Val Tobin's Blog, page 17
September 29, 2017
You Can Win Without Cheating FFS
Most self-publishers will agree: it’s getting tougher out there.
If you are in KU, then you’re pretty much dependent on one income stream and if Amazon sales dip or you run afoul of the Hall of Spinning Knives for whatever reason then you are totally boned. And it’s getting so competitive in KU that it seems to take more titles and quicker releases, along with multi-pronged marketing campaigns – which can be complex and/or expensive – to get any real traction or stickiness.
If you’re not in KU, hitting the charts on Amazon is increasingly difficult and holding on to position is near-impossible – especially when your book is being leapfrogged every hour by thousands of borrow-boosted KU salmon running all that mad marketing. And you can’t even advertise to the same level because they are getting reads on top of those sales to make ROI easier.
Getting visible at…
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September 24, 2017
Michael Hyatt Has Something To Sell You
Michael Hyatt has successfully reinvented himself as an author and speaker – one of those quasi-experts on marketing who slowly morph into a life-coach type guru. It’s a well-trodden path and these guys all tend to present themselves in similar ways.
Here’s Michael Hyatt reclining among soft furnishings. Here’s Michael Hyatt enjoying a tender moment with his dog. Here’s Michael Hyatt projecting success with a shiteating grin for the ages. It’s almost easy to forget what he did. Almost.
In 2009 when Michael Hyatt was CEO of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, he was instrumental in the creation of WestBow Press – one of the first white-label vanity presses operated by Author Solutions on behalf of an established publisher.
The Naming
The shadiness began right from the start, with the choice of name. WestBow was already an established fiction imprint at Thomas Nelson, with titles still in print and stocked in…
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August 30, 2017
This Self-Publishing Course Is Free… And Great Too
When I heard someone was giving away a self-publishing course, I was a little skeptical, presuming it was either some kind of bait-and-switch or an opportunity for some hardcore upselling.
But I was wrong.
Iain Rob Wright has done something pretty amazing. He has created a pretty damn comprehensive course on self-publishing and marketing – over 50 hours of HD Video – and he has made it all free. Not the first bit free. Not free for a limited time. Not free if you also buy this, or agreed to be assailed by that.
Just free.
Iain had originally planned to charge quite a lot of money for it, but the idea didn’t sit right with him and just before launching he made the decision to make the whole thing free. The course is called Self-Publishing Mastery and you can enroll here.
You are probably skeptical. And you…
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August 29, 2017
A dark date with destiny…
For a man who doesn’t scare easily I woke up quite afraid this morning. I had a dream you see, not a nightmare but a dream and it frightened the livin’ Bejesus out of me for a number of reasons. I warn you now; you should only stay with me, if you are not of a nervous disposition.
Now usually, dreams are odd and at the best of times they can be hard to remember. Some people say they rarely dream or they just don’t remember them. I remember them all. Perhaps it’s because I’m a light sleeper. I’ve always remembered my dreams and they have always been vivid and filled with colour. Nightmares haunted me as a child but I learned to wake myself from the worst of them. These days I rarely have nightmares.
My mother was a dreamer too. I loved my Ma but she frightened the…
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August 23, 2017
Why I’ll Never Run Another Goodreads Giveaway Again … Probably … Maybe
I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, so I’m emerging from my blogging peek-a-boo and publishing an actual post.
I could have just as easily titled it “That Time Winners Made Money off My Book but I Didn’t.”
I’m referring to winners of book giveaways who immediately sell the book on Amazon (or some other venue) without reading it first or leaving a review, which, although not required to win, is certainly the hope. Why enter a book giveaway if you’re not interested in the novel?
Of course, not all winners leave reviews. Maybe they never got around to reading the book. Maybe they didn’t like it and want to spare the author a bad review. No problem. Expecting everyone to review the book is unrealistic. I net about a 30% review response from giveaways, and from what I’ve read that tends to be the norm.
Hmm, that…
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August 19, 2017
Today 17 Years Ago I Took My Life
A moving and inspiring post.
Today 17 years ago I took my life.
I had been depressed for years.
I had been abused for years.
I had given up the struggle months and months before to try to remain….to try to remain in my life…my hurt…my desperation…my pain.
Many times I had tried to end my life and many times I had failed. I always thought of my children and I would put the knife down, I would bring back up the pills, I would steer the car back on the road. I sucked even at that.
I could not even end my pain.
I was so alone.
The few attempts I made early on to reach out to people to let them know about my pain ended in them telling me how their pain was worse.
Worse? How could anything be worse than this?
I shut down. No one wanted…
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August 13, 2017
The Only Rule Amazon Truly Cares About
An important read for all indie authors considering KS.
On Monday, I found out that some bug hit a German e-book site causing the reactivation of long-dead listings, including one of mine, putting myself and some other authors in breach of KDP Select’s exclusivity rule.
Amazon pounced into action and cancelled my Countdown deal which was scheduled for this week, screwing up a carefully planned promotion. And despite pledging to resolve the matter and restore the promo, Amazon has not done so.
I’m going to go through what happened in detail so you can be sure that I acted correctly at all points – because there is a lot of shadiness going on at the moment – but feel free to skim some of the details if you wish.
Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible had never been in Select, so I decided to throw them in for one term as an experiment at the start of July…
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July 15, 2017
Scammers Break The Kindle Store
A must-read post for anyone in the publishing industry who deals with Amazon. We must put pressure on Amazon to put a stop to this.
On Friday, a book jumped to the #1 spot on Amazon, out of nowhere; it quickly became obvious that the author had used a clickfarm to gatecrash the charts.
The Kindle Store is officially broken.
This is not the first time this has happened and Amazon’s continued inaction is increasingly baffling. Last Sunday, a clickfarmed title also hit #1 in the Kindle Store. And Amazon took no action.
Over the last six weeks, one particularly brazen author has put four separate titles in the Top 10, and Amazon did nothing whatsoever. There are many such examples.
I wrote at the start of June about how scammers were taking over Amazon’s free charts. That post led to a phone conversation with KDP’s Executive Customer Relations.
Repeated assurances were given that the entire leadership team at Amazon was taking the scammer problem very seriously indeed. But it was also stressed that the…
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July 1, 2017
The Long Hot Summer of 1947
My second Novel, Summer Day, was originally published in the spring of 2012. Earlier this year I re-issued it with a few changes and a revised cover, thanks to Sharon Brownlie (cover) and Katherine Hamilton Pfiel (editorial suggestions).
As it is set in July 1947 I’ve decided to make the Kindle version free for the first 5 days of July 2017. Here’s a link to a blog post about the book’s genesis: http://cassandra2012.blogspot.ie/2012/04/england-after-war.html
June 30, 2017
The space in the break of my heart…
My mother died 23 years ago. She was sixty. To be honest it was a devastating loss. We lost our father two years earlier through a long battle with cancer but Mam? Well she simply disappeared one night, or at least that’s how it felt. She had come through a brief enough medical battle which in itself was life threatening. She was on the way back out of that battle all seemed well. Mam went out with her sisters for the first time since her battle began as if to celebrate her return. She dropped dead holding on to her sister’s hand, singing.
Today is her birthday. She would be eighty three. I saw her two days before she died and I never saw her again. I was called to the hospital at two in the morning, but the body that lay on that hospital bed wasn’t Mam. She was gone…
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