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My next novel…

For me, with every novel, there’s a point of no return.

Up through about 10-ish thousand words, it’s entirely possible that I scrap the whole thing and start over. My hard drive is littered with novel-starts of 5-10,000 words that I set aside because they weren’t working how I expected. But there comes a point at which the novel is going to happen. I’ve written enough to love it enough to need to finish.

Sometime in the last couple days, I passed that point with my next novel. I’m super excited about it.

I am shooting for a late-September launch date. I’m planning some slightly different marketing strategies. I’m visualizing the cover.

What’s more, I have a big announcement about it coming next week. I can’t wait to tell you!

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Death of Secrets Audiobook

I’m listening to the first fifteen minutes of the Death of Secrets audiobook. This is so cool! The actor who does this really makes it sound good. I’m excited about this. Hopefully I’ll be able to share a sample of it soon, and everyone else can look forward to it as much as I am.

Death of Secrets sells much better than Life of Secrets so far. It’s hard for me to understand that, since I feel like Life is the superior story. But it’s a fact. Reinforce success, as one often hears. Since Death of Secrets is the more popular book, Death of Secrets gets an audiobook first.

I’ll be sure to post a sample for folks as soon as one is ready.

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Life of Secrets Launches!

My new novel, Life of Secrets, is live on Amazon.com today. Life of Secrets is the story of a woman framed for assassinating a Presidential candidate.

Alyssa Chambers is rich and privileged by birth, but a criminal by choice. She steals secrets from the powerful and influential, and sells them to whoever pays – and they pay very well. But when someone assassinates a Presidential candidate in an office Alyssa just robbed, she’s framed for the murder and her whole life goes up in smoke. Now she’s running for her life, hunted and alone. The last man she can trust is the one she can’t stop betraying. To survive, clear her name, and uncover the assassin, she must face the truth about her past, the truth about her family, and the truth about her Life of Secrets.

Grab your copy today! Click here.

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Life of Secrets: Launching in Nine Days

Tonight I uploaded what should be the final version of Life of Secrets to my Kindle and my Android phone, to make sure everything works. If my normal job leaves me some free time tomorrow, I will try to set up an “early edition” purchasing system so people can buy the book in different file formats for a day or two before it goes exclusive to Amazon.

If you signed up to be an ambassador, get your reviews ready! The time to post them is coming right up!

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Life of Secrets: Proofs Are In!

2014-06-10 21.57.54The physical proofs of Life of Secrets are in! This is such an exciting time for me. I remember when I held the first real, physical copy of my first book — now it’s here all over again.

The launch is on schedule for June 23. If my work schedule ever lets up a tiny little bit, I’ll be trying to set up some advance ordering options before then. But one way or another, this book is going out. Thank you God for the wonderful experience of publishing books.

 

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Coming June 23: Life of Secrets!

Life of Secrets, the sequel to Death of Secrets, will be available for sale on June 23, 2014.

I ordered the proof copy today. If it checks out on Wednesday, I’ll order a bunch of paperbacks so I have them available.

I love this book. I feel like it represents tremendous growth as a writer since Death of Secrets. This is a roller coaster thrill ride with twists, turns, and surprises at every new page. Hidden in all that fun is a powerful emotional story about forgiveness and redemption.

It also represents growth as an indie-author-businessman. The book is much more professionally presented, with far better editing.

Warm up your Kindles, friends. Life of Secrets is almost here!

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Life of Secrets: Ambassadors Wanted

I’d like to recruit some Ambassadors to help spread the word about life of Secrets when it launches. As an independently published author, there’s no publishing house marketing budget behind my books. I manage all the promotions myself. And word of mouth is a crucial part of that marketing. Ambassadors will have specific things they can help with. Read on!

Who should be an Ambassador?

Did you read Death of Secrets? Did you like it? Have you been looking forward to Life of Secrets? Are you comfortable telling other people that, including strangers and friends? If so, you’re the perfect candidate.

What do Ambassadors get?

You will get a FREE e-book version of Life of Secrets, and you’ll get it weeks before anyone else. (So, one more qualification for Ambassadors: you should enjoy reading electronically, whether on a Kindle, iPad, tablet, nook, your laptop, or whatever.)

