I’ve never been able to pat my head and rub my belly at the same time, and so I have been remiss in keeping up with my blog, or my writing for that matter. But I had decided early on that this summer was not going to be writing intensive. Instead, I have spent the last two weeks working on house stuff. I got a start (not a good start, but a start) on painting my deck, which sorely needs it. I did paint out dining room, and it looks great if I say so myself. I started tearing up tile in our kitchen in anticipation of putting in some kind of new flooring (not sure which yet). I replaced the sheetrock in our bathroom where a major crack has appeared. And I spent several days with my wife cleaning dust off of everything in the house because of all of my other endeavors. And, oh yeah, we caught a couple of movies. Ironman III and Star Trek–both thumbs up.
But even though I haven’t been pounding the keyboard, stuff has been happening. I have a book signing here in Keene tomorrow and Sunday at the Texas ABC. I told the manager that my two new books–Infinity’s Reach and The Champion–were a great deal more edgy than what he was used to selling, but he still insisted on the event, and he seems to be more excited about it than I am. Previous events haven’t been that well organized, but this one seems to be coming together well. I ordered 50 of each book for the ABC and I will be there three hours each day. I encourage you to come by.
As part of that event, I sent out a press release (Tiffany: this is why authors need newswriting skills) and have a story in today’s Cleburne Times-Review, on the Keene Star website, in the Southwesterner and on Facebook. In addition, Mark Smith from the Times-Review will be coming tomorrow to interview me while at the book signing. So pretty cool, eh?
And more good news: I regularly get listings of books from Amazon that they recommend I purchase, as I presume other people do. Today they were promoting a book called Tom Horn vs. The Warlords of Krupp. Every heard of it? Well I guess I have, since I wrote it.
And the giveaway on Goodreads for ten copies of Infinity’s Reach is winding down, with 11 hours to go. Presently I have 664 people signing up to get 10 books. Glad that I’m not the one who has to decide who those autographed paperback copies go to.
But this blog is called hits and misses. I am still trying to figure out how to best use pricing and advertising on Facebook to my best advantage. Sales on If Tomorrow Comes were doing well a couple of months ago, and so as an experiment I decided in April to run Facebook ads promoting it, while raising ITC e-book pricing from $2.99 to $4.99 to pay for the ads. After three weeks I cancelled the advertising because it was costing more than I expected for less results than I expected. Yesterday I checked with Amazon and it appears that my sales actually went down during that time. And so I have dropped ITC prices back to $2.99.
There’s no great mystery to book marketing. For me it’s been hit or miss; trial and error. I am learning as I go, and so far haven’t made a million or lost my shirt. And so that’s a good thing.
But I have come to one conclusion. You have to keep trying until one day something you write will appear at just the right time with just the right person. And then it will take off.
At least, that’s the plan.
The Great Adventure 