Kindle Scout, Thunderclap and HeadTalker

Well I am afraid that this morning I received the news that A BLURT IN TIME was not selected for the Kindle Scout program. I am not crushed by their decision. Entering a manuscript into this sort of a program is ALWAYS a crap shoot.

I got the message this morning and I promptly submitted BLURT to both the Kindle and the Kobo e-publishing system. The e-book should be live in the next day or so. I hope to have it out in paperback as well, hopefully by the end of the month.

I’ve been up for an hour and I have already uploaded A BLURT IN TIME into the Kindle portal – so it should be available in e-print within the next few days.  I’ve also got a Createspace cover already constructed and I plan a paperback release within the next week or so.

I’ll be releasing A BLURT IN TIME as a 99 cent promotion but I will be bumping the price up to $2.99 – probably by December. I had contemplated going Kindle Select – but there are quite a few options available for me through Kobo – so while I type this kboards entry on one screen, my Kobo portal is likewise chewing into Blurt. Otherwise I would have happily have released BLURT as a freebie so that all of you folks here could grab it for free.

I am NOT beaten – not by a long shot. I have been writing and selling my work for about forty years. If I haven’t given up yet I do not expect that I ever will.

I want to thank EVERYONE here for all of the help and support that you have given me. I have learned an awful lot during this whole process. I met a new cover artist who has already created three new covers for me. I have learned how to pester people creatively upon Facebook and Twitter and I have learned how the whole Kindle Scout program works.

I did this all while still working on a NaNoWriMo manuscript that I am already 22000 words into – in fact I should be writing THAT – but I am trying to handle THIS first.

Thanks all. I’m going to be pretty busy this morning – but come this afternoon I expect to reach new heights as I climb up onto the roof to re-adjust the heating cables to be ready for this coming winter.

I have waffles and fine dark maple syrup simmering in my belly and a cup of hot tea to help rev my engines.

How is your day going?

The Tale of a Time Traveling Toilet – out soon in Kobo and Kindle format.

NEWS FLASH – A BLURT IN TIME is NOW available for 99 cents at Kindle.

What’s it about?

Burt was certain that if he hadn’t hit King Kong with Darth Vader’s head he would not have fallen into that Citadel Hill time traveling toilet. He wouldn’t have met and been shot by the one-armed ghost and he would NOT have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong freaking time. A BLURT IN TIME is a YA time-travel horror story that grown-ups will want to read when the kids aren’t looking.

JUST CLICK HERE TO GRAB YOUR COPY TODAY!

Come December I will bump it up to $2.99.

---

Before I let you go I would like to talk to you folks about a promotion mechanism that has seemed to do pretty well for me so far.

I want to talk about Thunderclap and HeadTalker.

Let’s talk about Thunderclap first – since they have been around longer.

A Thunderclap is basically a mechanism that allows a writer to promote a new release or a sales price or a book launch – or whatever they want to promote.

Here is a look at my latest Thunderclap campaign – promoting a Black Friday – Cyber Monday 99 cent sale of my vampire/hockey novella, SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.

So – let’s say that you want to create your own Thunderclap.

First, swing on over to the Thunderclap homepage and sign in. You have to basically be a member – but it does not cost a dime.

Then – once you are signed in have a look around at some of the sample campaigns. The site is VERY user-friendly and it took me about five minutes of poking around to figure out just how everything worked.

Trust me – if I can figure it out – YOU can figure it out.

🙂

Then click onto START A THUNDERCLAP and set your first Thunderclap up. Remember – you are going to have to gather up 99 other people with active Twitter or Facebook accounts.

The way it works is pretty simple. Let’s say I sign up to support your next Thunderclap. Let’s say that you have a new e-book coming out – a moving yarn entitled I WRITE GOOD – and you are offering it for the low promotional price of 99 cents.

Let’s say that I WRITE GOOD is coming out on November 25.

Let’s say that you want to promote I WRITE GOOD on that very same day.

SO – once I sign up to support your I WRITE GOOD Thunderclap then on November 25 on whatever time you decide to set up – a promotional Tweet will pop up on my Twitter account.

Something like this:

Buy a copy of I WRITE GOOD for only 99cents today on Amazon!

That Tweet only comes up the once at the agreed-upon time.

In addition – that tweet is simultaneously coming up on each of the other 99 Twitter accounts – which means that your new book, I WRITE GOOD, is simultaneously being promoted on ONE HUNDRED Twitter feeds.

Let me give you a few numbers.

As I type this entry my book SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME has 74 out of 100 Thunderclap supporters. That is 74 Tweeter feeds that can reach 389,234 readers on November 26th.

