C. Hoyt Caldwell's Blog, page 4

Why there’s a woman’s ass on my book cover

Why I’m so cheeky

Believe it or not I’m not completely comfortable with a nearly naked woman’s ass on the cover of Bad Way Out.  It was not my first choice.  Initially I went with the same text and graphics against an all black background, but I became concerned that some Amazon customers might buy it and immediately return it once they got to the bawdy language and backwoods descriptions of sex organs.

I felt that a shapely rear end clad in cut-off short shorts on the cover would be fair enough warning that the story within is not for prim and proper readers with delicate sensibilities.  Just because I’m an unsophisticated lout doesn’t mean I’m not sensitive to those who see the world differently than me.  I don’t want to corrupt anyone.  I just want to entertain them.

Final Bad Way Out downloads up 5007%

Downloads up, up, up!

Yesterday I was in the midst of two-day free giveaway of my book Bad Way Out. Compared to my previous two-day giveaway the increase in downloads had already jumped up 3000%. The final numbers are in, and my final increase topped out at just a fraction under 5007%. I went from 87 downloads to 4,443. That doesn’t include international downloads. They were up as well but just not as dramatically. My best ranking in the free Kindle store for the day was #73. This morning I’ve recorded a total of four sales. I didn’t expect an immediate impact from the giveaway. It just ended. People need time to read it and fall in love with it before I’m raking in the dough.

I saw an increase in blog traffic as the result of the giveaway, too. I take that as a positive sign. People are at least taking the time to see what kind of idiot I actually am. A majority of the traffic came from my Amazon author page. Some of it came from one of the ads I placed.

Speaking of ads, I promised I would let you know where I placed them, and give my opinion on their effectiveness.

Free

Free eBook Downloads on Facebook – Yes, it is free. The administrator that runs the group is a wonderful person and provides an invaluable service to authors like me. I woke up the first day of the giveaway sitting at 47 downloads. Shortly thereafter it was posted on Free eBook Downloads and immediately jumped up to the 350 downloads. I can’t recommend this group enough.

For pay that worked

FreeBooksy – I purchased their Feature Plus ad for $100, and I was extremely impressed with their customer service. They asked for the most detail on the book, and they wanted to know odd stuff about me. I’m not sure why they wanted to know my favorite food, but if it helps me get the word out about my book, I’m game.
Dailyfreebooks.com – I paid to be their daily featured book for two days. Total cost was $34. I received notice from a reader they did indeed see my ad on the top of the front page of their website. They have a lot of promotional opportunities, and they are all extremely inexpensive. Their prices are so low it doesn’t really hurt to try.

For pay that didn’t work

Reddit Self-Service Advertising – I paid $40 to run an ad for two days and 58 people clicked on the ad. They have some fairly strict rules on the ads, and it tied my hands to the point that my ad was ineffectual. I would not recommend them.

So in total I spent a meager $174, and I’m extremely happy with the campaign. I will be even happier if I get reviews and sales out of it. I will keep you posted on that front.

Thanks to everyone that downloaded the book. A bigger thanks to everyone who has written a review for it. I’m extremely grateful.

Bad Way Out Downloads up nearly 3000%

Things are looking up!

I am pleased.  Bad Way Out has been available for free on Kindle since yesterday.  The free promotion will end at 11:59 PM Pacific time tonight. I also did two free days of Bad Way Out in the Kindle store at the end of last month.  The two brief promotional periods could not be more different as far as number of downloads.  Here are the numbers with approximately 13 hours left to go on the current promotional period.

March 30 & 31 – 87 Downloads
April 7 & 8 – 2640 Downloads

Fifty Shades of Grey has nothing to worry about, but you can see why I’m pleased.  The number of downloads this time around increased a little over 30 times compared to last time around.  Why?  I did some advertising on Kindle specific sites and Facebook groups.  I’ll give specifics after the current promotional period is over in case you’re an author or you know an author who might find the information valuable.

Will these free downloads generate any sales?  That is out of my hands.  I can make people aware of Bad Way Out, but I can’t make them like it.  I’m told that a massive number of people liking a book leads to much better sales. It is true I can pay for more advertising outside of the promotional period, but that will only get an unknown author so far unless I have an enormous advertising budget.  I do not.  Word of mouth is the only way I can hope to increase my sales numbers and pay the Wi-Fi bill.

I am encouraged and humbled by the positive reviews that the giveaway strategy has generated.  As of this writing, there are seven reviews, and I am much too modest to tell you how great they all think the book is.  To those who have commented about looking for another book by me, I am working on a few.  I’ll be talking about those over the next weeks and months. 

In the meantime, tell your friends, followers, and family about Bad Way Out.  It’s free until 11:59 Pacific time tonight (2:59 AM Eastern time tomorrow).  After that, it will be available for $1.99 on Kindle.  That price may go up in the future, but since no one knows who I am, I’m keeping the price low for now.  I should also mention that the paperback is available on Amazon for $8.99.  If I feel there’s a demand, I’ll even do some signed copy giveaways, but I’m not near there yet. 

