Lincoln Cole's Blog, page 2

December News and Updates

My biggest update is that my newest book project is starting to come together. I'm planning to announce it sometime in early January, and I'm really excited about how it is all coming together.

If you want to find out about the project before the listing goes live on Kickstarter, you can find it on my site.

I've never actually run a kickstarter campaign for one of my books before, so this is something extremely excited I'm interested in trying. I've been working with a class on this, so there will be quite a few of us running these campaigns together.

I'm anticipating it beginning on January 8th and notifications going out to people shortly thereafter, so stay tuned for more updates about what is coming!

I'm also working on finishing The Bishop's Legacy to meet its launch day of January 30th. I'll do my best to get early copies of that book out to my reader team before it goes live! Quick reminder, though, that CRISPR will only have advance copies by supporting the campaign, so if you're going to want an early copy of that book (months early, at that) you're going to have to support the campaign!

Don't worry, though, because there are some other amazing things you can get for your support, including custom artwork, bookmarks, screensavers, and paperback copies!

Apart from that, my next project is going to be finishing up Last Light in the Dark, re-working Graveyard of Empires a little bit, and focusing back on the space opera books I've been neglecting for a while. It's something I really want to work on, so hopefully I can make some progress on those books throughout the middle of 2018.

That is a series I enjoy writing, so it definitely doesn't fit into a recognizable genre or style. I have some huge plans for it, though, and really intend to work hard to get more books out in 2018 and do the series justice.

My next post will include a little bit more of a postmortem about 2017. What went well, what didn't go so well, and the lessons I've learned for enhancing my book launch strategy and career for next year. It was a lot of fun launching the World of Shadows series, and it will only be a short break from that universe before I come back and fill in some of the open sections (including a continuation of Abigail and Haatim's story after Raven's Rise).

Laying out my plans for 2018: A Chance to Try New Things

My biggest update is that my newest book project is starting to come together. I'm planning to announce it sometime in early January, and I'm really excited about how it is all coming together.

If you want to find out about the project before the listing goes live on Kickstarter, you can find it on my site.

I've never actually run a kickstarter campaign for one of my books before, so this is something extremely excited I'm interested in trying. I've been working with a class on this, so there will be quite a few of us running these campaigns together.

I'm anticipating it beginning on January 8th and notifications going out to people shortly thereafter, so stay tuned for more updates about what is coming!

I'm also working on finishing The Bishop's Legacy to meet its launch day of January 30th. I'll do my best to get early copies of that book out to my reader team before it goes live! Quick reminder, though, that CRISPR will only have advance copies by supporting the campaign, so if you're going to want an early copy of that book (months early, at that) you're going to have to support the campaign!

Don't worry, though, because there are some other amazing things you can get for your support, including custom artwork, bookmarks, screensavers, and paperback copies!

Apart from that, my next project is going to be finishing up Last Light in the Dark, re-working Graveyard of Empires a little bit, and focusing back on the space opera books I've been neglecting for a while. It's something I really want to work on, so hopefully I can make some progress on those books throughout the middle of 2018.

That is a series I enjoy writing, so it definitely doesn't fit into a recognizable genre or style. I have some huge plans for it, though, and really intend to work hard to get more books out in 2018 and do the series justice.

My next post will include a little bit more of a postmortem about 2017. What went well, what didn't go so well, and the lessons I've learned for enhancing my book launch strategy and career for next year. It was a lot of fun launching the World of Shadows series, and it will only be a short break from that universe before I come back and fill in some of the open sections (including a continuation of Abigail and Haatim's story after Raven's Rise).

Thrill Me Giveaway

Thrill Me!

Hard to believe the year is almost over...

It's hard to believe it's already December.

It feels like the year only just began and it's already time to buy Christmas presents and start preparing for 2018. I won't be sad to see 2017 go, but it just feels like time really flew by. I launched a couple of new books this year (Raven's Rise, Indie Author Tools, The Everett Exorcism, and The Vatican Children) and I already have a January release lined up for pre-order. Next year I'm going to try a few new things out, but unfortunately I also had some problems to deal with late this year.

