…going to be determined in a week! Have you left a review for
Beasts of the Walking City yet? If you get it in before the end of the month, you're eligible for my drawing for a free Kindle Fire. And remember: all proceeds from this month are going to
Habitat for Humanity. If you haven't yet picked up the book, you still have a few days left to go and still have your money going to help out a fine charity.
Please pass the word: it's not too late!
To the rest of you:
thanks to everyone who has downloaded, read, reviewed, or are in the middle of reading Beasts! At the moment, I'm not doing any external promotion (aside, of course, from this post) and am still seeing sales happening regularly, every day, which I'm assuming are coming from work Amazon is doing to market it to other book buyers. I'm not ready to retire, of course. Nor am I quitting the day job any time soon. But it is great to see the book getting into the hands of readers on a steady basis, and I'll confess--results have been encouraging enough that I have started work on the sequel.
I'm going to hold off until the end of the month in posting all the results from the month, and some of the tests I'm doing, but I will post a few links here to materials that were helpful in either navigating Amazon's processes, tweaking the sale page, etc, if you're hanging around the site for that:
- First, while I'm generally allergic to how-to books, The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe by Jeff Bennington was a great overview of what to do and not to do when approaching Amazon's program. In particular, there were some good, tactical instructions here on dealing with your Amazon page that I didn't see anywhere else. Typical me, I read this after I already had everything set up online. But, the great thing about digital publishing for me means it's never too late to change something you screw up.
- Same for Make A Killing On Kindle (Without Blogging, Facebook Or Twitter) by Michael Alvear. I read this one pretty fast, and think a lot of the info is redundant with what you can find elsewhere online, but there were some good practical tips here that I ended up implementing, including at least one good one that Jeff didn't mention. (Full disclosure: I have not made a killing yet.)
- Joe Konrath's blog is very well known in the indie-publishing world, and many of you are probably reading it already. If not, check it out--he's a great cheerleader for someone considering making the leap into independent publishing.
Most of these authors will freely admit their experiences are somewhat unique--they were early in to the experiment, and their own experiences many not become yours. And it's important to keep in mind that the online publishing landscape changes rapidly and some of this info may be out of date. But I'd argue if this is something you're thinking about doing with a book of your own, you'll want to have as much info at your fingertips as you can.
More soon--stay tuned! (And thanks again for reading...)