Now – if I do NOT get the 100 supporters within the next 12 days that I need the Thunderclap does NOT go live – unless I am willing to pay a certain fee to help make up the difference. Judging from the numbers I do not anticipate that it will be a problem to find those necessary 26 Thunderclap supporters.

STILL, if you want to sign up as a supporter you are more than welcome!

In fact – if you are setting up your own Thunderclap and want my support I would be more than happy to trade you my support for yours – just so long as your Thunderclap was supporting an e-book release and/or promotion.

That is the second most important thing to remember about setting up a Thunderclap. A lot of folks who support you will have Thunderclaps of their own and they will expect you to likewise support them.

Quid pro quo, Clarice.

HeadTalker works a lot like Thunderclap – except you can get away with a minimum of 25 supporters for your campaign – so I believe that I prefer using HeadTalker. Also, HeadTalker has a mechanism set up that will give you three or four supporters right off the bat.

Here is a look at my latest HeadTalker campaign.

You see – even though I created my HeadTalker campaign at about the same time as I created my Thunderclap – my HeadTalker already has FIFTY supporters, even though I only needed 25 to launch it.

I will let you folks know how both campaigns work out for me, saleswise. Keep in mind that this will be the very FIRST time that I have used either service to promote an actual e-book.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

How To Create A 99 cent Bargain Book Promotion

Hi everyone!

I have been messing with indie publishing for over three years with mixed success. This year I have decided that I want to hit the puree button on that mix and see if I cannot speed things up a little bit.

I have planning out a very large promotion for some time now. The promotion will involve THE TATTERDEMON OMNIBUS — a book that has so far been one of my best indie sellers. Which means my sainted maiden aunt, three bums from the local park, and my pet cat all think that my book is cool.

Understand now – I do not wish to give ANYONE the sense that I ACTUALLY know what I am doing.

In fact, I DON’T know what I am doing.

I am totally lost, somewhere between west-what-the-f**k and north-by-don’t-you-dare-drag-that-Dane-into-the-mix.

In fact – you couldn’t be more lost if you burned the map and then stirred up the ashes into a funky sort of ink that you used to freehand your own map with your eyes tightly closed. Stomp on the GPS and cram your pocket compass somewhere that I would rather not talk about right now.

So let’s get right down to the promo.

The Tatterdemon Omnibus — usually about $2.99 depending on which way the wind happens to be blowing has been recently marked down to 99 cents. I marked it down about a week and a half before the promo was scheduled to take place and I have been Tweeting and Facebook quietly about this price change and have jogged a few loose sales from a few happy Tweeterers and Facebookogians.
Those are technical terms, by the way. You might want to go and Google them, the next time you are about six drinks into a bottle of strong Scotch.

I set it up this way under the theory that this “soft” opening would bump up the Kindle ranking just enough to give the illusion that this book was written by someone who could actually write and even maybe sell a few books.

This will take you to the Amazon.com sales page where TATTERDEMON is already listed at 99 cents. It might even be cheaper depending on where you are ordering from. Why don’t you order a copy today?

THE TATTERDEMON OMNIBUS
Current ranking — as of October 20th, 2015.
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,545 Paid in Kindle Store
#263 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Fairy Tales
#271 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mythology & Folk Tales
#377 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Mythology & Folk Tales
Twenty reviews — 4.3 out of 5 stars average.

PROMO DETAILS
October 24: My Book Cave
October 26: BookSCREAM
October 26-31: Kindle Book Review Halloween Party
October 27-31: Discount Bookman
October 27: Just Kindle Books
October 28: Fire and Ice Promo
October 28: Buck Books
October 28-30: Awesome Gang
October 28: Book Tweeter
October 28-30: Kobo 99 cent promo
October 29: bknight (a VERY reliable Fiverr book promo service)
October 29-31 Choosy Bookworm
October 29 — Book Sends/Pixel of Ink
November 2 — Robin Reads

Note: Some of you will point out that I missed a few obvious choices but I am simultaneously running a big promo on my historical horror novel, DEVIL TREE and I used some of the other sites that you might name for them. I am hoping that the boost between the two novels will help stir up some heat for the rest of my work.

I am also (naively) hoping that this big push will stir up a few more nominations for my Kindle Scout Campaign for A BLURT IN TIME — my novel of time travelling toilet terror.

Or at least that is the plan.

This is not the best way to create a 99 cent book  promotion. There are better and much more expensive websites to work with – but I am on a deep budget. The main bit of advise that I would give you is if you want to make a big splash and create a big bump in your ranking and hopefully a tail of sales that you will follow you after the promotion is over you ought to concentrate on length.