Pronoun closing down totally screwed up my plans. I wasn't expecting it and had almost everything wrapped up in their system. I launched my newest series with over 1,000 sales in the first week (my best launch ever) and then got an email telling me all of it was for nothing. It forced me to start over and try to salvage the series, which meant putting it on Kindle Unlimited and offering it for free to rebuild my also-bought lists.

I've officially moved all of my books off of Pronoun and put them back on Amazon. They are in the process of closing their doors for good, but it is nice to be free and clear of them. I offered all of my books for free to hopefully kick start their engines, so we'll see how that goes in the next couple of weeks, but for now I'm just letting it sit on its own and working on new projects.

Goes to show that no matter how well you plan something or how hard you work, it can all be torn down in a matter of hours. Lessons learned, and it's time to try something new.

What is new...?

I was recently accepted into a group of authors that are launching new crowdfunding campaigns for their books. It means that instead of me spending a lot of money out of pocket to launch a book (and possibly getting kicked in the teeth by a company list Pronoun), I can collect money upfront to offset the costs of launching a new book and ease some of the burden.

This will be happening in January of next year, and the new book is one I am incredibly excited about. It revolves around a story idea I've been kicking around for a couple of years now about genetic engineering and Crispr/Cas9. It'll use some of the characters from UAV, but it'll effectively serve as a reboot so you won't need to know that story to enjoy this one.

I don't really have a lot of details to offer for this yet, but just know it is something incredibly important to me and I am really excited about it! I hope you are too! More to come!

Aside from that, I've got another couple of series and books to write, so time for me to get back to work!

November 2017: Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday Sales!

November is coming to a close and it is hard to believe that it is already Thanksgiving. This year really flew by and it feels like everything happened so fast. It's been a wild year, and I've released several new books, including a new series that just came out.

The biggest problem I ran into this year was Pronoun shutting down, something which put a huge damper on all of my plans. I was building up my career to have my books released wide and free myself from Amazon, but this seriously messed all of that up.

The biggest reason was because it meant all of those listings I used to launch my book were useless. Apple Books, Google, and Barnes & Noble don't merge books together, which means that once I lost all of my reviews and traction on those websites it would have been difficult to try and regain it. I could have put the books back out through the platforms or on Draft2Digital, but it simply wasn't worth trying to salvage all of it right now. 

Eventually, I would like to offer the books are more locations, but Amazon Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity, and the the only alternative would be to release on all networks simultaneously. Passing up on Amazon's network to go wide was a huge gamble I took when releasing The Everett Exorcism, and it ended up backfiring to such a huge extreme that I don't think I'm going to be willing to risk going wide again for a while.

I'm sorry for everyone who loves reading on other platforms than Amazon, but considering Barnes & Noble is selling Nook and combined all other networks only make up about 25-30% of the entire market, being in Kindle Unlimited is just a much better way to gain some visibility. If only the other networks would actually offer something to make their services worthwhile, but considering how badly MacMillan just damaged indie authors I only see Amazon's strength growing.

Anyway, right now it's time to just relax, spend some time with family, and enjoy the end of the year.

I'm working on three more books right now with three different strategies: first, I have to finish The Bishop's Legacy and end out the World of Shadows series. It's been fun writing and launching these books, but I'll be glad to be able to turn away from paranormal horror and get a break from it for a while (especially with the Pronoun fiasco and how much that screwed up my launch).

Second, I'll be working on the space opera horror book I've been planning for a long time. This book is going to be run differently through a new Instafreebie beta program, so publishing it is going to be something completely new and different for me. I'm excited to try out something new and it could lead to a new publishing model for me.

Third, I'm planning to write another book to submit to Kindle Scout about modern genetic engineering. I've got some ideas for it, and it would serve as a follow-up to UAV with maybe some of those characters crossing over into it. It's meant to be a fast-paced and fun mystery/thriller, but I'm not completely sure when I'll be able to work on it.

