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Life of Secrets is being edited

The rough draft of my next novel is done. My editor is working on it right now. I’m incorporating her changes as they come in. Very soon, the sequel to Death of Secrets will be ready for readers.

These are my plans: Very soon, I hope to begin recruiting ambassadors for the book. Ambassadors will get a free copy with a unique commemorative cover in exchange for committing to post a review on Amazon the day it comes out there, and sharing about the book on their social media account.

After the ambassadors, it’ll be time to sell advance copies. Everyone who buys in advance will get a signed copy with a unique cover.

And then, Life of Secrets goes live on Amazon! The day is not far ahead of us!

In the mean time, if you haven’t read Death of Secrets yet, get your copy on Amazon today!

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Death of Secrets now includes a sample from Life of Secrets

The e-book version of Death of Secrets has been updated with a sample chapter from the forthcoming sequel, Life of Secrets. To celebrate, it’s free for download today.

Life of Secrets is a thriller about a professional thief framed for an assassination. It’s also a character driven novel exploring why a person comes to do bad things. Most important of all, it’s a story of redemption.

Return to the world of Mike Vincent, Kathy Kelver, and D. W. Tilman. Meet Alyssa Chambers. Go deeper into a political world where secrets and betrayal can be the difference between life and death.

You can start reading early by downloading the Kindle version of Death of Secrets today!

 

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Death of Secrets hits BookBub

As I’ve learned the art of marketing an indie novel, I’ve been trying to inform readers about what works and what doesn’t. But in all those posts, there has been one name that loomed over everything I wrote about analyzing sales. As I wrote “E-Reader News Today is good” or “Facebook advertising stinks,” there was always a caveat. The huge, most effective marketing channel that everyone talks about is BookBub.com. And I couldn’t report on it because they would not accept Death of Secrets for promotion.

Until now!

Yes, DoS finally qualified for the (reputedly) most effective marketing channel out there for e-books. So after April 29th and 30th, I hope to be able to report on just how well BookBub works.

So I want to say a thank you to everyone who responded when I asked for reviews. Your actions directly helped make this happen. More and more five star reviews make it possible for an e-book to qualify for some marketing channels. Thanks to you, I guess I finally made it over BookBub’s threshold.

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Sample Chapter Coming April 28!

Life of Secrets is now to the point where I’m ready to release a sample chapter! Starting a week from tomorrow, I’ll make it available on www.bowengreenwood.com. At the same time, the Amazon.com listing for Death of Secrets will also change to include a sample chapter from Life of Secrets.

As for the full novel, although I’m a bit behind the schedule I set for myself, it will still be published on June 1. The timeline was built to allow for a few delays.

Currently, the manuscript is in what I call the “rough rough draft” format. The story is finished, and I’m cleaning up some of the errors that result from the way in which I work on books (several different files, writing the beginning, middle, and end in different documents, constant revision of what’s already written to accommodate new ideas — etc.).

My first choice for editor doesn’t have the time right now, so hopefully this week I’ll learn about my second prospect.

The book will be substantially shorter than Death of Secrets. Currently it’s 53,000 words, and I doubt it will grow much beyond 55,000. Death of Secrets was closer to 90,000. Hey, that’ll cut the cost of editing almost in half!

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E-Reader News Today: Current Marketing Champ

I just paid my bill from E-reader News Today. Are you wondering how much it was? Of course you are! Answer: Under $10.

Their billing system is simple: they invoice you for 25% of what you earn on books sold by people clicking on the e-mail in which they featured your book. You math whizzes out there will have already grasped hold of the secret: you literally cannot lose with ereadernewstoday.com. If you sign up for a paid promotion with them and only sell a single book, you will still profit because they only charge you 25% of what you make. On the other hand, if you sell more books, your profit is larger.

They billed me for 110 books sold. Personally, I credit that promotion with 150-ish books sold. Probably some of the sales that happened while my promotion with them was going on were due to how my book rose in the amazon rankings, rather than people clicking the specific e-mail link.

Either way, I made over $50 on book sales for those couple days, and paid less than $10 for the promotion that made that happen.

My fellow indie authors, I am proud to recommend you toward e-reader news today!

Incidentally, in addition to having the best pricing structure so far, I also had more paid sales while I was promoting with them than with any other marketing avenue I’ve tried so far, including the free promotion. So not only are they cheap, they’re also effective.

It should be pointed out here that the reigning conventional wisdom about indie authors is that bookbub.com is the best e-mail marketing promotion you can buy. So far, I have not succeeded in persuading bookbub to list Death of Secrets. I’ll report on them when I do!

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Quote Post

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Sequel-izing

For people who enjoyed Death of Secrets, it might raise questions that Life of Secrets is a sequel, but features a completely new main character.

Don’t worry!

Congressman Mike Vincent is back in a pivotal role, and Kathy returns as well. D.W. Tilman will pass across the scene in flashbacks to his younger days.

Vincent finds himself a key player on the Presidential campaign of a man who might finally give Americans a leader who’s humble and sincere. Since it’s part of the marketing blurb for the novel, it’s not giving anything away to say that candidate dies early on. The whole story hinges on choices Mike makes.

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Life of Secrets is 99% finished

Today I expect to write the climactic fight scene and the epilogue. After that, it will become a simple matter of polishing, submitting the manuscript to an editor (I have her picked out – hope she agrees!) incorporating edits, polishing again, and beginning the marketing process leading up to the June 1 launch.

I expect Life of Secrets to come in shorter than Death of Secrets. Probably about a third shorter.

I wrote the start of the novel, then started a second file to write the end of the novel. Since then I’ve been writing forward in one and backward in the other. Tonight, the two files caught up to each other and I merged them.

Life of Secrets is on the cusp of being finished.

I can’t wait to show it to you.