That means that you shouldn’t be necessarily thinking about a one-day promotion or a three day promotion. I do use mini one-day promotions quite often – but for this sort of a big push you ought to give yourself a good running start.

Think of it this way.

If you sell fifty copies of your e-book tomorrow – your Amazon rank will bump up – but then it will fall down just as quickly. HOWEVER – if you sell twenty copies tomorrow, followed by twenty more on the day after and twenty more the day after that your bump will last a little bit longer. Amazon rewards consistency as well as numerical performance. The more steady your sales are, the more consistently your rating and your VISIBILITY will rise.

I should also mention that a lot of these promotional sites promote WIDE – which means that they also promote your book if it is available on Kobo, Nook, Apple and other sites. Both TATTERDEMON and DEVIL TREE are available at all of these other sites and are marked down to 99 cents already. I am going to be watching closely over the next month to see how my Kindle sales compare to my Kobo, Nook, Apple, Googleplay and other assorted e-book distributors.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

If this blog entry was the least bit helpful and/or interesting – PLEASE CLICK this banner and nominate A BLURT IN TIME for the Kindle Scout program. If the book makes it into the Kindle Scout Publishing Program you will automatically receive a free Kindle copy of the book.

Can an e-book cover make a difference?

Just take a look at the cover I have been using for my hockey/vampire novella, SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.

You tell me which book you would choose if you had to go STRICTLY by the covers alone?

---

Now take a look at the cover that I recently purchased from Christine at Bayou Cover Designs.

I’m just finishing up the last couple of chapters of this one. I haven’t decided whether or not I will shoot it into the Kindle Scout program or just release it on my own. A lot will depend upon whether or not A BLURT IN TIME makes the cut on Kindle Scout.

(and I know how tired you folks must be from hearing me yammer on and on – blah, blah, Kindle Scout, blah, blah, nominate)

Speaking of which, Bayou Cover Designs also was the creative force behind the cover for my YA novel, A BLURT IN TIME.

The Tale of a Time Traveling Toilet.

Take it from me – a good cover can mean a whole lot of difference in immediate sales. If any of you writer-types reading this out there happen to be looking for a good cover artist why don’t you swing on over to Bayou Cover Designs and check out some of their premade covers or else hire Christine to do a cover just for you.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

If this blog entry was the least bit helpful and/or interesting – PLEASE CLICK this banner and nominate A BLURT IN TIME for the Kindle Scout program. If the book makes it into the Kindle Scout Publishing Program you will automatically receive a free Kindle copy of the book.

My Kindle Scout Campaign – Day 4

Every morning I get up out of bed and go down the hall and walk into the bathroom.

THEN – I do the man-thing. I stare into the bathroom mirror and I make a few discrete muscles and I say to myself – “Dang, I am HOT!”

I have to do that BEFORE coffee to help ward off the inevitable invasions of reality that clear vision can incur.

It turns out that my Kindle Scout Campaign offers me the very same phenomenon.

Every morning I get up and I take a peek at my Campaign and I say “Dang, I am STILL hot!”

This is my fourth day and I have enjoyed 69 out of 96 happy hours of Hot & Trending.

I have 335 views so far.

That means that SO FAR I am still keeping my head above water. This could end tomorrow – but not for lack of trying.

Somebody at kboards asked me if I could offer any tips to a newbie.

I told her that the biggest tip I could offer a newbie – considering that I am a rank newbie myself – is to get the word out there as best as you can. Emulate the waves upon the beach. Turn over every stone that you can find in your own social network and then spread out and reach other social networks. Tweet like a drunken parakeet, Facebook like it was the end of the world and you were trying to personally message every single living human being on the planet. Tell your family and your friends and blog like a yodeling alpine bullfrog. Be persistent without being obnoxious.

Most of all, try and have some fun. Remember that this is NOT the end of the world. Drunken parakeets and yodeling alpine bullfrogs are not overtaking our planet. Even if you DON’T get a single freaking second on the Hot & Trending list; even if Kindle Scout does NOT accept your novel – remember, you can still publish it yourself – and all of those people who did think enough of your creative efforts can still be reached to alert them to the release of your book.

Kindle Scout is a fun sort of game that way.

Even when you lose, you win.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

---

Click this banner. Nominate A BLURT IN TIME for the Kindle Scout program. If the book makes it into Kindle Scout you will automatically receive a free Kindle copy of the book.

Deep Discount Promotion – Part 5

I sold 6 copies of GYPSY BLOOD yesterday on Amazon.com and a copy to Amazon.co.uk for 7 copies in total.