Along with that, I want to finish another Graveyard of Empires novel plus write some more short stories to submit to magazines. So, big plans for 2018 with launching new books and trying new things.

Anyway, on to the sales:

Pretty much everything is going to be free on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Some books are going to be on sale the entire weekend, and others (like Everett and Vatican Children) are only going to be on sale for a couple of days.

Check them out while they are discounted and before they go back up to full price! The free period is meant to sort of play catchup for everything I lost from Pronoun!

Tweet it: The Everett Exorcism is on sale now! Get your copy today of this #horror novel!

Pronoun Shutting Down and How it Affects My Books

Pronoun just announced yesterday evening that they are shutting down their services permanently in a couple of months, and I wanted to let everyone know how this is going to affect distribution of my books.

I was using Pronoun to primarily distribute all of my books, and this closure means that every single book I have, from the anthologies to the new horror series I just launched, will need to be moved from Pronoun to Amazon.

Unfortunately, what it means is that my books won't be available on other platforms (at least for a while) and will be exclusive to Amazon for now. I'm sorry for anyone who already bought a copy on iTunes or Google and will now have to buy the sequel on Amazon, but this certainly wasn't my hope or plan for the books.

The craziest part was that in the last few months Pronoun has been redesigning their system and adding enhancements to it, so this closure is completely out of left field. A lot of people think it has something to do with the company hoping to hurt indie authors, but whether or not that is the case is impossible to tell.

It will change my promotional plans a little bit for The Everett Exorcism and the World of Shadows books series, but the effect will hopefully be minimal beyond changing back to Amazon for distribution.

Thank you all for your support and I'll keep you updated with what comes of this new development!

November 2017: Getting Ready for the End of the Year

Closing down the season...

It's been a pretty huge couple of months for me with the launch of two books at the same time! Both of them were in the same series, and I wanted to make sure that everyone knew I was committed to releasing this series as soon as possible. I'm finishing up the third book now and hoping to get it off to my editor, and I'm working to resolve all of the huge problems that the second book raised for our main characters.

Especially Niccolo.

A little background on why I released books I and II around the same time: I finished writing the first book in May, and I decided to hold off on launching it until I had the second book done and it was the right season for it. I love Halloween, so it felt like the perfect time to schedule a book launch. It turned out, though, that even giving myself a lot of time to prepare, there were still tons of things I wish I had more time to do with the launch itself.

Speaking of Halloween: I went trick or treating twice this year. My niece was so excited that she could barely contain herself (she's three) but after a while she got tired and I ended up carrying her. It was cold this year both times that I went, but it was also a lot of fun. My little sister (she's nine) got a chance to run around with friends, and we ended up getting lost in a housing development and spent over two hours finding our way back out.

Fun times.

I'm starting to plan out what I'll be working on next after I finish writing The Bishop's Legacy. I want to go back to the Graveyard of Empires series and release some more books there. It's one of my favorites, and the first one I ever really worked on. I have a series of three books I want to write that is set in the same universe with new characters and more of a horror feel, and I also want to add at least two new entries to the space opera series I've already started.

I'm also hoping to rework and edit those first two books (GoE and CoW) a little bit better to make them more presentable. It's been awhile since I worked on them, so a refresher will help me work deeper into the series. They are very different from anything else I've ever done, and since I've been fixing up all of my other books and putting more work into making it all cleaner I figured they could use a little love.

However, all of those projects are going to have to wait until I find a little bit more ambition and time to actually work on them. Real life has a habit of getting in the way and now we're right in the middle of holiday season. Time for family and friends, which means not a lot of time for writing.

Anyway, some other unrelated news: I finished watching the first two seasons of Rick and Morty. I love that show now and can't wait to see the next season. I also almost finished both The Mist and Stranger Things II on Netflix. Both of them were really good in completely different ways.

