Tag Archives: amazon

Spam and Russians

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Anyone, well…any real person, who’s ever looked at my site and blog can tell right away that I’m not the type that loves to blog everyday.  Once or twice a month is fine for me.  My time is taken up with more important things in life than telling the reader what I had for breakfast.  So, it’s always nice when someone subscribes to the blog.  (“Subscription” is the term iPage uses for logging in so one can leave a comment.)  Sadly most, no, honestly almost ALL, ‘subscriptions’ come from autobots in the cyber world.

And, most of those are Russian.  I’ve even had some sites send long posts entirely in cyrillic script.  (Makes the spam hard to read for us ‘one language’ types.)  Other spammers have told me what a ‘wonderful’ site I have and they’ve been looking for months for the information I just gave them.  Sadly, I’m just hawking a couple of novels I’ve written, sorry…I’m not giving out too much earth shaking information here.

Don’t really know the point of all this.  I look at the web site traffic and see a couple of thousand hits a month.  I always wonder how many of those are real people and how many are search engines, autobots and Russian spammers.
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The new book is nearing completion.  Final scene is coming together.  Then we’ll go into the editing mode, finalize and put together the cover art.  Hope to have it for sale on Amazon sometime in the late summer.  Hope everyone had a great 4th of July!

 

New Book!

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I’ve been working on the next and probably last of the Jim and Eve books. I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through the story, this time a bit of an adventure involving antiviral drugs.  This one has been a bit more difficult to write, in fact, down right hard!  I thought it was going one way and just a few days ago it all turned around.  The characters in this story are more complicated, the story line more complex and there isn’t a historical flashback as in the first two. Severe hypoglycemia results in stroke condition or paralysis of limbs Burning/stabbing sensations in the body Seizures, stroke Wooziness, increased motion sickness Encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) Difficulty with multitasking Slowed speed of processing Auditory processing problems Encephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and spinal column or muscle response in penis. b. buy cheapest cialis According to a study sildenafil tablets australia has been proved helpful in treating erectile dysfunction. Estimating the figures are tricky because less than 2 levitra on line sales men in 10 try to find treatment for male sexual problem. cialis australia This may avert a man from keeping an erection.  I’ve changed the ending a time or two, it seems I’m settled on one thing and about a page in the story veers in a different direction.  Hopefully that’s about to end and we’ll get this book loaded on Amazon soon!  One thing I do enjoy is the research associated with being an indie author.  Who knew I’d ever gather so much useless trivia.  More about the new story later.

Final results of the free give away promotion

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Okay, this is good, as a result of this promotion I’ve sold enough books to buy a new car!  Yup, a new Corvette…and here it is:

NewCar

 

 

 

So lets look at the final results.  First, we need to understand the distribution.  BIL is currently exclusively listed by Amazon, both in softcover and, via Kindle, as an ebook.  (The Collingwood Legacy is not.  Hence, it is available via Smashword, Kobo, Barns and Noble, etc.  Someday, when I’ve figured it out I’ll make an educated guess: exclusive to Amazon or not.)  Anyway, back to the grist of this.  There are eleven Amazon sites, e.g. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, etc.  They are as follows:

• UK Kindle Store: United Kingdom (including Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey)
• DE Kinde Store: Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland
• FR Kindle Store: France, Monaco, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg
• ES Kindle Store: Andorra, Spain
• IT Kindle Store: Italy, San Marino, Vatican City, and Switzerland
• Japan Kindle Store: Japan
• BR Kindle Store: Brazil
• MX Kindle Store: Mexico
• CA Kindle Store: Canada
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I’m prohibited from telling you the numbers downloaded at each site.  However, I will say that I was a bit surprised by the results.  By the end of the promotion Betrayal in the Louvre was ranked #102 on the list of Free Amazon Kindle books and #3 in Historical fiction!  (See attached)

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Now, at the risk of Amazon being upset, well north of two thousand downloads were made in the USA alone.  So the question becomes “How did that translate to sales?”

Honestly, I don’t know if I have a good answer.  Certainly some sales of the book have occurred, witness my new car above! 🙂  But not a great number.  Interestingly, nearly as many sales (as opposed to free downloads) have occurred in France than even here in the USA since the promotion.  I find that interesting because the book is in English, about a couple of Americans and not advertised there a great deal.  So, thanks to the French!  There have been a few sales of the next book, The Collingwood Legacy.  And, that was really the goal wasn’t it?  The people who enjoy reading an indie author tend to get their books from giveaways.  I would to, its the way the industry is right now.

Lets face it, an indie author doesn’t have a lot of cash to spend on advertising.  The only mass outlet is a free giveaway.  Paid advertisements, even if the author makes the decision to spend the coin, are expensive.  Until that author has a substantial following, and I believe, a substantial number of books to sell I really don’t see the return on investment.  I’m setting a goal of four books listed on line before I start spending any money on advertisements.  Lets keep in mind the original goals: 1)  Tell a good story for the family;  2) This is just for fun, not for profit;  3) Learn a little bit about the indie world and share it with others.

So, here’s the most important thing.  On the three nights of the give away Eve and I checked the Amazon site every couple of hours.  We were nuts, absolutely caught up in the excitement of watching the book rise in the rankings.  It was fun. Mission accomplished.

Two other amazing things happened.  One lady posted a review on the Amazon site saying that she would rank the book 5 stars because my bio sounded like I’m a guy it would be fun to sit and talk with.  How cool is that!?  What a nice person to write that.  Some may question her ranking a book before reading it to which I reply, “C’mon, let’s not get too serious over a free ebook.”

The second amazing thing was a note I received via this web site from a lady in England. She was a bit miffed about some misspelled words.  I’m truly sorry those mistakes caused irritation.  I wrote her back and told her how embarrassed I was, how much her feedback was valued and hoped she would forgive me.  Guess what…she wrote back, said she enjoyed the story and after she’d received my reply any additional mistakes she made simply made her smile.  So, I had two takeaways on that, first and most important, I made someone smile (mostly by looking like an idiot that can’t spell but hey, a smile is a smile) and two, I’ve got to go back and reread the book, correct any misspellings and replace it on Amazon.

One word about editing.  When a book is written it is read and reread a dozen times.  Misspellings are difficult to catch after the second or third time through because the mind knows what the word is before the eyes finish seeing all the letters.  Take this sentence for for example.  Did you catch that?  I’ll bet you missed the second ‘for’ didn’t you?  Enough said.  I’ll work harder. (Oh, and remember, no paid editors, this is for fun and I’m cheap.)

 

Marketing for the indie author

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Since my main source of income is not revenue from books I’ve decided to make this one giant experiment in internet marketing.  I’ve spent a great deal of time reading other indie author’s sites, blogs, watching their YouTube videos and generally poking around in this ‘new’ industry.  It seems there are more scams, con artists and amateur experts than during the gold rush years of the dot.com era.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.  First, basic truths:  1. The CreateSpace store is much more profitable than selling on Amazon (by nearly a factor of two). 2. Amazon loves reviews.  The more reviews, the better.  Note, I do not think the number of reviews ups the ranking of the book in their ranking list, not sure on that however.  3.  A book signing is a wonderful, fun event and the profit per book sold CAN be higher than selling on Amazon.  But, it is impossible to sell enough books via that method to really make a large impact on yearly income.

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So, here’s what I’ve done.  I’ve enrolled in “The Author’s Marketing Club” (the free version, remember, this whole thing is about keeping costs to an absolute minimum.)  They seem like a good bunch, there are a lot of PAID services there, okay, a guy has to make a living…got that, but there is also a bunch of free advice and help.  Anyway, on their site they provide a ‘Free Amazon Kindle Book Submission Tool’.  While it doesn’t fit my definition of a ‘tool’ it is a page with links to the free book submission form for twenty-four ebook reader sites and blogs.  I’ll provide a list of the sites in the next few days, suffice it to say I’ve listed BETRAYAL on the sites and created a banner for the front page of this site.  Now, we’ll ride this part of the experiment out and see what happens to downloads.