus my experiment this month, because I really don't know. My goal is to have the most people read my books as I can reach, and I'll choose whichever path is getting my books to the most readers. And the only way to find that out is just to try.

So I'm trying, and I'll report back on how all this goes.

Authors never used to have to think about this, by the way. Our publishers did all of this - or DIDN'T do it, as often seemed the case! - and we had no control or input whatsoever over or into the various strategies.

Now it's up to us to research, analyze, experiment, and go with the best strategy for whatever our goal is in publishing.

It's a lot of control, and a lot of responsibility.

And a lot of authors I know are freezing up at the sheer overwhelm of the increased demands, and not jumping in to this brave but chaotic new world.

I'm trying not to freeze up, even though it really is kind of annoying, alternating with terrifying, to have to make business decisions like this instead of just concentrating on the free-form creativity that writing is. I really HOPE that having my books up on B&N for Nook will prove viable; I hate the idea that anyone with an e reader would not be able to instantly download any one of my books any time they wanted one. After all, instant gratification is the very essence of e reading, isn't it? It sure the hell is for me.

But if my goal is the most readers I can get...

Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?

The fact is, with e publishing, we GET all of those numbers. And the numbers are very telling, and they don't always tell what we want to hear.

So how about you all? Authors, what are you finding on the Kindle Select vs. multi-platform question?  Is Nook paying off for you, or are you sticking to Select? Anyone trying Kobo's new program?

And readers - how many of you actually ARE Nook readers? If you are, are you supporting the Nook platform by buying a lot of Nook books? Are you aware of how agonizing a decision this is for authors?

Any insights greatly appreciated!

- Alex

Practicing story

I'm teaching this week, the one really intensive workshop I do all year, at the West Texas A&M Writers Academy.



Usually when I do a workshop it's a day-long interactive lecture  that I give to a large class - sixty to several hundred people - in which I review the Three-Act, Eight Sequence Structure and other general film writing techniques that are invaluable for authors, and then start with Act I and go through all the story elements I talk about here and in the workbooks, one sequence at a time.



Which is a great overview, and I answer a lot of individual questions and use lots of examples, but it's by necessity a very general class.



At the Writers Academy,  the class size is limited to fifteen people and we can go through everyone's stories one sequence at a time.  I love being able to be hands-on (at least, for a limited time!)  and it's really remarkable to see writers at very different levels and at very different points in the writing process pull their ideas into coherent, complete and exciting story outlines in just five days. 



At first you can see some people in the class are so focused on their own stories that they don't pay any attention to the other writers as they talk about their stories - they just scribble notes on their own stories until it's their turn to talk.  But by the third day or so it's starting to sink in that listening to OTHER people's stories, and brainstorming to solve SOMEONE ELSE'S story problem, is actually helping them become better writers.  And you can see the lightbulbs go on - that it doesn't matter that other people in the class are writing in different genres - that story structure applies across the board, and comparing stories in different genres actually gives you a better understanding of your own genre.



I hope that the class shows people that to get good at telling stories you have to actively practice story structure, spitballing story problems, comparing story solutions.  I hope it shows people that you have to fall in love with - not just writing, but STORY.



There's something about creativity that craves company, and feeds off the creativity of others.  I know I get exponentially more writing done when I get together with my own writing group, The Weymouth Seven. I would meet with them every week, if we all actually lived in the same state. But even though we don't, we still make time and travel to meet up with each other for a week at a time, two or three times a year.



It seems to me that it's so worth the time to create and sustain a critique group.  That's not an easy thing to do, I understand. Especially when you're a new writer, a bad critique group can do a lot more harm than good.  But if you can find a group of dedicated people who have enough control over their own egos and insecurities to commit to creating the kind of atmosphere that encourages creativity, it can bring everyone's writing to a far higher level.



How about you guys?  Good or bad experiences with critique groups?  If you have one that works, how do you run it?  Do you have a moderator, or do you use a particular writing method?



And if you don't have a critique group, how do YOU practice story?



- Alex



=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.



- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)



- Kindle



- Barnes &Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)









- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)



- Amazon/Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amazon DE



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Two books a year?

Okay, I'm sure a lot of you have read this NYT article by now, which tells us that the minimum output of books per year for a professional author is now two. Per year.  Double what people are used to thinking.



In the E Reader Age, a Book a Year is Slacking 



And the article links this new phenomenon to the e book revolution.



Well, I would strongly disagree.  MOST of the authors I know who make a good living at just writing books have been writing AT LEAST, at the VERY least,  two books a year for longer than I've been in the author business.  There are very few I know who can afford the leisurely pace of a book per year.



It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved from screenwriting to the author business in 2006. Successful writers write a LOT of books.  Tons.  Staggering numbers. Plus stories and any number of other things. (I felt like a total slacker until I realized if I had been writing books instead of screenplays for the last 11 years I would have those kinds of numbers, too.)



Of course, there's a catch that we all have to be wary of.  How long does it take to write a GOOD book?  When are you starting to risk, well, dreck?



I wanted to think and talk about that today.



From the beginning of my (still quite short, really) author career, one of the questions I have gotten most often at book
signings and panels is, “How long does it take you to write a book?”



My feeling is what’s always being asked is not how long it takes me to
write a book, but how long it would take the person asking to write a
book. Which of course, I have no way of answering, unless it’s to cut
to the chase and shout, “Save yourself! Don’t do it!” But that’s
never the question, so I don’t say it.



What I started out
answering instead was, “About nine months.” Which, from Chapter One to
copyedits, used to be true enough. But I'm getting faster. And the paranormals I write take more like two months. And of course with e publishing, the whole process of publishing has changed, and the time frame has changed, too.



I wrote three and a half books last year.  One YA thriller, THE SPACE BETWEEN, one non-fiction writing workbook, WRITING LOVE, one paranormal, TWIST OF FATE (coming out in 2013) and half of my latest crime thriller, HUNTRESS MOON, which will be out in July.  (And technically I also outlined another paranormal, KEEPER OF THE SHADOWS, which will also be out in 2013.  Outlining is writing, too!).



So that's a lot of books.  How long did it take me to write any one of those?  It's really hard to say when those projects are constantly overlapping.



But the fact is, in almost every case, the real answer to the question of "How long?"  is almost
always: “Decades.”



Because honestly, where do you
even start? I’m quite convinced I’m a professional writer today
because my mother made me write a page a day from the time I could
actually hold a pencil. At first a page was a sentence, and then a
paragraph, and then a real page, but it was writing. Every day. It
was an incredibly valuable lesson, which taught me a fundamental truth
about writing: it didn’t have to be good, it just had to get written.
Now I make myself write however many pages every day. And now, like
then, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get written. Some
days it’s good, some days it’s crap, but if you write every day, there
are eventually enough good days to make a book.



Then
there were all those years of theater, from writing and performing plays
in my best friend’s garage, to school and community theater, to
majoring in theater in college, to performing with an ensemble company
after college. Acting, dancing, choreography, directing – that was all
essential training for writing.



And then the reading.
Again, like probably every writer on the planet, from the time I
could hold a book. The constant, constant reading. Book after book
– and film after film, too, and play after play – until the
fundamentals of storytelling were permanently engraved in some template
in my head.



Hey, you may be saying, that’s TRAINING. That wasn’t the question. How long does it take to WRITE A BOOK?



I
still maintain, it takes decades. I think books emerge in layers.
The process is a lot like a grain of sand slipping inside a clamshell
that creates an irritation that causes the clam to secrete that
substance, nacre, that covers the grain, one layer at a time, until
eventually a pearl forms. (Actually it’s far more common that some
parasite or organic substance, even tissue of the clam’s own body, is
the irritant, which is an even better analogy if you ask me, ideas as
parasites…)



Let's take a look at Book of Shadows, the thriller I've just gotten back from my publisher and put out myself as an e book this week.  (Free through Kindle Select today and tomorrow.)



When did I start Book of Shadows?
Well, technically in the fall of 2008, I guess. But really, the seed
was planted long ago, when I was a child growing up in Berkeley. (The Berkeley thing pretty much explains why I write supernatural to begin with, but
that’s another post.) Those of you who have visited this town know
that Telegraph Avenue, the famous drag ending at the U.C. campus,
is a gauntlet of fortune tellers (as well as clothing and craft
vendors and political activists and, well, drug dealers.).



Having daily exposure to Tarot readers and
psychics and palm readers as one of my very first memories has been
influential to my writing in ways I never realized until I started
seeing similarities in Book of Shadows and my paranormal The Shifters, and discovered I could trace the visuals and some of
those scenes back to those walks on Telegraph Ave.



Without mentioning an actual number, I can tell you, that’s a lot of years for a book to be in the making.



Over the years, that initial grain of sand picked up more and more layers. Book of Shadows
is about a Boston homicide detective who reluctantly teams up with a
beautiful, enigmatic practicing witch from Salem to solve what looks
like a Satanic murder. Well, back in sixth grade, like a lot of sixth
graders I got hooked on the Salem witch trials, and that fascination
extended to an interest in the real-life modern practice of witchcraft,
which if you live in California – Berkeley, San Francisco, L.A. –is
thriving, and has nothing at all to do with the devil or black magic.
Hanging out at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (more Tarot readers!), I
became acquainted with a lot of practicing witches, and have been
privileged to attend ceremonies. So basically I’ve been doing research
for this book since before I was in high school.



And my
early love of film noir, and the darkest thrillers of Hitchcock,
especially Notorious, started a thirst in me for stories with dark
romantic plots that pit the extremes of male and female behavior against
each other; it's one of my personal themes. Book of Shadows
is not my first story to pit a very psychic, very irrational woman
against a very rational, very logic-driven man; I love the dynamics –
and explosive sexual chemistry - of that polarity.



So
to completely switch analogies on everyone, this book has been on the
back burner, picking up ingredients for a long, long time.



Now,
what pulls all those ideas and layers and ingredients into a storyline
that takes precedence over all the other random storylines cooking on
all those hundreds of back burners in my head (because that’s about how
many there are, at any given time), is a little more mysterious. Or
maybe it’s not. Maybe storylines leap into the forefront of your
imagination mostly because your agent or editor or a producer or
executive or director comes up with an opportunity for a paycheck or a
gentle reminder that you need to be thinking of the next book or script
if you ever want a paycheck again. I know that’s a powerful motivator
for me.



But the reason a professional writer is able to
perform relatively on demand like that is that we have all those
stories cooking on all those back burners. All the time. For years
and years, or decades and decades. And if a book takes nine months,
or six months, or a year to write, that’s only because a whole lot of
stuff about it has been cooking for a very, very, very long time.



A long time.



So
writers, how long does it take YOU to write a book? Or your latest?
How many stories do you figure you have on the back burner at any one
time?



And readers, do you ever notice certain themes –
or recurring scenes or visuals - in your favorite authors’ books that
make you suspect that story seed was planted long ago?



- Alex









My spooky (and maybe - but maybe not! - supernatural) crime thriller Book of Shadows is free on Kindle today and tomorrow.



Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT

Giving it away: Book of Shadows, free this week

My spooky (and maybe - but maybe not! - supernatural) crime thriller Book of Shadows is free on Kindle today through Friday.


Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Amazon FR
Amazon ES
Amazon IT


I know, I know. People must be wondering by now how authors can possibly make a living if we're always giving books away.

The fact is, giveaways are always part of the marketing process of a book. Drug dealers have known since the beginning of - drug dealing - that you need to give a little something away at first to get your potential customers hooked. But once they're hooked, the money just rolls in, a regular income stream.

It's exactly the same way with books, which are after all just another form of addiction. Come on, you know it's true.

Wouldn't you pay full price right now for the newest book by one of your favorite authors? I know I would. Mo Hayder, Tana French, Nikki French, Lee Child, Mr. King... I'd pay extra to get any one of them NOW.

Well, that's what these giveaways are about. A big giveaway is a great way to hook new readers on one of your books, and like good addicts, those readers will then buy all your other books, and you build your readership.

Now, a lot of people who read this blog have already read most or all of my books, and I am eternally grateful! I love that these Kindle giveaways let me reward those faithful readers by letting them stock their Kindles with free e versions of books they already have, but want to have in their e library.

But there are other people who come here just for writing advice, but who might actually be tempted by the giveaway to maybe see all of this advice I'm always giving in ACTION, and discover that I'm actually a pretty gripping thriller writer. And support me as an author without having to lay out even a dime, just by clicking on one of the links and downloading a free book.

Well, I hope so, anyway!

And there are lots and lots of other people out there that these powerhouse Kindle Select giveaways can reach. You can argue against Amazon any way you like, but there is NO OTHER WAY an author can possibly reach 20,000 or more potential new readers in two or three days - for free. It's impossible not to do it.

(But if you're a Nook reader and pissed off about the constant Amazon giveaways, e mail me, Alex AT alexandrasokoloff DOT com and I'll get you the book in e pub format. I'm not trying to leave anyone out, it's just the reality of the system as it is now.)

Book of Shadows was actually my favorite book that I've ever written - until I finished my last one, of course. But I hope if you haven't read it, you'll give it a try.

So how about others of you? Are you reaping the benefits of the giveaways?

Want to talk about it?

- Alex
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Book of Shadows

Homicide detective Adam Garrett is already a rising star in the Boston police department when he and his cynical partner catch a horrifying case that could make their careers: the ritualistic murder of a wealthy college girl that appears to have Satanic elements.

The partners make a quick arrest when all evidence points to another student, a troubled musician in a Goth band who was either dating or stalking the murdered girl. But Garrett's case is turned upside down when beautiful, mysterious Tanith Cabarrus, a practicing witch from nearby Salem, walks into the homicide bureau and insists that the real perpetrator is still at large. Tanith claims to have had psychic visions
that the killer has ritually sacrificed other teenagers in his attempts to summon a powerful, ancient demon.

All Garrett's beliefs about the nature of reality will be tested as he is forced to team up with a woman he is fiercely attracted to but cannot trust, in a race to uncover a psychotic killer before he strikes again.


Click to download your free copy:





Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT



Read the first two chapters


"A wonderfully dark thriller with amazing is-it-isn't-it suspense all the way to the end. Highly recommended." - Lee Child

"Sokoloff successfully melds a classic murder-mystery/whodunit with supernatural occult undertones." - Library Journal

"Compelling, frightening and exceptionally well-written, Book of Shadows is destined to become another hit for acclaimed horror and suspense writer Sokoloff. The incredibly tense plot and mysterious characters will keep readers up late at night, jumping at every sound, and turning the pages until they've devoured the book." - Romantic Times Book Reviews