Sounds great! What do I have to do?

Ambassadors commit to three things:

  1. Posting an honest review of the book on Amazon.com within 24 hours after the official launch date. This is the biggest, most important duty of an Ambassador. The most successful e-book marketing tools are all based on the number and average star rating of your reviews. It takes at least 4 to get listed in some places, and as many as 20 in others. I need reviews, and I need them quickly, in order to get started on the advertising campaign to sell the book. Remember: honest reviews. Ambassadors are not obligated to write a good review, or give it five stars, or anything like that. They only commit to posting a review that tells how they really felt about the book. The official launch date is likely to be the last week of June, so you’ll have  quite some time to read the book and craft your review to get it ready to post on Amazon.
  2. Sharing Life of Secrets posts on Facebook. This really helps increase the awareness of the book.
  3. E-mailing me any typos or edits you might find. The great beauty of electronic publishing is that mistakes can be corrected at any time, even after the book is published. Life of Secrets has already been worked on by very skilled editors, but the lesson I learned from Death of Secrets is that typos still crop up no matter how many times you think you’ve polished it.

Ambassadors are a fundamental part of my marketing strategy. I want to be clear about this: I am asking for your help. If you’re willing, and the above description sounds good to you, then fill out the form below and I’ll get you started!

UPDATE: Life of Secrets is published, so the Ambassador program is over now. Grab your copy on Amazon!

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BookBub lives up to the hype

For Indie authors trying to promote their books, the name BookBub looms very large. Once I finished blindly flailing about, I discovered that BookBub is the leading name in promotion of e-books by e-mail. I also learned that they’re hard to get in with. But eventually, they accepted Death of Secrets.

Bookbub has certain requirements: The price you give them has to be the lowest for which the book has been advertised anywhere else. It has to be a limited time special. Unfortunately, I had put Death of Secrets at $0.99 as a regular price starting in March, which made it hard to get listed in bookbub for that price.

I put the novel on free promotion, and paid BookBub $220 to list it. I also sent the free promotion to a few smaller e-mail lists that promote free e-books. As usual, I scheduled like a bazillion tweets over the course of the free promotion.

What happened?

Over the course of the free promotion (April 29-30) the book was downloaded 40,000 times. Let me repeat that: Forty Thousand. My previous free promotion had 5,700 downloads. So yeah, BookBub can move e-books.

But of course, those are all free. Your humble narrator makes zero. Obviously, it’s a great audience builder for the sequel, which is the main point at this stage of my writing “career.” But still, one yearns for entrepreneurial success as well.

Good news!

Amazon. of course, lists books based on their sales. So by spiking the downloads so hard, Death of Secrets was all of a sudden much more visible on Amazon to people who are looking for thrillers. What that means is, after a free promotion, there’s always a spike in paid sales. In this case, that spike was pretty impressive.

I set the price back to $2.99 after the free promo, rather than $0.99. (more on the pluses and minuses of the two price points in a later post). And at that price, the day after the huge free promo, 220 people bought Death of Secrets. In the intervening days, the number has grown to 320.

Since $2.99 qualifies for the 70% royalty rate on Amazon, I get roughly $2.05 per sale. That means, of course, that I’ve made $656 in royalties so far in May. Given that the BookBub promo cost $220, that qualifies as a smashing success!

Now, the trick is to keep the success going. I have a couple other promotions scheduled today and later this month. I’ll post again about how things develop.

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Death of Secrets – Amazon Bestseller!

Screenshot 2014-05-03 at 9.33.15 AMDeath of Secrets hit number one in Amazon’s list of political suspense thrillers!

The book was on free promotion through 11:59pm Wednesday night. Thanks to a listing in Bookbub.com’s daily e-mail, the free promotion was wildly successful, with almost 40,000 downloads over the course of two days. The residual sales after the free promo ended much more than covered the cost of the bookbub promotion — indeed they’re still going on.

Those same residual sales were strong enough to boost it to the top of its category for a while this week. It’s still in the top ten as I write.

For a person strongly influenced by Tom Clancy in my youth, it’s pretty amazing to see my own work ranked above his.

I plan to fully analyze the cost/benefit of my investment in bookbub soon. I think it’ll be info that other indie authors want to know.