Ways You Can Support Me

Aaron and His Brief Encounter with Sp... Time Burrito 5

Ways You Can Support Me

Before we start, a Sci Fi and Fantasy Giveaway and a survey to help me improve this mailing list.

People have been asking me this for a long time. What’s the best way to support you? My response has always been Amazon. The reason behind choosing Amazon as the best place to get my books was that when a book sells well on Amazon, it helps other people find it. This used to work for a while. I’d publish a book, dump a lot of advertising dollars to prop it up for a week or so, and then the book would have decent sales for a bit and then be buried under the crushing weight of all the other books that are out there.

Those months of higher sales have been getting shorter and shorter and now are almost non-existent. It’s not hard to see why. There are more books than ever before. AI is writing them (though to what degree of success, I couldn’t say) in addition to hopefuls like me that it’d one day be a career. Gone are the days of the solitary genius who writes a world changing book (none of mine fall into that category btw). The writer now must not only write a good story, but be able to edit one, understand marketing to be able to market the hell out of their work, and at least have enough artistry to make a good book cover or know what one would look like when they get it back from the cover artist.

All I’m saying is that in order to achieve success as a writer, it’s insufficient to merely write a good book. There are many other skills that go into being a writer and if you don’t nail them spot on then the consequence is being buried in the avalanche of work that’s being published. While I strongly believe that every writer could eventually find one million who’d buy their work, the challenge is reaching those customers.

Yes, I fully understand that not every book is equal. For example, I’m sure wouldn’t take long to find a published book where if the author was paid per spelling and grammatical errors, they would be millionaires (or thousandaires at the very least). There are also books with cover art that must have been sourced from a 2nd grade class and not the cutesy look at what my kid drew way, but they were digging through the dumpsters of elementary schools looking for cover art sort of way. I think those authors too could reach one million sales. They just have more work ahead of them than a person with a polished manuscript and fantastic cover art.

The subpar cover and error riddled manuscript can get better. I know because I had books published under those conditions. But I learned from my mistakes and sot to better myself. Overtime, anyone can improve if they put the time and effort into it. But even when the book is ready to be sold, the story is fantastic, the cover art is compelling, the description makes the reader just want to dive in and read more, the book can still not sell.

The simple reason good books go unnoticed is that people don’t see them. We live in an economy that is now driven by algorithms. Please the algorithms and you sell. Displease them and you are buried. It feels almost like being an ancient farmer trying to figure out how the gods make rain. Human sacrifice? That so last season! Praying and piety? Move over marketing gods. Throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks? Sounds about right!

In effort to throw the proverbial shit against the wall and see what sticks. I’ve decided to sell my books direct. What that means for me, I keep most of the purchase price (88% more or less on a $5 ebook, a much higher % on a bundle). What that means for you, is any book that is fully edited and ready for publication, it drops on my website first. Time Burrito 5 is there now. Misfits of Carnt 4 and Office Maxi 2 will be there as soon as it takes for me to finish writing them, getting them edited, polish up the edits, and load it to site. If this experimentation in direct from me goes well, I’ll continue to post books to my website way before you get them anywhere else.

Don’t worry, anywhere else will still exist too. They’ll be on Amazon, Google Play, B&N, and all the other places too. I’m just going to focus my advertising on direct sales for a while to see how it goes. And I can’t see how much I’m pleasing those algorithm goes unless I sell direct.

Also, in effort to please those gods, I’m going to start offering book bundles. I even have a few of them up already.

Before I go, I have a quick survey, and like all my surveys, there’s a little silliness as a reward for taking it. But with this survey, I’m going to find out what you want from this email list. It should help me write better emails because while yes, I’m here to promote my books, I want to give you something more for your reading time, so help me figure out what you want.