Nick Stephenson's Blog, page 5

R.I.P. Elmore Leonard – you will be remembered (without adverbs)

“Elmore passed away this morning at 7:15 AM at home surrounded by his loving family,” announced his official website,elmoreleonard.com. Leonard was aged 87 and was the author of 45 novels, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (based on Leonard’s Rum Punch). But the author dubbed as the “Dickens of Detroit” also had a lot to teach other authors. In my own small way of honouring this great man, here is a copy of his “Ten Rules for Writers”, extracts of which I...

Why Free Book Promotions Still Work – Sort of.

I promised to follow up with a more detailed post regarding my recent free book giveaway – so, here’s the skinny…

On the 30th July I ran a campaign with the fine folks over at Bookbub. I shifted (or, more accurately, they shifted) a little over 60,000 copies of Panic, the first novel in the Leopold Blake series of thrillers, and the title hit the number 1 spot in the US Kindle Store, hovering around the top for five days. A lot of authors have been questioning whether a campaign like this will...

How Amazon Teaches us to be Successful

This week, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, announced he had purchased the Washington Post for $250 million. Of his own cash. The Seattle retail giant has no stake in the purchase, leaving Bezos with a personal investment portfolio that now includes the second most influential news publication in the US (after the New York Times) despite falling circulation and dropping profits.

Why would Mr. Bezos invest? The answer is simple when you consider Bezos’ mantra when it comes to Amazon itself: “The thre...

It’s Been a Mad Week – Book Promotion Results!

It’s going to be a fairly short post this week, but I’ll follow up next time round with a little more detail on all the back-breaking labour I’ve been doing recently (well, the digital equivalent of back-breaking anyway… ass-cheek-numbing?). Following a free promo forPanic, the first book in the Leopold Blake series of Thrillers, the book has returned to the paid charts and is cooking up a storm. In fact, both PanicandDepartedbooks are steaming ahead, and are currently ranked at 4,067 and 4,0...

Let’s Celebrate – Kindle Paperwhite Giveaway Bonanza!

I’m in a thoroughly good mood, so I think I’ll try and spread the joy a little. Earlier this week, Panic, the first novel in the Leopold Blake series of thrillers, hit the #1 spot on the Amazon free charts with around 50,000 downloads in a little over 24 hours – and I’m already starting to see the benefits (more on this in a later post).

As a giant thank you to everyone who’s downloaded the book, dropped in to visit the blog from time to time, left a comment, or in any way paid attention to my...

Hitting the Top Spot: Blood, Sweat, and Tears – Author R.S. Guthrie’s Path to Success

I first noticed R.S. Guthrie’s first novel Blood Land a while back, while researching other authors and their approaches to publishing top-notch work. Like many readers, I must have seen the book half a dozen times before I actually went ahead and downloaded it, having stashed the title in my mental “wish list” to read later. Last week, Blood Land was headline material once more, as Rob hit the much-coveted #1 spot in the Amazon Free Kindle ebooks chart – rocketing his name into the stratosph...

The Authors’ Oath

The publishing world is full of scandal. Whether it’s Ms Rowling’s decision to pretend to be a Royal Military Police ex-serviceman, or Random Penguin’s continual attempts to screw authors out of a decent living through their “self-published division” of Author Solutions, It’s about time we came up with something to give us all a little bit of accountability. Hippocrates seemed like a good enough place to start:

“I swear by Patterson, Rowling, King, and Koontz and I take to witness all the read...

Authors and Publicity – Where to Start?

Book marketing is hard. Like, really hard. In a vast sea of 2 million titles (and that’s just Amazon) how in the name of James Patterson can an author stand out from the crowd? The most obvious answer is to release a shed-load of titles and pray to the publishing gods that fortune will smile upon you – but some people might not find that particularly practical.

Of course you can always pay for advertising spots, but the return on that investment is usually just slightly above breaking even, so...

Triple Whammy

Andy Murray just won Wimbledon, the UK is enjoying its longest ever heat wave (3 days), and I’ve got three exciting new additions hot of the presses and ready to go… all in all, it’s been a weekend of threes – so why not take the time to celebrate? Speaking of which, I’ve got three more bottles of icy-cold Bud in the fridge just waiting for me, so forgive me if I start to slur my typing. Obviously the most exciting news is that I’ve got three new titles out (who’s this Andy Murray guy anyway?...

Being British on the Fourth of July

Happy independence day to all you Bluecoats out there. We forgive you. Now come on back to the fold. We need the extra cash to prop up our free healthcare and lord knows a few extra guns would help us keep the Frenchies at bay. Seriously, I can’t believe we let them build a tunnel all the way across the Channel. Now they think they can drop by just whenever they want – it’s just not cricket, chaps.

In light of celebrating everything that’s red, white, and blue (the USA flag, not the French one...