Thanks for all your support and keep reading!

On being obscene

We the obscene

I am, it seems, obscene.  All the evidence is there.  One needs to look no further than the cover of my book, Bad Way Out, to be thoroughly offended.  A shirtless woman from the rear carrying a whiskey bottle wearing a miniature pair of daisy dukes is not exactly the ideal feminist image.  The book itself contains violence and homespun depictions of sex organs, both male and female.  There’s clear evidence of arousal throughout.  People get stabbed and shot and beaten.

And that only scratches the surface.  The humor is not sophisticated, not purposely anyway.  With zero restraint, I manage to make fun of southerners, females, males, religion, authority figures, the obese, the skinny, the young, the old… Let’s just say everybody to save some time.  In short, if a group finds something sacred, I probably make fun of it.

Here’s the thing.  I find horrible things and people interesting and worth writing about.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like heroes just as much as the next guy.  I just like my heroes to be as flawed as the villain.  Obscenity is simply my tool to illustrate the beautiful horribleness in us all.  Perfection is a virus that wipes out any semblance of character.  Obscenity, in its natural, unforced form, gives depth to character.  We don’t care about someone who’s always trying to do the right thing.  We care about someone who’s trying to do the noble thing, and nobility, more often than not, is ugly and obscene. 

Murder is obscene.  I don’t think anyone would argue with that.  Yet some may call my character E.R. Percy a hero even though he commits murder.  Why?  Because he murders for noble reasons.  And, he has the added benefit of being a fictional character.  We afford fictional characters a lot more room to behave badly and still be forgiven than we do real people as we should.

So I don’t mind being labeled obscene when it comes to my writing.  I am.  Never gratuitously, but I certainly won’t miss an opportunity to write something obscene if the situation calls for it.  It’s not only my way of illustrating nobility, it’s pretty damn fun. 

I made Bad Way Out free on Kindle and here’s what happened

For those of you who don’t know, Kindle Direct Publishing allows authors to make their books available for free for five days every 90 days if you are a part of their Kindle Select program.  While giving books away for free doesn’t sound like a great deal for authors, it actually can be a terrific promotional strategy.  Some authors have used the giveaway program as part of their overall marketing plan and have managed to sell thousands of books as a result.

Before I share my results with you let me make one thing very clear, no one has any idea who I am.  In the world of publishing, I’m as well-known as a flea living on a cat’s ass.  You will not see me on Good Morning America or the Today show chatting it up with George or Matt about my latest release.  I have friends and family, but they don’t even know I wrote this book.  Why? To protect them from all the sex, violence, and drugs in Bad Way Out.  The folks I know aren’t exactly internet savvy, so as long as I keep things online they won’t have reason to shun and shame me.

I’m currently in my second 90 day cycle.  I published Bad Way Out at the end of December.  That’s important to keep in my mind because that means I’ve made the book available for free a total of seven days, and I still have three days left to make it available for free in the current 90 day cycle. I had zero sales before I made the book available for free, and no reviews.  Other than Facebook, I did zero promotions for the book.  It’s not the best way to sell a book, but I’m learning as I go.

During those seven free days, Bad Way Out was downloaded 451 times.  I managed to sell a total of 18 books along the way, and I’ve collected five reviews in the process.  BTW – These are US numbers only.  The foreign numbers are more than I expected, but not enough to brag about.

Am I pleased?  I’m as pleased as an impoverished writer can be.  My book is one book out of millions to choose from.  It would be a bit unrealistic of me to expect to sell enough to retire on right out of the gate.  Of the numbers listed above, I am absolutely thrilled with the five reviews.  I’m hoping those five people will tell a couple of friends who will pony up the $1.99 to read it on their Kindles or if they prefer paperback, it’s available for a meager $8.99 on Amazon.  If enough people tell enough people, I’ll tell George and Matt you said ‘hey.’

Many thanks to everyone who downloaded, read, and reviewed the book.  Now tell everyone you know to do the same!

Bad Way Out is free on Kindle

Free on Kindle today and tomorrow

I’m making Bad Way Out free again on Kindle today and tomorrow (March 30-31).  Last go around I got some promising reviews.  I’m told this is how to build a readership and spread the word.  Check it out.  You can’t beat free. 

I’ll admit the genre question has held me back a little.  More than a few readers have called it literary fiction and that’s what I listed it as on Amazon, but when I wrote it, I was just going for laughs and wows.  I’m really not smart enough to write anything that’s considered literary.  They story is full of rednecks, moonshine, sex, and drugs.  They say write what you know, right?

Is it okay to get excited about good reviews?

This is probably terribly unprofessional, but I can’t help but express my giddiness over a good review on Amazon.  I’m sure Hemingway and Steinbeck would think it terribly gauche to draw attention to one’s own reviews, but I just can’t help myself.  I made  Bad Way Out available for free last weekend and it was a strategy that seems to have paid off.  I received two reviews today (4 star and 5 star).  In an industry where success is measured in the tens of thousands, it may be silly to get excited about two reviews, but it is what it is.  I’m excited damn it.  Here’s the 5 star review:

This has to be hands down, the best e-book ( out of thousands) that I have down loaded. I read it all in one setting and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was well written with a kind of sarcastic twisted sense of humor that I get, not laugh out loud but groan, did he actually say that type humor. It is written in a deep hill country twang but not so much that it is a caricature of “hillbilly” but more of a “good old boy” style. Yes there is rough justice, swearing and references to sex or sexual body parts in graphic terms but nothing you would not see on TV granted it would be after 9 PM or on cable. I will definitely look for more of this author’s writing.

This may mean so much to me because I was told by an industry veteran that this book would be a tough sell because there’s no clear genre.  This was after he read it and claimed to have enjoyed it.  I have no reason to doubt him because he’s told me when something I’ve written hasn’t worked in the past.

So a major thanks to the reviewers.  May you succeed in everything you do, including, but not limited to spreading the word about Bad Way Out!

My South is broken

I am what’s known as a liberal shithead in my American South.  I detest mixing God and Jesus with my politics and government.  I assume if you own an assault weapon you’re either a repressed douchebag who’s dealing with some really dark shit, or you’re compensating for a baby-sized pecker.  If you’ve got a problem with gays getting married, you’re an un-American asshole.  And finally, if you’re fighting for smaller taxes on the top 2% of Americans while bitching about providing healthcare for 100% of Americans, you’re priorities are fucked.

These are the things I believe, and these are the things that make me an alien in my American South.  There are a small percentage of Southerners that think like me, but we’re all relegated to sharing eye-roll emoticons and secret acronyms in emails and text messages because the people we scorn are heavily armed and diluted enough to believe they’re doing God’s work by shutting us up.

My American South is rapidly regressing into a Bible-thumping dystopia that will result in more and more instances of open aggression towards those who think outside of the red state party line.  We are caricatures of the fiery independent thinkers we were once thought to be.  It’s time to kick the teabagger cranks out of our American South and be progressive, free-thinking Southerners.

We’re broken but we can fix this.  Let’s all just put down the guns and Bibles, and be a kinder, smarter South.

I’m C. Hoyt Caldwell, and I’m a proud liberal-shithead-Southern-American.

When is erotica not erotica?

Okay, I’m relatively new to the erotica game.  If you asked me last year what I write, I would have told you trashy southern thrillers, but I’ve had more than a few readers tell me that I actually write erotica, albeit unconventional erotica.  My stories contain crass and unsavory behavior, inappropriate and foul language, bad and offensive grammar, subtle and bawdy humor, and yes, dirty, dirty sex.

What I don’t write is romantic erotica.  I have nothing against that type of erotica.  I just don’t have the talent to pull it off.  I usually approach sex with an in-your-face style that slaps you around like a stripper motorboating a sucker with a handful of singles.

So, my question to the five or so people who’ve visited this blog so far is what is erotica?   I don’t want to avoid the label if it applies, but I don’t want to mislead fans of erotica that may have no interest in the type of sexually charged stories I write.  On the other hand, I want readers offended by stories with graphic sexual content to have some inkling that my stories do contain heavy doses of graphic sexual content, although the sex is not the primary component of my books.  It’s simply a tool to help develop and define character.

What is a trashy southern novelist to do?

A blurb! A blurb! My kingdom for a blurb!

The blurb.  Is there anything so coveted yet so tainted in the publishing industry?  Those short, magical testimonials written by professionals and industry stalwarts and strategically placed on a book’s cover and Amazon’s detail page are the Viagra of the publishing industry.  They are sure to spice up your sales and pump up your ego.  And if your ego should remain inflated for more than four yours, the rest of the world can go fuck themselves because you got a goddamn blurb for your book.

Never mind that the blurb came from someone who probably didn’t read your book from cover to cover.  And forget the fact that the glowing blurb you got came with an unwritten contract that you will one day return the favor with an even more glowing blurb for their book that you won’t read cover to cover.  And above all, never mention that the person who provided you a blurb is a friend doing you a favor because that may suggest the praise is just a byproduct of your friendship.

Blurbs are sinister and vile and utterly glorious.  I would kill a cute bunny rabbit to have a back cover full of blurbs from people with more gravitas than I can ever hope to have.  And that, my friends, is the problem with blurbs.  Every author detests having to pursue them, but craves them like a hot piece of ass.

This video about the king of blurbs, Gary Shteyngart, is an interesting look at the world of blurbs, and the authors who love/hate them.