Last week I did a soft launch of Blood Royal and experienced good results with this and other titles. Sadly, sales and shares have dropped off for the last few days. No worries, because I had already planned a KDP Free Day promotion for 8-7-15.Which brings us to the oft asked question; do free days still work?My experience is that they do, but not like before. There is simply too much competition. In a free market, that means the consumer wins. So to look at the bright side I reminded myself that I am more of a book consumer than producer. For every book I publish I must read between twenty to one hundred fiction and nonfiction titles, depending on the length and complexity of my work-in-progress.As usual, I am breaking some promotional rules. The best practice in the past has been to do at least two days free to build momentum. I think that works, but only if you have quality paid advertising on both days. Due to budget constraints, I am doing one day and using Bknights as my paid advertiser. With luck, I will combine Bknights with Freebooksy for my next promotion.Other writers do giveaways and actively pimp their newsletter. These are promotional methods I should use, and will, when I have more time. In the mean time I mostly write and play at designing book covers.In other news I am strongly considering putting up some of my titles for audiobook audition on ACX because my current narrator is between studios. He’s really good. Finding someone new has many dangers, but we’ll see, won’t we?If you haven’t scored a copy of Blood Royal, tomorrow (8-7-15) would be a good time to check the series out (keeping in mind that Blood Royal is episode 2).
Archives for August 2015
Work to Do
Kin Roland and his companions move beyond the Battle of the Bleeding Ground to uncover the mystery of Earth Fleet versus the Mazz Empire. With the Crashdown wormhole closed, everything is changing. Aefel has friends in high places, in this case, the space station above Grendel. Are they willing to sacrifice everything to join him in a fight that can’t be won?
Today is going to be a busy but good day. I’ve committed to working on two projects. This seems like a bad idea, until I admit that I often have three to five stories going at once. And I am usually listening to an audiobook while driving and reading something on my Kindle phone app whenever I get a chance. So in the grand scheme of things, this is like focusing on the task(s) at hand with laser intensity.Last night I moved Weapons of Earth (Book Three in the Chronicles of Kin Roland) back into Scrivner. The complexity of the project requires a lot of notes. Scrivner, for all the headaches it causes me, is good for that kind of thing. I also have a really fun start on episode three of the Grendel Uprising series, Heavy Weapons. I would like to have WOE ready for publication by my birthday month in October and HW ready in September. It’s doable, I think.The reason I started the Grendel Uprising series, was to stay fresh. The Chronicles of Kin Roland is a four book series with two currently in print. Each book is about 85k to 90k. About 51k of Weapons of Earth is done. About 20k of book four, King of Hellsbreach, is complete as well. I really enjoy writing in this universe. It is a big project and a lot of work.For variety, I started the Grendel Uprising series with Proof of Death. The goal is to produce and publish one professionally edited story of 15k to 20k words a month. The June and July editions came out on schedule. I am crossing my fingers for August.Anyway, I should be writing fiction right now. So thanks for stopping by and have a great day.Scott