I also have Destiny II now, but I haven't really made it very far in the game. It's a lot of fun, I just don't really have a lot of time to play (especially when I'm trying to write as well). The copy I got was for computer (last time I got console) and it means the graphics are a lot better and using a keyboard and mouse is perfect. The only problem is, the game makes me sick if the lighting isn't right. I got some ginger chews to try out, so hopefully those will help.

I finally got to see Split as well since HBO picked it up. It was exactly what I expected, though a little better than the original trailer made it seem. I'm curious if the crossover will happen in another movie down the line with Bruce Willis or if that will just be a forgotten teaser down the line.

Anyway, that basically covers everything with my books and life right now! Feel free to reach out and let me know if you also enjoyed the new Netflix shows or if you have any recommendations for good television!

The Everett Exorcism and the World of Shadows

The Everett Exorcism

Books I and II are available and out now! The launch week went incredibly well and I sold almost 1,000 copies right off the bat. It will go up to full price in December, so this will be the last month for a while to get it on sale.

Buy Now














Raven's Peak and World on Fire

Raven's Peak

The sale is over and all of these books are back up in price. Around the middle of the month the second and third book will also go to $3.99 but for now you can get them discounted! The good news is that all of the audiobooks are done as well!

Buy Now














Want to see how the launch went?

It went incredibly well, but if you want more nitty-gritty details about it and want to check for yourself then you can view the above post. It goes into more specifics, and if you're curious about launching your own book and want to see how I did it that is where you should go!

I also have tons of other tools and resources for authors to check out!

More stuff to check out!

Haunted by the Devil

Nominate on Kindle Scout and get a free copy of this book if it is picked! 

Nominate














Dragon Lords

Vetravincus: a mercenary who fights for the underdog? A beautiful Mercian swordstress, a half-Thrule tortured for his knowledge of a treasure map, unlikely companions on a savage quest to find fabled treasure, guarded by old gods better left dead...

Book Blog Launch Tour for The Everett Exorcism

2018 Book Signing Schedule

Here is my book signing schedule for 2018, including all of the different places I will be at and which books I'll be bringing to each event.

Check it out on facebook here to show your support!

Tour

I'll keep adding more signings to the tour as they get scheduled. There are already several that have been submitted to in the last couple of days that should hopefully get added here fairly soon.

October 2017: Mega Book Promotions, Sales, and More!

It's finally here! I've been building up to October for basically half of this year for THIS sale week. Most of my books are discounted in the coming days until Halloween! Basically, starting on Tuesday, you'll be able to get just about all of my books on sale marked down quite a bit from their normal price.

I've been prepping and doing everything I can to launch all of these books, so here's hoping it all pays off!

Let's start with the sales...

If you want to browse this page you'll see all of the offerings, including the special pricing on the launch of The Everett Exorcism. You can also get second editions of my other books on discount, and as soon as the sale is over with those books will be heading back up to full price.

  The Everett Exorcism and the World of Shadows 



























 

It's coming out on October 24th, which means it's all coming to fruition! The book is ready, the second book is done, and now it is time to start pushing! I've reached out to tons of bloggers and tons of websites to hit the ground running with this, but I would be super appreciative of anyone sharing on social media!

Tweet it: The Everett Exorcism is on sale now! Get your copy today of this #horror novel!

Raven's Peak and World on Fire 



























 

The entire series is going to be on sale for only 99 cents apiece starting on the 24th and going through the end of the month! If you haven't gotten your copy yet, then there has never been a better time! Get your copy of the entire series during the week before Halloween!

Want to learn what goes into launching a book?

Check out this strategy guide to find out more about exactly how I'm launching this book, including why it is priced at 99 cents, who I'm reaching out to for promotion, and what other plans I'm running to make it a success!

  Dragon Lords

Vetravincus: a mercenary who fights for the underdog? A beautiful Mercian swordstress, a half-Thrule tortured for his knowledge of a treasure map, unlikely companions on a savage quest to find fabled treasure, guarded by old gods better left dead...