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!
newest »
Unfortunately, I'm not the publisher over the World on Fire series so I can't modify pricing on that one, and since TBL isn't out yet I am unable to change pricing until it is released. I should have specified as "most" not "all". What I meant was "all of the books I transferred from Pronoun to KDP" to be more specific!
Surely it's not unfortunate that Kindle Press picked RAVEN'S PEAK? Congratulations! Although I had thought you had published Books 2 + 3 independently. They're listed as Lincoln Cole Publishing / LC Publishing / Amazon Digital Services.
Wordwizard wrote: "Surely it's not unfortunate that Kindle Press picked RAVEN'S PEAK? Congratulations! Although I had thought you had published Books 2 + 3 independently. They're listed as Lincoln Cole Publishing / L..." I wouldn't consider it unfortunate, but it just means less control over the book. When Raven's Peak was marked down to 99 cents the other books were as well, and making free vs 99 cents is an either/or scenario with amazon. Technically, the paperback of Raven's Peak is also published through me (they only own the e-book) but there are direct limitations about how amazon lets you promote books.
I don't understand how all this works. Kindle Scout lowered the book they published, RAVEN'S PEAK to 99¢, and your two sequels were lowered similarly, w/out your say? You weren't able to make any of them free, because they somehow control the ones they didn't publish? It sounds unreasonable, but by now, I don't put anything past Amazon (which owns KS). Can you explain?
Wordwizard wrote: "I don't understand how all this works. Kindle Scout lowered the book they published, RAVEN'S PEAK to 99¢, and your two sequels were lowered similarly, w/out your say? You weren't able to make any o..."Basically, Kindle Scout lowered the price of Raven's Peak for the entire month of October (no say from me) for the entire 31 days. For seven of those days, I also priced down the other two books through the KDP platform so the entire series was at 99 cents. But, Amazon only lets authors run such a promotion OR a free promotion, so I could not price them down to free. You cannot, under any circumstances outside of a price match, place a book for free on Amazon...you can only run their 'promotion' for free for a few days, and only then if you don't also run a 99 cent deal. Pronoun used to be a way in which we could set our books to free or 99 cents on Amazon whenever we wanted but that avenue has just closed and disappeared on November 6th. Basically, there is only so much we can actually do for pricing our books (and moreover, once you use their system to change a price, it LOCKS the books price for x number of days between 14 and 30 wherein you can't change it at all). I know it is all clear as mud, and to be honest I barely understand how most of it works. Hope that helps.
"But, Amazon only lets authors run such a promotion OR a free promotion, so I could not price them down to free. You cannot, under any circumstances outside of a price match, place a book for free on Amazon...you can only run their 'promotion' for free for a few days, and only then if you don't also run a 99 cent deal." I don't understand those two sentences. But I do believe you. Why does Amazon want to be so evil? (You don't have to try to answer that if you don't want to.) Did Amazon know what it was doing, lowering RAVEN'S PEAK for a month, or were you just stuck, making less money? If you didn't have a say about the sale, they shouldn't have lowered your cut, but I'm sure they did. Did it pay off?
Wordwizard wrote: ""But, Amazon only lets authors run such a promotion OR a free promotion, so I could not price them down to free. You cannot, under any circumstances outside of a price match, place a book for free ..."It's hard to tell if it really pays off in the short term. Hopefully in the long term it can bring out more readers and I can release more books. Amazon is definitely better than most traditional publishers about letting us know about sales and have a say in the process, so I can't complain. It does just mean that series is mostly out of my control, but at least I can still over good deals and sales on the rest of my books.
I thought that THE BISHOP'S LEGACY, and the three World on Fire books, RAVEN'S PEAK, R~'s FALL, and R~'s RISE, were not made free. Was there a glitch?