The numbers aren’t huge so far and the advertising has CERTAINLY not paid for itself – but there has been a bump in daily sales both for GYPSY BLOOD and a few of my other books. Trying to positively attribute a bump in sales directly towards promotion is ALWAYS an exercise in pie-hole-smoke, however, I am still satisfied that my efforts are bearing a little fruit.

Let me give you the full run-down, so far.
bknights – ($15) – May 24
Read Cheaply – (free) – May 24
May 24 – 4 copies sold, total=4

Booktastik – ($5) – May 25
Book Deals Daily – (free) – May 25
May 25 – 0 copies sold, total=4

Robin Reads – ($10) – May 26
May 26 – 9 copies sold, total=13

Sweet Free Books – ($5) – May 27
May 27 – 7 copies sold, total=20

ContentMo – ($1.99) – May 28
May 28 – ?

I have got another small promotion lined up for June 1 and June 2 for my massive short story collection Do-overs and Detours: Eighteen Eerie Tales – so we will see if this momentum I am building up with this one promotion carries through to the next month.

At least that is the plan.

We’ll see what the road ahead has in store for me.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Deep Discount Promotions – Part 4

Cue the comeback music!

Yesterday – thanks to promotional advertisements at Robin Reads and other assorted factors I managed to move 18 books in total.

Not all of these 18 books were GYPSY BLOOD and not all of them made me any money – but 18 books in one day is still a long away from the 1-2 books daily that I was moving from May 1 to May 23.

Let me break it down for you.

Yesterday I sold…

GYPSY BLOOD – 7 copies Amazon.com and 2 copies Amazon.co.uk

THE TATTERDEMON OPUS – 1 copy Amazon.com

BIGFOOT TRACKS – 1 copy Amazon.com

BIG HAIRY DEAL – 1 copy Amazon.com

TROLLING LURES – 1 copy Amazon.com

as well as these permafree e-books…

REVENANT: BOOK ONE OF THE TATTERDEMON TRILOGY – 4 free copies Amazon.com

FLASH VIRUS: EPISODE ONE – 1 free copy Amazon.com

***

Now, you have to understand that I usually move a couple or two of those permafree e-books nearly everyday. I don’t crow too loudly over them because – hey, they don’t make me any money. They are nothing more than freshly churned cow-guts thrown into the waters of the mighty Amazon as chum.

So – did ALL of these sales directly result from Robin Reads?

Maybe – but as I mentioned there are other factors to consider.

Some of the promoting I did yesterday and the day before might also have sold some of those book copies. Maybe you got a Booktastik newsletter in your e-mail box on May 25th and did not get around to reading it and acting upon it until May 26th.

Anything is possible.

Also there are the numerous Facebook pages that I have announced my GYPSY BLOOD promotion upon. Personally, I have really begun to doubt the effectiveness of these Facebook postings – but in all honesty, I am too chickenshit to NOT give them a try. I do try and space them out so that folks who follow me on Facebook don’t get inundated with something along the lines of STEVE VERNON JUST SHOUTED BUY-MY-BOOK ON THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO AND A HALF FACEBOOK BOOK PROMOTION PAGES.

(That half a promotion was the one that the telemarketer interrupted me at, wanting me to purchase a brand new gold-plated Ginsu knife collection to fix my computer on my free cruise to Mexico)

So – a couple of those sales MIGHT have resulted from those Facebook postings.

Then too there is always the possibility that somebody might have read a recent blog entry and felt compelled to order a copy.

You never can tell.

That is the thing about promotion. It is a little like casting rocks into a pond. You cast one rock and you get a few ripples. You cast a whole handful of rocks and you get a whole pond full of ripples. You build yourself a catapult and chuck an entire dumpster-load of pebbles into that pond and you get yourself a non-stop freaking tsunami of promotional ripples.

Something that I have not done is to set up promotional blog appearances. You know – the kind where you write an informative blog entry for somebody else’s blog and make mention of your upcoming promotion. This is another important tool for indie writers who are trying to get the word out to as many people as possible. It isn’t just a matter of having a typical BUY-MY-BOOK! blog post show up on somebody else’s blog. It is FAR more effective to write something creative and interesting and useful that might possibly go just a little viral, even for a brief internet moment – and then to add at the end of that blog entry – “Oh, by the way – BUY MY BOOK!”.

However, I have a hard time these days following through on promises to write interesting blog entries for guest blog appearances, so I don’t hunt those up the way that I used to. Still, I have always felt this was a strong way of getting the word out – especially if you can get a more popular writing/reading blog to take one of your articles.

