Saturday, March 31, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Updates
Hello everyone. I haven't blogged in awhile. Got some various updates. Mostly been busy with the release of my book now. It is available in both ebook for .99 HERE you can also get it in paperback through amazon. If you'd like a signed copy, click the "BUY NOW" link off to the right and I will send you an autographed copy.
Also working on book number two at the moment. It is the second book in the Pastor Charlie series. Between that, working and getting over a bad chest infection, I have been keeping plenty busy!
Also working on book number two at the moment. It is the second book in the Pastor Charlie series. Between that, working and getting over a bad chest infection, I have been keeping plenty busy!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Guest Author Christine Nolfi
Christine’s
debut novel, Treasure Me http://tinyurl.com/7ttq5lt enjoys a 97% approval rating on
GoodReads and many 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon, including a 5-star rating
from Amazon Top Reviewer Betty Dravis. Her next release, The Tree of Everlasting Knowledge, will be available in March.
When you decided to
Indie Publish, what was your first step in the process?
I didn’t
start out as your typical Indie novelist. I spent several years working with
literary agents. Both Random House and NAL expressed interest in my novels.
When an offer never materialized, my critique partners urged me to go Indie to
build my own readership.
Going
in, I knew my debut must stand head and shoulders above many of the
independently published books flooding the market. Treasure Me was heavily edited and flawlessly proofed. The plot was
fast-paced and amusing. The eBook went live in late April 2011 and I
immediately began querying book blogs for review. Those great reviews posted on
Amazon, GoodReads and FaceBook drove sales.
Are your books
available in print? If so, how did you select a printer for the hard copies?
The
paperback of Treasure Me didn’t hit
the shelves until November 2011 for the simple reason that I was busy selling
my house in Ohio and moving to new digs in South Carolina. Now that I’ve
settled in, the process is more organized. I’ll release the paperback version
of Tree of Everlasting Knowledge a
week after the eBook goes live. All of my upcoming novels will probably appear
in tandem—eBook and paperback—to ensure a wider readership and allow for
submission to national and international contests.
Who
builds my paperbacks? I use Amazon’s CreateSpace, based here in my new hometown
of Charleston. Of course, there are several quality publishers to choose
from—CreateSpace doesn’t have a lock on the market.
What has worked best
to boost sales?
Every
time a book blog prints a positive review or invites me to write a post there’s
a surge in sales. Not that I’m focused on short-term results. I write
contemporary fiction bordering on literary and strive, with every book released,
to expand a loyal readership. As any financially secure novelist will tell you,
it’s all about building a backlist. I’ll release my third novel, Second Chance Grill, in April.
How has social
networking and blogging affected your sales?
Social
networking is an important driver of sales. I believe firmly in Good Author
Karma and try to give back every day. Other authors will help you succeed if you do the same for them on Twitter,
GoodReads, Facebook, Google+ and your blog.
One
caveat: As your readership and following grow, social media can get out of
hand. Limit your exposure. Know that you can’t respond to every post that
mentions you. Always respond to your readers, of course, but fiercely guard
your writing hours. You must continue
to produce or readers will forget you.
What advice can you
lend new Indie Authors?
Don’t
publish a novel that’s thin on plot, littered with clichés and poorly edited.
If you’re serious about a publishing career, you should be familiar with the
superb Stein on Writing by Sol Stein
and the equally information Breakout
Novelist by Donald Maass. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style and Elements
of Grammar should sit on your bookshelf. And if you’ve been writing in a
cave, consider joining a critique group. You need the company and feedback of
other serious writers to help you achieve your dreams.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Now Available!!
The Hand of God is now available on Kindle! It's 4.99 to purchase, free to Amazon Prime members! Please feel free to leave amazon reviews as well. Thank you to everyone for your support through this process.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Amazon Charging to Publish, Low Ebook Prices and Other Crises
So lately I've seen many blogs and articles about whether or not Amazon is going to charge authors to publish their books, or if they should charge. So far there has been nothing official from Amazon regarding this, not even a hint at it that I'm aware of. Yet I've seen a lot of discussion about this in the Twittersphere.
Many authors would even support this. Some have suggested a $500.00 publishing fee to put the book up on Amazon. They argue this would instill some sort of quality among independent books. At least it would cut down the field to the most dedicated and serious authors. As things are right now, anyone can publish anything into Kindle format and sell it for .99, no matter how horrible it is. So readers are left to sort through a schlock pile of drivel to find anything of any quality. Somehow it is believed we will see less of this if Amazon charges some exorbitant fee in order to publish.
I find that interesting however. Around ten years ago I wrote and indie published my first book. At the time there wasn't an ebook option. Print on Demand was just coming into its own at that time. You could publish your book in print for anywhere from $99.00 to $2500, depending on who you used, and what services you bought from them besides just the formatting and publishing. During that time, prices to publish would often creep up, or you'd sign up for the 99.00 package only to be hit with hidden fees later down the road. Among the author sites and message boards, authors complained that this was fleecing the authors and that everyone had a right to have their book in print.
I could understand the justification for some of the big fees back then for print books. They did the setup, cover design, sometimes editing, marketing, etc. So they had to charge for some of this. Not sure how Amazon would even justify a 500.00 fee as they aren't doing anything other than storing your book on their site. If anything, I could see them charging an annual fee to house your book there, but nothing like 500.00. Maybe 50.00 a year "storage fee" if that.
As it is now, Amazon makes 30-65% off each ebook sold depending on the price point. They make this money for doing little more than hosting the book on their site. Using this model, they make all the money off of sheer volume. They sell millions of ebooks, indie and other wise each day. They are doing pretty well with their cut of these books. From what I read in the past, a lot of this has to do with Bezos and some conflicts he had with publishers when the Kindle first became a big deal. So this is his way of pushing them out of the picture, by making them irrelevant. So far they have done a pretty good job of that. I don't see why they would want to mess that up.
That brings me to my second point, the .99 cent price point. I suppose this could be two blogs, but I'm feeling energetic today. I have a LOT of .99 cent books on my kindle I haven't even looked at yet. I will try to keep this part short and simple. When it comes to price point, it comes down to two things, perceived quality and value.
I used to work in sales, for many years. Even had my own retail store. Now, my store went out of business, so maybe I'm not the best expert here. I had good prices on my items, problem was for me, I had Best Buy and Wal-Mart right down the road selling the exact same items for a fourth of what I could. So in that case a low price point wins. But here is one story when I had my store.
My particular store was a cell phone franchise for a major carrier. Often times, people would want free or cheap phones. After Christmas of 2009, I knew there would be a big drop in business. One of my wholesalers gave me a huge discount on some little flip phones he was trying to move. So I decided to have an after Christmas sale and sell these for .99 with a 2-year contract.
So people would come in and say "I just need a basic phone. Got any phones that are like that, and real cheap?" I'd show them these phones, very good quality little phones too. They'd look at them and say "99 cents? What's wrong with it?" Every single person had to ask me that.
Then here is the second thing. I did sell all the phones, they went pretty quick. However a couple months later I got my quarterly deactivation report. These were people who either cancelled their contracts or got their phones shut off for not paying their bills. Dealers would get these every few months to see their cancellation percentage, not to mention the carrier would charge us money for people cancelling too soon.
So, I get the report for that quarter to see I had almost five times the amount of cancellations as I had in previous quarters. The majority of these were from the people I sold the .99 cent phones to. What was the lesson here? Value. These folks had no investment in their product. It was a .99 piece of nothing. Once they decided the bill got to be too much of a hassle or the phone wasn't as cool as they would have liked, they just didn't pay the bill, or just cancelled.
What does this have to do with ebooks? Well, everything. I know a lot of folks, when they see a .99 ebook, they figure it must be no good, it must be on clearance, or there must be something wrong with it. If they do buy it, it's not likely high on their priority list, because there is no value. They have no investment in it, so they don't really care if they get around to reading it or not.
One thing they often taught us when I was learning sales, is a good sales person can show the value in their product without having to slash prices. Yes, you want to be competitive, but undercutting each other to the point where you have to sell a thousand books just to come out a little ahead, is not good salesmanship.
Another thing we learned was price high, then work low. When my book is out, I plan to price it at 4.99, but then have different sales and specials for 2.99 or even .99, but only for a day here or day there. I've found with most products, that will grab more attention than a constant bargain basement price.
Unlike any other products I've sold, our books are our own creation, something we should take pride in and value. If no one else values it, WE definitely should. There is nothing wrong with presenting that value to others. Sure, we went people to download our book, but then we want them to READ it. Not only do we want them to read it, but we want them to tell their friends to read it, and they tell their friends and so on. It can be done. We might not sell a thousand copies a month, but if we're making 2-3.00 per sale, we'll make more with less sales. It's that balance of profit margin vs. volume.
So these are my thoughts on these issues today. Feel free to discuss below. Thank you all for reading.
Many authors would even support this. Some have suggested a $500.00 publishing fee to put the book up on Amazon. They argue this would instill some sort of quality among independent books. At least it would cut down the field to the most dedicated and serious authors. As things are right now, anyone can publish anything into Kindle format and sell it for .99, no matter how horrible it is. So readers are left to sort through a schlock pile of drivel to find anything of any quality. Somehow it is believed we will see less of this if Amazon charges some exorbitant fee in order to publish.
I find that interesting however. Around ten years ago I wrote and indie published my first book. At the time there wasn't an ebook option. Print on Demand was just coming into its own at that time. You could publish your book in print for anywhere from $99.00 to $2500, depending on who you used, and what services you bought from them besides just the formatting and publishing. During that time, prices to publish would often creep up, or you'd sign up for the 99.00 package only to be hit with hidden fees later down the road. Among the author sites and message boards, authors complained that this was fleecing the authors and that everyone had a right to have their book in print.
I could understand the justification for some of the big fees back then for print books. They did the setup, cover design, sometimes editing, marketing, etc. So they had to charge for some of this. Not sure how Amazon would even justify a 500.00 fee as they aren't doing anything other than storing your book on their site. If anything, I could see them charging an annual fee to house your book there, but nothing like 500.00. Maybe 50.00 a year "storage fee" if that.
As it is now, Amazon makes 30-65% off each ebook sold depending on the price point. They make this money for doing little more than hosting the book on their site. Using this model, they make all the money off of sheer volume. They sell millions of ebooks, indie and other wise each day. They are doing pretty well with their cut of these books. From what I read in the past, a lot of this has to do with Bezos and some conflicts he had with publishers when the Kindle first became a big deal. So this is his way of pushing them out of the picture, by making them irrelevant. So far they have done a pretty good job of that. I don't see why they would want to mess that up.
That brings me to my second point, the .99 cent price point. I suppose this could be two blogs, but I'm feeling energetic today. I have a LOT of .99 cent books on my kindle I haven't even looked at yet. I will try to keep this part short and simple. When it comes to price point, it comes down to two things, perceived quality and value.
I used to work in sales, for many years. Even had my own retail store. Now, my store went out of business, so maybe I'm not the best expert here. I had good prices on my items, problem was for me, I had Best Buy and Wal-Mart right down the road selling the exact same items for a fourth of what I could. So in that case a low price point wins. But here is one story when I had my store.
My particular store was a cell phone franchise for a major carrier. Often times, people would want free or cheap phones. After Christmas of 2009, I knew there would be a big drop in business. One of my wholesalers gave me a huge discount on some little flip phones he was trying to move. So I decided to have an after Christmas sale and sell these for .99 with a 2-year contract.
So people would come in and say "I just need a basic phone. Got any phones that are like that, and real cheap?" I'd show them these phones, very good quality little phones too. They'd look at them and say "99 cents? What's wrong with it?" Every single person had to ask me that.
Then here is the second thing. I did sell all the phones, they went pretty quick. However a couple months later I got my quarterly deactivation report. These were people who either cancelled their contracts or got their phones shut off for not paying their bills. Dealers would get these every few months to see their cancellation percentage, not to mention the carrier would charge us money for people cancelling too soon.
So, I get the report for that quarter to see I had almost five times the amount of cancellations as I had in previous quarters. The majority of these were from the people I sold the .99 cent phones to. What was the lesson here? Value. These folks had no investment in their product. It was a .99 piece of nothing. Once they decided the bill got to be too much of a hassle or the phone wasn't as cool as they would have liked, they just didn't pay the bill, or just cancelled.
What does this have to do with ebooks? Well, everything. I know a lot of folks, when they see a .99 ebook, they figure it must be no good, it must be on clearance, or there must be something wrong with it. If they do buy it, it's not likely high on their priority list, because there is no value. They have no investment in it, so they don't really care if they get around to reading it or not.
One thing they often taught us when I was learning sales, is a good sales person can show the value in their product without having to slash prices. Yes, you want to be competitive, but undercutting each other to the point where you have to sell a thousand books just to come out a little ahead, is not good salesmanship.
Another thing we learned was price high, then work low. When my book is out, I plan to price it at 4.99, but then have different sales and specials for 2.99 or even .99, but only for a day here or day there. I've found with most products, that will grab more attention than a constant bargain basement price.
Unlike any other products I've sold, our books are our own creation, something we should take pride in and value. If no one else values it, WE definitely should. There is nothing wrong with presenting that value to others. Sure, we went people to download our book, but then we want them to READ it. Not only do we want them to read it, but we want them to tell their friends to read it, and they tell their friends and so on. It can be done. We might not sell a thousand copies a month, but if we're making 2-3.00 per sale, we'll make more with less sales. It's that balance of profit margin vs. volume.
So these are my thoughts on these issues today. Feel free to discuss below. Thank you all for reading.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Pastor Charlie Journal Entry
Today:
I killed a person today. Even though this is God's work, and this person was a disgusting sinner, I find I enjoy the work. Having them tied to a cross, hearing them beg for their lives and for mercy, only to feel my blade sink slowly into them as the life drains away. I've done this long enough now, I can tell the exact moment the soul leaves the body. Sometimes they take another breath or two even after the soul is gone.
The cleanup is always routine. Some would call me a serial killer. I suppose that would technically be correct. However when I dismember my victims, it is a practical matter of disposal, not for the enjoyment. I've always been thorough in everything I do. There is a reason I haven't been caught yet. As far as I know, the police don't even know the status of anyone I've killed other than "missing."
Needless to say, I sometimes reflect on my work and what I've done. God directs me to sinners, and I kill them as part of his will. They beg me for mercy which I always deny. However I sometimes wonder, what if I'm wrong? What if it isn't God telling me to do these things? If so, will there be mercy for me? I try not to ponder the thought too much though. Things like that only confuse the faithful, giving us doubts, causing us to fall away. In the meantime, I must conclude this entry. There is work to be done.
---Pastor C
I killed a person today. Even though this is God's work, and this person was a disgusting sinner, I find I enjoy the work. Having them tied to a cross, hearing them beg for their lives and for mercy, only to feel my blade sink slowly into them as the life drains away. I've done this long enough now, I can tell the exact moment the soul leaves the body. Sometimes they take another breath or two even after the soul is gone.
The cleanup is always routine. Some would call me a serial killer. I suppose that would technically be correct. However when I dismember my victims, it is a practical matter of disposal, not for the enjoyment. I've always been thorough in everything I do. There is a reason I haven't been caught yet. As far as I know, the police don't even know the status of anyone I've killed other than "missing."
Needless to say, I sometimes reflect on my work and what I've done. God directs me to sinners, and I kill them as part of his will. They beg me for mercy which I always deny. However I sometimes wonder, what if I'm wrong? What if it isn't God telling me to do these things? If so, will there be mercy for me? I try not to ponder the thought too much though. Things like that only confuse the faithful, giving us doubts, causing us to fall away. In the meantime, I must conclude this entry. There is work to be done.
---Pastor C
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Book Review: Reunion by Jeff Bennington
Today I finished reading Reunion by Jeff Bennington. In this story, it begins with a Colombine-esque school shooting. The shooter is a very troubled teen who takes his own life during after the shooting. From there, the story fast forwards to twenty years later catching up with several of the former students present at the shooting. Many of them find they are still suffering from some sort of PTSD or feel they need some kind of closure, so they return to their school, which is now closed down, for a final class reunion.
Once they arrive at the school, they find a string of supernatural occurrences. Some of them are deadly. They think it's the ghost of David Ray, the shooter, but the story unfolds in a series of different twists and turns. Overall the story was well paced. The characters were well done and it offered a lot of good insight and internal dialogue about dealing with such a tragedy and how different people cope over the years. Some of the dialogue between characters was a bit over the top, and even cheesy; especially toward the end.
******SPOILER************
Biggest problem I had was at the end regarding David Ray's soul. He was "given" to demons as a child, and now these spirits were fighting for his soul which they were later granted. I guess I felt a better ending would have been some sort of redemption for the guy. As we learn about him leading up to the shooting, his life had been nothing but a path of pain, suffering and even torture. He was terrorized by his dad, beaten by his step dad and bullied at school. Hard to believe despite his horrible final act, he is still doomed to hell without ever really having a fair shake at life. Just my final thoughts there.
Over all I would give the book 4 out of 5 stars. Enjoyable and quick read, doesn't bog down too much, but tries to be preachy and poetic at times.
Once they arrive at the school, they find a string of supernatural occurrences. Some of them are deadly. They think it's the ghost of David Ray, the shooter, but the story unfolds in a series of different twists and turns. Overall the story was well paced. The characters were well done and it offered a lot of good insight and internal dialogue about dealing with such a tragedy and how different people cope over the years. Some of the dialogue between characters was a bit over the top, and even cheesy; especially toward the end.
******SPOILER************
Biggest problem I had was at the end regarding David Ray's soul. He was "given" to demons as a child, and now these spirits were fighting for his soul which they were later granted. I guess I felt a better ending would have been some sort of redemption for the guy. As we learn about him leading up to the shooting, his life had been nothing but a path of pain, suffering and even torture. He was terrorized by his dad, beaten by his step dad and bullied at school. Hard to believe despite his horrible final act, he is still doomed to hell without ever really having a fair shake at life. Just my final thoughts there.
Over all I would give the book 4 out of 5 stars. Enjoyable and quick read, doesn't bog down too much, but tries to be preachy and poetic at times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)