How To Promote a Kindle Release

In case you haven’t seen this cover enough…

Back in the spring of 2016 my novel KELPIE DREAMS was fortunate enough to be selected for Kindle Press, thanks to a successful Kindle Scout campaign. I have talked about this at length throughout my blog but now I need to talk to you folks about the ways that a writer such as myself can promote their Kindle Press release. In fact, this is going to give ALL of you indie authors out there some ideas on how to promote any sort of a Kindle e-book release, so there is something here for everybody.

Let’s start by explaining how the steps work here. When you enter an unpublished manuscript into a Kindle Scout campaign you are given thirty days to jump up and down on the internet, trying to attract some fresh hungry readers to come and take a look at your Kindle Scout campaign page and hopefully NOMINATE your book. Then, at the end of thirty days, if you have attracted enough nominations – AND (and this is WAY more important than the nomination process) if you have written a book that Kindle Scout deems salable, then you are selected for publication.

That’s what happened to me. I got enough nominations and wrote a good enough book that I was awarded a $1500.00 advance and a publication deal with Kindle Press.

Kindle Press is the publishing arm of Kindle Scout.

So, in May 2016, my book KELPIE DREAMS was published by Kindle Press and I began trying to pay back my advance. That’s the hitch, you understand. You have to sell enough books to pay that $1500 back before you can begin receiving royalty checks in your bank account.

Which kind of sucks – but hey, I am used to this. I was a traditional writer back before I became an indie writer, and actually I still publish traditionally, which makes me a HYBRID writer.

Personally, I have always felt that the term “hybrid” sounds a little bit more like some sort of supernaturally nutritional loaf of bread that you have to know the secret password to purchase at shady midnight health food bars – but I haven’t had enough coffee yet this morning to think straight – so what do I know?

Well, selling the first $1000.00 bucks worth of books turned out to be easy. The first few weeks all of the power and muscle of the Kindle Press promotional team was placed squarely behind my release, but as I squeaked past that thousand dollar point things began to peter out.

Now I can hear some of you folks out there saying “AHA!” and “I KNEW IT!”. I can hear your “This is all a freaking conspiracy!” bells going off and I can hear other folks coughing loudly into their palms and saying “SCAM!” like they were trying to scare a cat off – but it isn’t so.

The fact is, I know of quite a few Kindle Press writers who paid off their advance VERY quickly – some in the first two or three days. So this isn’t a scam and this isn’t the way that it always plays out. I just didn’t push hard enough during those first couple of sales weeks.

So – what can you do about this sort of a situation?

Well, back in January I was notified by the folks at Kindle Press that they were about to launch my book into a huge BOOK FOR A BUCK promotion. Meaning that KELPIE DREAMS, along with 99 other Kindle books, were going to marked down to a dollar for the entire month of February.

Now was the time to get out there and promote. Only problem was, I fell down with a case of Noro-Virus just as sick as I could get and I missed out on getting some of my promotional spots lined up.

I’m better now and I’ve been promoting all February long, as best as I could manage to.

The only problem is, I am on the Bataan Death March of a fiscal budget. I am so broke that all of the Krazy Glue and duct tape in the universe could not put my bank balance back together, so I could not afford some of the ritzier book promotional services.

Hands-on promotion technique

Here’s what I did.

For starters I weeded through TWO book promotion lists, looking for the cheap and the free.

(and doesn’t that sound like a kickass name for a spaghetti western – THE CHEAP AND THE FREE?)

I checked out Kindlepreneur’s list of 127 Best Book Promotion sites as well as this big fat list.

I found 18 services who offered a CHANCE at free promotion – Awesome Gangs, Pretty Hot.com, Discount Bookman, Book Pinning, Bookzio, Daily Cheap Reads, ebookasaurus, Book Circle, Free Book Listings, eBook Listen, Book Bongo, readper, Bargain Booksy, Indie Book of the Day, Ebook Booster, Reading Deals, Bookscream, Armadillo ebooks, eBookSoda, Book Pebble and eBookSkill.

Now, the thing to remember is when you sign up for FREE promotion, you are making a bet that those services MIGHT just have enough room to fit you in “pro bono” and MIGHT just think your book is salable enough that they will get behind you and promote it. They do make a bit of money through their Amazon Affiliate Connection, but it isn’t a lot. They REALLY make money by having authors PAY them to promote their books. So, if you have the money, I recommend actually spending a bit of it on promotion – but I’m broke right now, so I don’t.

The other problem is that you don’t always hear about when your book is being promoted by any of these free services – IF they promote it at all.

I was helped out by Awesome Gang, BookScream, and readper for free.

Actually, my readper promotion just went live today. The company is being set up by indie author, Jaxon Reed, and you really might want to get in on the bottom floor of this promotional service. I have been VERY impressed with his service so far.

In addition, I have taken part in several multi-author cross-promotions during the month of February, one of which got me up to the 12250 Amazon ranking, which is an all-time high for this month, so far.

Thanks, Roz Marshall!

For those folks who are wondering, a multi-author cross-promotion happens when a group of authors get together and set up a master-page with one or two of each of their sales books listed at a bargain price, and then they promote that master-page through each of their personal fan newsletters. It can work out really well if you have a good book with a good cover and get yourself in with a good group of authors. And, best of all, it is often free, although some cross-promotions ask for money, primarily so that they can offer a cool gift to folks who visit the cross-promotion, like a free Kindle or an Amazon gift certificate.

That’s something for another blog entry, though.

I also used HeadTalker and CoPromote and group Retweets to get the word out about my KELPIE DREAMS sale through Twitter. Now understand, it is a foolish game to go and try to sell your e-books on Twitter. There is just too damn much white noise and chatter. Folks tend to avoid your BUY MY BOOK tweets. But, as I said, I am broke and desperate and I have no pride what-so-ever.

Besides, I do see a little bounce from this strategy. It isn’t the best way to go about promoting your e-book, but if you are financially-challenged, it is better than nothing.

On February 15th I paid five dollars for a Book Pebble promotion, and I have to say that the pebble didn’t make too much of a splash. I’m not sure if it sold ANY copies at all.

So far, throughout the month of February I have balanced at around an Amazon ranking of 30000 to 50000, meaning that I am selling about 10 books a day. As I mentioned, at one point I was up to about 12000, which is about 15 books per day. This morning I started out at about 29000 and have moved up to 27300, which is about 11 books per day so far.

(for those folks who are wondering just WHERE I am pulling these numbers out, I use the Kindlepreneur Calculator, which gives me a rough estimate of how many books I need to sell in a day to hit a certain ranking. It isn’t accurate, but it seems to be pretty close to the mark.

Today, as I mentioned, my readper promotion is going live and my eBookSoda is also going live. So I am hoping that this one-two promotion will bump up my rankings enough that folks will begin to notice KELPIE DREAMS and maybe I will sell a few more copies.

I hope you folks will cheer me some good luck as I head towards the end of February!

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Day 21 at Camp NaNoWriMo – I Ain’t No Sissy-Wuss…

The original rock and roller…

I passed the 34000 word mark this weekend.

That is over 2/3 of the way through my 50000 word manuscript target.

This is the hard part of the storytelling. Like Sisyphus, I have been pushing this rock up that hill all month long and gravity and momentum and my aged sinew are all beginning to tell on me.

This is where the going gets tough.

This isn’t just about Camp NaNoWriMo.

This is about novel writing in general. You line up any ten people at a writers convention and at least half of them have about twelve unfinished novels sitting up in a pyramid of shoeboxes scrawled on fistfuls of yellowed foolscap with a little sticky note on top of each of those shoeboxes reading – I GOT TO GET ROUND TO THIS ONE OF THESE DAYS!

But this isn’t just about novel writing, either.

Any damn thing that you have been MEANING to get around to doing – go and do it now.

Fuck the bucket list.

Make your dreams a reality now.

Start small. Run to big. Huge is going to happen.

Write that novel.

Say those words you mean to say to that person you mean to say.

Do it now!

Get your ass to the gym.

Mow the lawn.

Climb Mount Everest, bare naked, yodelling, in grease paint!

Don’t be a Sissy-Wuss!

yours in storytelling

Steve Vernon

PS – I just hit the 35000 word mark. I’m behind on my quota. The rock is getting heavier but I am going to lean on in and look for an elevator.

You can follow my progress over at Camp NaNoWriMo, if you’d like.

Bottom-Dwelling E-book Authors RISE UP!!!

Just tonight I came across an interesting question over at Kboards – and if you Kindle authors haven’t heard of Kboards you REALLY don’t know what you are missing.

A fellow named Frank was asking how bottom-dwelling authors – that is, the folks who have to settle for selling double-digits every month. Say like eighteen books sold in a month or twenty-three or thirteen.

(remember that number)

It seemed that Frank was major-league bummed out over the fact that his books had been selling at a pace that made a frozen road-killed snail look fast.

Well – I thought about his question and then I stepped into the thread and rattled off this answer.

Listen Frank – I have sat and watched my Kindle sales freaking PLUMMET over the summer – and even before that.

Now – just these last couple of weeks I’ve begun a renewed campaign to goose those sales up a bit.

And I have seen some results in just these last couple of weeks. Brown bars have begun to slowly disappear.

I’ve got a big Friday 13th push coming in four days. I’ve got more promotion planned over the month of October. I am already beginning to figure on Christmas.

I have just begun to fight!

The good thing about being on the bottom is it gives you a pretty good idea which direction you need to head in.

Remember this – and this is coming from a hybrid author who still has foot in the traditionally-published camp.

These aren’t the old days. This isn’t the era when books would poop around on the bookstore shelves for three or four weeks before getting their covers torn off and their pages thrown into the landfill. Brothers and sisters we are publishing freaking kowabunga e-books – tiny wonderful immortal bundles of raw data that CANNOT BE KILLED.

Sure, you may be on the bottom today. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay there. Roll your pennies and collect your bottles and sell your baby sister for a couple of brand new nifty covers. Plan that next big promotion – with about three more promotions after it. Write a new book – or three new books – each one of them and advertisement and a potential life line for those books of yours that are inspecting the be-barnacled belly of the Titanic.

Remember – children – the e in e-books stands for EVOLUTION – which rhymes with REVOLUTION – which bespeaks of wheels and cycles and whatever is on the freaking bottom rising up again to the top.

Get at it now. Get writing and get promoting and just forget about the numbers are telling you now. E-rase that blackboard and e-volve your product and e-something-or-other yourself the heck off that bottom and back up to the top where you belong!

So that’s what the next month or two is going to bring. I’m going to tell you folks all about my upcoming promos and strategies over the next few days and I will tell you all about the HUGE sales event I have planned for this Friday 13th – at least for you folks who read Kindle.

But for now I just want to tell you that you should never, ever surrender in this business. Your book has not sunk forever – anymore than the Loch Ness Monster has gone and drowned himself. The fact is – what has sunk can and will rise again.

Here’s somebody who says this a little better than I do.

You might also want to give a read to Sherrilyn Kenyon’s speech to the RWA – what she went through before hitting publishing success is incredible!
You just follow this blog for the next few days and see what luck I manage to pull out of my bvd’s.

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If you want to read the actual Kboard thread check it out HERE!

And – if you are looking for something to read why don’t you pick up a copy of the fifth story in my collection of Sea Tales – BUILT FOR HANGING ON – which tells the story of a long-married Maritime couple and how they survive the Apocalypse.

Just click the photo-link. I guarantee a good read. Warning, though – this made my wife cry.

STARTING YOUR STORY – FROM A TO Z

Starting Your Story

Okay.

Let’s step into a time machine for a minute. Back to high school dances when I was a kid. They usually happened in the gymnasium. All of the boys would line up on one wall. All of the girls would line up across the gymnasium on the other wall. And then, while the music played on, we mostly just leaned there, squinting across the distance and trying to work up the courage to cross that vast span of gym floor and ask someone to dance.

Sometimes, getting started is the hardest thing of all.

So – today – I have prepared for your use twenty-six story-starting paragraphs.

Read through them and write yourself a short little story. It doesn’t have to be an epic. It doesn’t have to be particularly brilliant. This isn’t rocket science. We’re just sitting here together on opposite sides of the internet, telling each other stories.

Consider it a challenge.

Consider it an exercise.

Consider it an invitation to a dance.

 

Albert had it all figured out. She was coming by train. He wanted to surprise her. He was at the station two hours before the train arrived. He had a chocolate bar an hour before arrival time. As she was getting off the train he was hiding in the men’s washroom, waiting for her to leave.

 

Betty bought the pistol at a pawn shop from a dapper little man who was a foot too short and about thirty pounds too heavy to be considered anywhere close to desirable. He placed the pistol in a shoebox, tied with a frayed yellow string. She drove home, unwrapped the box and loaded the pistol. She turned on the television and sat there, watching a Dr. Phil rerun, waiting for her husband to come home.

 

Cyril hated his job more than any human being ought to.  He hated the sight of his desk. He hated the smell of the wallpaper. He hated the rasping wheedling sound of his boss’s voice. One morning everything changed.

 

Delores loved Cyril – but Cyril had been married to Betty for over twelve years. As far as Delores concerned that was a twelve year mistake that she was about to rectify.

 

Ernest had sold tickets at the train station for sixteen years. Every morning before work his wife would pack him a lunch – cold ham with a slice of processed cheese and a generous squeeze of yellow mustard. A cup of lukewarm tea that he sipped from all day long.  Then one morning Ernest bought a train ticket for himself for the very first time in his life. He boarded the train, handed the ticket to the conductor and sat down at a window seat to watch.

 

Felicia collected butterflies. She loved the magnificent patterns of their wing structure. She kept them mounted in picture frames in her living room where she would sit and rock upon rocking chair and stare for hours at the kaleidoscope of perfect wonder. One morning Felicia decided that she had waited and studied for long enough. It was time to make her very own set of wings.

 

Gary watched the woman upon the roof with that beautiful set of multi-colored silken wings. Any other person in the world would have felt some sort of a brief burst of excitement but Gary was tired of living. He wasn’t suicidal, just intensely lethargic. It had been coming on for some time. He took one last look at the winged woman, then returned to his room and crawled under the bed and lay there in the darkness. “I’ve been waiting for,” a voice whispered far too closely to his ear.

 

Hilda turned the television set off and wondered when Ernest would come home. He was nearly two hours late. He might have been shopping – but he hated to shop. He might have been bowling – but he hated sports of any kind. She picked up the telephone and dialed the train station. When she heard that Ernest had left on the morning train she hung up carefully and considered her next move.

 

Isaac was having a good day. He had sold that pistol as well as the three rolls of silk that the old Chinamen had left with him.  He ought to close early but you should not turn your back on luck. His father had taught him that. When the fat black man with the guitar case walked into pawn shop and said “I’d like to pawn my soul, please.” Harry simply replied “How much were you hoping to get?”

 

Jennifer had never heard such music before. The old black man’s guitar must have strung with lark song and essence of whippoorwill. She threw three shiny quarters into the belly of the guitar case and was surprised when the old man snatched the three quarters up and told her – “I can double this ten times over if you’d like to make a little medicine with me.”

 

Keith picked up the bible and started to pray. He’d done the same thing every morning and every night of his life but God had never listened – until now.

 

Laurie walked into the church with two cans of gasoline and one box of matches. Maybe now God would finally listen.

 

Max smoked his last cigarette just outside of the old church. He was staring directly at the graveyard when the first explosion roared out.  He woke up beside a gravestone, staring at himself.

 

Nancy opened one eye. Then the other. She breathed in. She breathed out. Damn it, she said – I’m still alive.

 

Orson started walking. He wasn’t sure where he was going but he had a hunch he’d know when he got there.

 

Phyllis listened to the waves rolling onto the beach. They had been telling her a story all of her life – a story that only she understood and knew the meaning to. This morning she woke up to discover that the waves had grown silent.

 

Quincy had worn cotton in his ears for as long as he could remember. He had a theory that ninety-eight percent of the words that were ever spoken weren’t particularly worth listening too. Three days following his fifty-eight birthday Quincy finally found a reason to unplug his ears and listen.

 

Rita was ready. Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue – namely herself. She sat there alone in her room sprinkling uncooked rice and dead daffodils upon the floor playing the wedding march on her dead Uncle Billy’s eight-track player.

 

Steve sat at his keyboard – wondering how in the world he was ever going to come up with a story-starting paragraph for T,U,V,W, X,Y and Z. His coffee was getting cold. His patience was wearing thin. If only someone would help him finish this all-important blog entry. He looked up in surprise to see a small blue songbird sitting upon his windowsill – whistling out the answer in a surprisingly tuneful Morse code.

Too bad Steve had failed his Morse Code Badge in Boy Scouts…

 

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Seeking Inspiration in Writing…

“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison.

Edison does have a point – but I know of an awful lot of writers who have shed an awful lot of perspiration in the cause of seeking inspiration. Sometimes it is awfully hard to find just the right chunk of kindling to make the fire go!

Any maritime fledgling writer in search of inspiration you would do well to swing on down to The Bookmark on Spring Garden Road and pick up a copy of SALT LINES – a brand new collection of 55 examples of writer’s wisdom on inspiration, expectation, blocks, breakthroughs and the art of process.

In fact you don’t need to be writer to find value in this little pack of words. Whether you are a playwright, a songwriter, a columnist, a blogger, a writer of memoirs, a spoken word artist, a poet or maybe you just like to scribble dirty little notes on the men’s room walls – you definitely will find the grain of sand necessary for the crafting of pearls in this nifty little collection of wisdom.

The writers sampled are published Atlantic Canadians, playwrights, poets, screenwriters, journalists, spoken word artists, musicians and novelists. They are: CATHERINE BANKS • JANET BARKHOUSE • BRIAN BARTLETT • JOHN BELL • CHRIS BENJAMIN • BINNIE BRENNAN • DOUGLAS ARTHUR BROWN • JEFF BURSEY • SCOTT CAMPBELL • SILVER DONALD CAMERON • MARY JANE COPPS • KEV CORBETT • NATE CRAWFORD • GWEN DAVIES • TANYA DAVIS • STEPHANIE DOMET • ALYDA FABER • JANE FINLAY-YOUNG • SHELLEY GOODWIN • SUE GOYETTE • JENN GRANT • SHAUNTAY GRANT • SYLVIA D. HAMILTON • SARA JEWELL • HEDDY JOHANNESEN • STEPHEN KIMBER • ADRIENNE KING • CARSTEN KNOX • HOLLY KRITSCH • TONJA GUNVALDSEN KLAASSEN • CAROLE LANGILLE • NADINE LAPIERRE • LEZLIE LOWE • KATHY MAC • EVA MADDEN-HAGEN • STEPHENS GERARD MALONE • ELAINE McCLUSKEY • MICHAEL MELSKI • SARAH MIAN • CARMEL MIKOL • SHANDI MITCHELL • PHILIP MOSCOVITCH • LORRI NEILSEN GLENN • SHARON GIBSON PALERMO • SANDRA PHINNEY • ANNA QUON • DARCY RHYNO • SYR RUUS • MARJORIE SIMMINS • ANNE SIMPSON • JON TATTRIE • JULIE VANDERVOORT • ROSE VAUGHAN • STEVE VERNON • BUDGE WILSON.

Yup, that’s my name, second from the last.

No accounting for taste, I guess.

Salt Lines is published by Backalong Books, edited by Lorri Neilsen Glenn and Carsten Knox, with illustration by Kathy Kaulbach. Each copy is $14.95. Salt Lines will be available at Bookmark Bookstore in Halifax and at backalongbooks.com.

Proceeds from sales go to the Elizabeth Venart Emergency Fund for writers, a fund administered by the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

I can’t think of a better fund. I mean – let’s face it – we are getting older by the minute. None of us are born wrinkle-resistant. And writers have one of the lousiest retirement packages on the planet.

 

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon