K. R. Hill's Blog, page 7

Promo Status

Dude on my new Writer's Digest.I have found out that sitting and staring at the Amazon sales report page, constantly checking sites where I could advertise, makes me crazy.

While the promos were going on I rescued a 10 year-old surfer cat, raised in Huntington Harbor, named Dude. Every time I enter the hall this cat, a twenty pound manx without a tail, slips and slides on the hard wood floor, and runs for his life as though I might eat him. Dude, I have noticed, is also cross eyed, and has an extra toe on each paw. Without a doubt, he is quite the dude.

Anyway, the promos!  Now my ad on goodreads has been viewed by more than 1,000 people without one sorry click. I stop to cry. But be of good cheer. The book giveaway has kicked in and there has been movement on the site. Seventy-six people have registered for a free book. Is the Artic ice melting?

Update: There is an excellent article on Digital Book Today outlining the steps required to maximize your sales using the KDP giveaway days. World Literary Cafe adds more insight with their bit about the subject. I am going to try their system next week on Wednesday, and will certainly post the results. The last time I tried the KDP giveaway 10k copies of my first suspense novel went out in two days. It was quite exciting. Alas, yes! I want to see that result for copies sold!

If any reader has tips to ad or to help with the KDP giveaway, please let me know. This blog is for you. Kevin.

Here I choose to hold my tongue (fingers) about the distance from hand to wallet being the greatest anywhere.

Beyond that, 26 people have added my book to their 'to read' list on goodreads. Bless their souls. I wouldn't want them to do anything bold like rush out and actually buy a copy.  But that is okay. I knew what the site was about, and accept it.

It is my belief that if the book is well written, makes readers sad to finish it, then it will grow in sales due to word of mouth. I shall see.

Now I wait to see what will happen with the Free Kindle Books and Tips ad out on Oct. 18, where I will be dropping the price from $3.99 to $1.99. The cost for the ad was $25.

Tell me Why the hell not

Had a great day away from the writing. While driving home with the fiance I wondered, 'Why can't I place a gold star on the cover of my book, in which it says something like: The best adventure novel of the year?  Please tell me.

I remember on the cover of Bridges of Madison County, it said something like: "A librarian said this is the best first novel she has read." Well who was she? Did she actually exist? Or, was the author simply placing the idea of the book's quality into the potential reader's mind?

In James Scott Bell's book about ebook marketing he mentions an author of ebooks who was disgraced for paying for reviews. THE AUTHOR SOLD MORE THAN A MILLION COPIES!! I'll bet he is so sad on his island.

In the digital marketing class I took the instructor mentioned repeatedly to be bold, think outside the box.

If I write something like that on my cover am I violating some ethical writing law?  Or, is it good marketing?

Book Promos #3

This is a rushed update that I will come back to later today when I have time and edit.

The ad I paid $50 for on Goodreads, which is a mega site with mega traffic, turned out to be a dud. You are charged $.50 per click. Their stats show an average of 1 click per 50 views. Really? To date, I have had over 400 views with zero clicks. It is enough to make me insecure. I have rethought my cover, title, and blurb. I have rewritten the blurb 6-8 times, searching for the magic one.

The Kboards ad was a dud as well. I sold three books from the two Kboards ads and the awesomegang ad. Those cost me $75. Three books sold.

The one ad that did something was a $50 ad from Bargain Booksy. As soon as that ad went live I saw the reaction on Amazon. It did not sell crazy wildly, but 10 copies went out in that one day.

The next one scheduled to kick in is the goodreads giveaway. It is free, and members register to win a free hard copy. They say an average of 600 members sign up for a giveaway. We shall see if the numbers are skewed. It begins on the 14th, Wednesday.

 Cheers. I will post more later today.

Kevin r. Hill

Ebook promos follow up

My first promos came from Kboards and the awesomegang. I thought surely I'd get a good response, but alas, I sold three books. Yes, at $.99! Ouch. That is not much return on investment. I thought I'd sell 30-40 books.

Well, the Kboards new book promo cost $15, and the awesomegang was $10.

My goal is to sell one hundred books. I consider that a foundation. From there the book has to produce its own sales via word of mouth, or it will die. If it is good it will rise and sell.

So, where do I go from here? On October 8th I'll be a featured author on Kboards. This promo cost $50.

On October 9th my book will be featured on Bargain Booksy. Again, this promo cost $50.  I expect a good response from these two sites. They both register a high volume of traffic. I will see.

Another important step I have taken is to produce hard copy editions on CreateSpace, and make them available to the public on Goodreads. (I remembered the Writer's Digest article about getting in good with goodreads.)

 Not only have I organized a book giveaway through the site, but I also paid for a graphic ad.  According to GR, on average 600 readers register for their giveaways. I placed 10 autographed books in the giveaway, and I will both purchase the copies from CreateSpace, and pay for the shipping to the winners. The ad cost $50.

The goodreads ad begins October 8th, while the giveaway begins on the 14th, and runs for one month.

I have a couple other promos in the works, but I'm going to end this here as one segment. That way I'll be able to keep all appraised of the results.

Now all I can do is wait. 

My Ebook Promotion Route

  

http://amzn.to/1FIVtdm

This photo was taken when I lived in Yucatan. That is where I set my new novel, Touching Spirits. I didn't know what I had then, spear fishing daily for meat, fish swimming around me, moray eels trying to steal my bag of fish. It was adventure, raw, life cracked open.

Flash forward many years. I spent three years writing this novel and don't want it simply fade away as my time in Yucatan did. Yes, it is on Kindle, but I need to prime the pump to let people know about it. If no one has heard any thing about it, no one will buy it. After all, John Grisham took a load of his his book and hit the road on his own. Wayne Dyer did the same.

The route I took was slightly different: I chose digital marketing. I selected several book sites to promote on, and am now waiting (while blogging, tweeting, posting). Since it is a new book, and I'm still a new comer, despite having several books out, many sites won't allow my business. I have to have a certain number of positive reviews. So I searched.

A site called kboards dot com has a discovery program for new authors. It cost only $15, and I'll be listed in their blog post on October 2, at 4pm, Pacific time. What a deal.

The following days, October 3 and 4, my book will be listed on a site called awesomegang dot com. That cost me a mere $10.

I also booked days on Bargain Booksy and Digital Books Today . Bargain Booksy cost me $50 for one day, but they are a large site with a lot of traffic, so I wanted to try them and see what type of response I would get. The latter, Digital Books Today, was a bargain. I paid $30 for 14 days' exposure. Talk about value.  For both of these promo's I raise the price to $1.99 for the book.

I should also mention goodreads.com. In a few days I will have hard copies available for sale, and will be offering a book giveaway on goodreads, most likely 10 free books.

I will be monitoring the results of each promo and will keep readers informed. I hope this will help other writers. Kevin R. Hill

Republished on Amazon Kindle

http://amzn.to/1KN2z1eI originally published my new action book in June. But one of my readers mentioned some changes to make it stronger, so I pulled it and rewrote, and it should be live on Amazon Kindle by tomorrow, the 24th of September.

I really struggled with whether or not to use a pen name because three years ago 10,000 copies of my first suspense book went out with horizontal text. Ouch. They were free, but nonetheless the damage was done.

But I decided to put my name on this book since I am proud of it. I worked for three years on it and had it professionally formatted, not to mention three beta readers having filtered it. I did everything possible to ensure a quality product.

I hope readers enjoy it.

Touching Spirits--Blurb for new book.

    This book took three years to write.I set it in a Mayan village I lived in. Notice the candle in the photo needs viagra. That was Yucatan in the summer. It was the time of my life, spear fishing for meat. The experience was priceless. 


                       Book Blurb for Touching Spirits.
     I'll be publishing under the pen name Charles Madrid.
     Every cop straddles the chasm between love and violence. At some point each must decide where they stand.      Police Sergeant Cody Brannon, the one American on the Amsterdam force, is stunned when something unseen grabs his arm each night. To make matters worse, he finds men stalking him along dark streets. It’s almost too much to cope with when his wife leaves him.     After a shooting Cody is forced to take a medical leave. He has to find out what grabs him at night, and flies to California to get answers from the family oracle, his freaky grandmother. Soon the men tracking him arrive and Cody must lead them away from the old woman he loves.      He finds a house with a palm leaf roof, a frog residing in the toilet tank, and waits for the men hunting him. In this village beside the Caribbean, strange Mayas follow him and sit outside his house at night.      With the department shrink guiding him via Skype, a stray cat bringing love into his life, along with the beautiful Clarissa, and oddball neighbors offering friendship, Cody begins to see a new path. When the men stalking him close in it is Cody’s time to choose where to stand.

Climbing the Rough Writing Trail

A childhood friend's suicide changed my life. I don't know if I would have traveled if he did not leave. But either way, there was something balled up inside me. 

For years I wandered Europe, hitch hiked North to South, harvested apples and hay. My soul sang for joy as I stood on a Paris on ramp, waving at drivers. I ran a bar in Israel and traveled atop supply trucks through Africa. The world was my playground.
All the while there was something caged inside me that wanted out. Since fifth grade, when a story I was writing jumped off the page and danced around me, I had to be a writer.

During my gypsy days I sold some travel articles to newspapers and wrote two bad novels and hundreds of stories. I didn't know my wandering was my path to being a writer. Through practice and reading I was learning the craft and tempering it with experience.

The novel is a fascinating, complex art form. I took classes, attended conferences, read like a fiend, practiced without end. And after years of work I am a beginner.

When Kindle came along I made tremendous mistakes. In one weekend 10,000 people downloaded a suspense novel of mine, only to find vertical text. It was a painful experience.

Now here I am. I have spent more than three years writing a new novel. Touching Spirits is about to be released on Kindle. I paid to have it professionally formatted, filtered it through three Beta readers (a process invaluable!), but I can't help but wonder if my name is tainted because of the previous blunder.

For that reason I am considering the pen name Charles Madrid. The result of years of study and practice is about to be on display. If I have created a book that readers will be sad to finish, a book that sits on a shelf and makes them nostalgic when they pass and see it, then I have gone beyond the formula novel.

Time and experience have tempered that caged beast. Whatever richness or wisdom travel brought to my writing, I consider it a gift from my friend. That's how I choose to remember a friend.

RIP Dr. Wayne Dyer

I want to post a quick note about the passing of Wayne Dyer, a great teacher and seeker of wisdom. His first book, Your Erroneous Zones, was published as a 'dove.' That meant that the publisher would spend little to no money on promotions. But Wayne took a trunk full of copies and hit the promotions trail, and didn't stop until he pushed all the way to the bestseller's list, and on to the Dick Cavett show. 

His teachings greatly affected me and because of them I live the life I do. I simply say thank you, Wayne.

Please leave a note regarding Dr. Dyer.  Thank You.

PYRAMID STYLE NOVEL REVISION

Hot Spring Bliss!Lately I've been afloat in what seemed a vast sea (hot spring, actually) of a novel rewrite.  I've been reading Gabriela Pereira's article The Great Revision Pyramid, in the September issue of Writer's Digest, and using her system. It has changed the way I rewrite and edit a novel.

I have found it very helpful and will certainly use it from now on. I enjoy how I am able to pop from one section to another, following a thread of plot, to sharpen and hone that aspect of the whole. Let me explain.

Using Ms. Pereira's system, I divided the novel into sections. Every time Brisker, a character, is present, for example, I have a sticky on the manuscript page. I have done that for all characters, and for all plot threads or aspects, so that I can pick one and follow it from beginning to end.

I used to get bogged down and lose track of the plot points because so much was going on. This system makes it easier to follow and sharpen and develop. Once again, Writer's Digest has come to my aid with the professional assistance I need. I write for up to twelve hours a day and keep their magazine beside me, with a sticky marking the article I am using that day. They have helped me develop my craft.

To writers seasoned and beginners alike I say utilize Writer's Digest as a tool. It is one of the best investments I have made in my writing career.