I hope this series of promotional advice is helping some of you writer-type-folks out there. This is still a big old learning experience for me and I do not claim to be an expert at what I am doing. I just like to put this out there to reach a few more folks and hopefully show them what I am doing right and just as importantly show them what I am doing wrong.

Good luck and keep on writing.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

No – because today’s Sweet Free Books listing has NOT gone live on their page just yet. Neither has their e-mailed newsletter. That is common with a lot of promotional websites. You do not ALWAYS know just when in the day that they will go live.

So – what DID sell those e-books I moved yesterday?

DAY 9 AT CAMP NANOWRIMO – NEVER SAY “I CAN’T!”

As any of you folks who have been following my progress you know that I am attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of July.

That isn’t all that unbelievable. I know a lot of writers who do this sort of thing. In the indie writing world it is an ASSET to be able to write quickly – just so long as you aren’t just pumping out crap.

So I am not going to pretend that I am breaking some sort of a Guinness world record in novel writing here. In fact, I wrote faster many years ago when I took part in the 3-Day Writing Contest in which I wrote a 30,000 word novella in three days flat. My wife kept me fed and supplied with strong black coffee and proof-read and edited each chapter as I wrote them.

However, this is the fastest that I have written in the last year – and that is very important to me. I was getting bogged down and letting life’s stress get in my way.

This month I intend to break that habit and get myself geared up for future books that I intend to write.

Why?

I have published over thirty e-books in the last couple of years. They are available at Kindle and Kobo and I sell maybe one copy a day – which just isn’t enough. I want to turn these e-books into a good side-income because I have bills to pay and I am hungry for new readers. I have been trying a lot of approaches but I have decided that I first need to teach myself how to write more productively and then once I have created a steady flow of my products – that is my e-books – I intend to begin trying to figure out a more productive way of promoting them.

So – for me my goal this year is improved production.

Next year my goal will be improved promotional techniques.

Which is why I am writing at Camp NaNoWriMo.

Still, I am surprised when I hear some of the NaNoWriMo writers that I have met saying “I CAN’T” about some of the writing they are trying to do.

My wife and I both really enjoy watching America Ninja Warrior on television.

I just watched this fellow compete – several months after breaking BOTH of his ankles and severing BOTH of his Achilles tendons in a gymnastic incident. Don’t try and tell me that gymnastics isn’t tough.

🙂

Take a look at this guy’s recovery and think about it the very next time you say “I CAN’T!”

Never say I can’t!

Today I wrote 1700 words on my novel – only 100 words past the quota – but I still have some writing time left this afternoon.

I am currently at the 21,700 word mark. That’s the result of nine days of dedicated writing and is an average of 2400 words a day.

I would like to do better.

And you know what?

I can!

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Why should I bother with anything else than Kindle???

Okay – so I’ve been doing really well at Kobo – but Kindle hasn’t done much for me.

I could ignore that or I could do something about it.

I intend to do something about it.

Still – that brings me to a question that some folks are looking for an answer to.

Right now Kindle is the big dog on the block.

A lot of folks believe that because that dog is so darned big they might as well not bother with ANYTHING else.

Go Select – they tell you.

Be a Kindle man.

Well, I see it differently.

The way I see it, there is one single undeniable constant in this indie-publishing thing of ours.

(cue Godfather music)

The undeniable constant is CHANGE!

Kindle will change how they do things. Kobo will change how they do things. Nook will change how they do things.

I don’t want to get stuck depending on ANY one e-book distributor.

Think of it this way. You sell five books on Kobo (or Nook, or Diesel, or Apple, or that note you scribbled on the men’s washroom) this month – you’ll tell yourself “Hmmph, Kobo isn’t worth it.”

Then you sell five more books next month. And the next month. And the next month.

On the twelfth month the FLYING FRYPAN OF FATE tips a domino and all at once you sell one hundred books on Kobo in ONE MONTH!

Or a thousand.

Hey, it could happen. You don’t know how the next rule-change is going to affect your sales. You don’t know how the next promotion is going to pay off.

***

Speaking of my next promotion – I’ve got something worked up with Kboards for Monday. My book, SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME, is due to appear as a part of Kboards BOOK DISCOVERY promotion.

That means that 65000 Kindle owners are going to have a chance to take a look at SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME.

It’s another experiment. If it makes a bump I intend to follow it up with another promotion – and then I’ve got a third promotion planned for the middle of the month as a part of my birthday celebrations.

I’ll post the links here on Monday and I’ll ask you all to put the word out on Twitter, Facebook, Pintarest – whatever you do – that would be GREAT.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon