Tag: book promotion

The Story Cartel Experience

Story Cartel has been around for less than a year, so it’s not surprising that many people may not have heard of it. It’s developed a unique symbiotic system of exchanging free books for book reviews prompted by several stages of giveaways. According to their website:

“Story Cartel is full of books that are read and discovered by people like you. Since October 2012, over 10,000 readers have downloaded and read over 100 books, generating more than 1,700 reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and blogs. Thousands of readers are connecting with new authors right now.”

It works like this. An author uploads an e-book with all the usual accoutrements: title, book cover, blurb, sales link. Story Cartel offers the e-book for free downloads for a limited time, usually 20 days. Anyone willing to review the book posts their reviews and registers with Story Cartel and becomes eligible for one of three gifts from the author (author’s pick): three $10 Amazon gift certificates (1 per winner), five physical books mailed out to winners, or an e-reader. Continue reading “The Story Cartel Experience”

How to Stop Selling Books Immediately

July 2013 was one of the slowest sales months I’ve had. I didn’t sell very many books last month. In fact, when the final numbers are tallied, it may turn out to be my worst month ever. There are excuses, I mean reasons, and I’ll get to those, but let me whine, I mean pontificate just a little while longer.

When I’m asked how many books I sell I like to say that I sell books every single day, and up until July that was almost always true. But, during the past month I had two days where the numbers on my sales reports did not change. Now, I realize I’ve been a very lucky guy and there are authors who haven’t been as fortunate as I have, but I’ve kinda gotten used to a certain consistency, and last month it just wasn’t there. For two days my sales dashboard remained dormant and no one downloaded any of my three books. As my author friends know, this also affects your rankings on Amazon. With each hour of non-sales, my rankings got farther and farther away from the coveted top 100, 1,000, 10,000 spots. My usual ranking for my most popular book, My Temporary Life, is in the 10,000 to 40,000 range but I watched as it fell all the way to the 80,000 mark. Fortunately, it didn’t last, and the numbers started increasing after the short delay, and my rankings climbed back up. Continue reading “How to Stop Selling Books Immediately”

Roll Up For The Mystery Tour

In this digital age of ours, it is important to grab a share of the vast internet audience of readers who lurk in cyberspace. Of course, we have our regular followers and Facebook friends, yet how can we get out into that big bad internet world, filled with people who haven’t heard of us? What about a book tour? If you feature on blogs where you are not known, and where there are different followers to yours, surely you’ll pick up some new readers?

Last month, I decided to test this theory and took part in my first ever virtual book tour. Up until then, I had had very mixed feelings about them. I’d researched several companies and always decided against them. They seemed to be costly. Some seemed overly pushy. Some of the tour hosts had very few blog followers and, finally, I couldn’t really find any evidence that justified wasting my money on one. Instead, I organised my own book tour, and, although I got onto stacks of blogs, and had plenty of interviews, I exhausted myself. It was a nightmare trying to coordinate posts and promote it all, after all, I was only promoting to people who already knew me. Continue reading “Roll Up For The Mystery Tour”

The Interview

Imagine for a moment that you are a businessperson conducting interviews of two candidates for an important position in your company.

The first candidate shows up for the interview on time. She is appropriately attired. She is clean and well-spoken. Her resume is well-organized and provides you with the information you want. She seems well-prepared and handles your questions with poise and professionalism. At the end of the interview, she thanks you for your time and leaves you with a very favorable overall impression.

The second candidate shows up late. He is dressed in a slovenly manner. He mumbles a lot. He brought a sort-of resume on some crumpled paper that leaves a lot of questions unanswered. He looks like he might have forgotten to shower this morning. He seems unprepared and disorganized. His answers are rambling and indirect. At the end of the interview, he leaves and you hear him say as he skulks away, “Man, this company sucks.”

Unless you’re looking for a way to sabotage your company, you’d hire the first candidate. Continue reading “The Interview”