Our Billion-Dollar Giveaway Continues.

Stella, one of our interns here at Long Cool One Books

This is an important message from publisher Ivan P. Krumholtz of Long Cool One Books.

(Staff writers.)

Here at Long Cool One Books, our Billion Dollar Giveaway continues.

While we will be winding things down gradually over the month of July, there are still plenty of free titles up for grabs.

All of our authors are on the same platforms, so here is just a quick sample of what’s available and where you can get it before time runs out.

Dusty Miller. Romance, erotica. Light BDSM, with occasional elements of fantasy and science fiction.

Ian Cooper. Hairy-chested male-oriented erotica, sexual memoir and historical fiction with his latest, Chevauchee. 

HaroldC. Jones. Gay literature with emphasis on bisexuality. Some BDSM elements. 

Zach Neal. Historical fiction, thriller, military, adventure and western stories. 

Louis Shalako. Science fiction, horror, fantasy, WW I memoir, satire, and the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery series.

Please enjoy the free read and don’t forget to leave a rating or a review.

Thank you for reading a Long Cool One Book.

END

{How was that, was that okay? > publisher.}

{Ya done good, boss. - ed.}

Don't mind him, ladies and gentlemen, he's never been on a blog before. - ed.

Analyzing Success.

A simple, low-cost cover image.

Louis Shalako

Analyzing Success.

In the past we might have been analyzing our failures and trying to figure out what to try next. 

Now we’re analyzing a success. One of the first things we realized, was that you really can’t analyze a success until you’ve had one.

Here at Long Cool One Books we’re a bit mystified by the success of one of our titles, Silent Service by Zach Neal.

We’ve gotten a little too used to launching a book and absolutely nothing happens. It felt a lot like standing on the edge of some bottomless pit and throwing it decisively into some kind of insatiable black hole, from which it would never rise again.

So far Zach’s short story of 16,020 words has sold forty copies in the U.K. and twenty-five in the U.S. and it’s only the eleventh of the month. The rankings are different because of the total sales, and the number of titles in that category in a particular store. Last month the book sold about sixty-five copies in the two stores combined and we’ve already beaten that. While there is no way to predict how future sales will behave, we are on our way to selling two hundred copies of this title in the month of July.

What’s interesting is that this book uses a very simple cover designed by J. Thornton. J. does all of our covers. There’s nothing radical about this cover.

Our editor, an un-named person living at an undisclosed location, edited this book as well as all previous titles. While their skills might have improved incrementally since the last book, there really isn’t that much of a difference.

For Silent Service, the sales copy, the product description might be better (slightly) than the one that went just before; and arguably, a hundred times better than the first half dozen we wrote five years ago.

So, what’s different about this book? Why is this book going when previous ones didn’t?

The biggest factor, and the most obvious answer, is that it’s a narrow category. There aren’t that many titles to begin with. If you make a sale in a category with ten thousand titles, it gives you ‘x’ worth of boost in the rankings. The same sale in a category with a hundred thousand titles can never be any more than ten percent of ‘x’. It’s just that simple, and of course having made one sale your book will now be presented to more readers. It’s certainly possible that a better cover would result in a better conversion rate. We will never know because we don’t have access to that data. (It is a pretty good guess, though. - ed.)

The cover alone doesn’t tell the whole story, although a smaller category, arguably, might have lower store traffic. In the romance category, there are probably ten million titles on Amazon. The thing is that every romance reader in the world might go through there once in a while. It has a huge amount of traffic. The submarine/adventure category cannot possibly be getting anything like that kind of traffic. In both categories, the covers all look depressingly familiar, but there is only so much one can do with a low-cost book cover image.

Analyzing a customer.

Years ago, I had this buddy. His old man was in the R.A.F. in WW II. I don’t know how much was bullshit, but according to the son he flew with Douglas Bader, he was in the Battle of Britain, he flew with the Dambusters later on and ended up in Pensacola on some exchange program teaching student pilots.

I liked airplanes and raided his bookshelves more than once.

Another buddy’s dad was in light cruisers in the Atlantic in WW II, eventually going on to the light Jeep or escort carriers.

I borrowed a bunch of books from them over the years as well.

Here’s what’s different about that generation. I doubt if either man had ever gone into a bookstore and bought one of those books for themselves. Those guys get those books for Christmas, they get them for their birthday. If anything, they sign up for some introductory offer from a book club. They take the first half dozen free ones for a buck (or whatever), buy a few books and then eventually let the membership lapse. They really aren’t big book buyers. Only a small number qualify as armchair historians, although this is a recognized stereotype and much more likely to buy a certain kind of book.

Now, in the case of ebooks, this is probably a different kind of customer—for one thing, the submarine service is very small. This book is historical as well, it’s not about the big nukes and the big boats. Their kids, grandkids and great grandkids probably do buy the books as gifts, but this doesn’t seem so likely to be ebooks. A few of them probably read thrillers such as Red October and watch films like U-571. I strongly suspect that the new buyers, certainly buyers of Silent Service, are more likely readers who just like ships, the sea, and stories of adventure. It might even be a younger audience.

For an author like Zach, who has dabbled in westerns, he has written a thriller, and he seems to like writing historical fiction, writing military or naval adventure stories seems like a natural. Writing sea stories, perhaps for a younger audience, encompassing everything from Horatio Hornblower to Tom Clancy, offers a quite a bit of scope for the historical writer, and there's room for some romance in there as well.

No big crossover.

What’s interesting is that so far, there has been absolutely no crossover for Zach. No one who has bought Silent Service has come back and read The Desert Raider or any of the other titles. Sea stories (or more likely submarine stories) and their readers are a category unto themselves, or so it would seem.

When we were first starting off, we would have been happy to sell five or ten copies of each title per month. Once you have that pump primed, the theory is that all you have to do is to keep writing. I can honestly say that never happened or we might have been a little more cheerful over the intervening years…

Obviously, it’s not as simple as all that, but we’re learning and trying new things with every project.

Poor old Zach has a really good day job and of course now he doesn’t quite know what to think. As for our other pen-names, they’re all wondering what they have to do to get a little piece of the action.

All I can tell them is to come up with your best ideas and write ‘em up.

We’ll get them out there and let the market decide.

END

Analyzing Success. (Chron.)

Failure Analysis. (HBS.)

Excerpt: Maintenon Mystery # 6, a Work In Progress.

Monsieur Noel is of course devastated.

(This is a work in progress and subject to revision. - ed.)

Louis Shalako

Traffic between the Quai d’Orfevres and the Boulevard des Italiens was heavy, not unexpectedly for the day after a long weekend. After the Resurrection, Jesus had returned to stay with the Apostles for forty days and then had been lifted up into heaven. Gilles’ own weekend, not being a particularly devout or even reverent person, had been spent quietly at home with the radio and his newspapers. Thankfully, they didn’t have far to go. The vehicle was warming up inside and they were fairly heavily dressed.

The weather had broken and the brilliant sunshine promised better things to come.

“What’s your name, young man?” Gilles was always on the lookout for new talent.

“Constable Renaudin, sir.”

“Don’t go anywhere. And for Christ’s sakes, park somewhere we can find you.”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.”

Doors thudded shut and Maintenon and Levain quickly mounted the front steps of the imposing building.

“Right, then.” Renaudin put it in gear and eased it forward, the most recent in a long line of official vehicles.

He left a little room in front of her. They could get out in a hurry if they needed to. It was always best to think ahead when dealing with the brass hats. There were one or two other uniformed types hanging around if he got bored and felt like talking.

Whatever was up, it looked like he might be in for a bit of a long day.

Renaudin got out of the car, needing a smoke. Some senior officers would shit all over you if the car smelled like dead tobacco.

There was a small throng of people, milling round in front of the building. Two other uniformed gendarmes were guarding the door, but talking to each other and not paying much attention.

“Move along now, there’s nothing to see here.”

A lady accosted him.

“Officer. That’s my bank. What’s going on? I have to get in there—”

“You know as much as I do, Madame. Do you have a car?”

She shook her head.

He thought for a moment, then began to give the lady directions to another branch via bus or Metro. At her age, it was a bit far to walk. After a minute, there were more than one listener clustered around him.

***

“Sir.”

Gilles flashed his badge at an unfamiliar gendarme, terribly thin and cadaverous even at the age of twenty or whatever, and their footsteps rattled and echoed in the cavernous space, all polished stone and hard surfaces.

A harried-looking individual broke out of a huddle with other similarly-stressed individuals, all of them remarkably of a certain stereotype. The detective hurried forward to meet them.

“Ah, Inspector Maintenon.” He extended a hand in genuine gratitude. “I’m Detective Grosjean.”

His sharp eye took in the hulking figure at Maintenon’s side.

“Hello.”

Grosjean grinned.

“Andre Levain, right?”

They shook hands quickly. Grosjean took a sober look at his hand afterwards, but no, it was still all in one piece. It hadn’t been crushed or anything…that was sure interesting.

“Come right this way, please.” He turned and led them through a featureless door in a flat section of the wall beside the main service counter.

***

There were too many people in the room. As soon as they saw Maintenon their voices lowered and they focused on the work. They were still taking photos and dusting every conceivable surface for prints. Any distinctive shoe-marks would have long since lost any meaning in the shuffle of men with big feet and habitually wearing stout, heavy shoes.

Grosjean was right there at his side.

“Who found the body?”

“A Mademoiselle Emilie Martin, head cashier. There were security guards on duty all through the weekend. The big branch manager, Monsieur Noel, was the first one to arrive this morning. The call came in at about twenty to nine.”

Maintenon nodded. Levain squatted by the body, awkwardly leaning in over a puddle of amorphous fluid with little chunks of something in it.

It must be vomit, there was some on his cheek and some on his shirt-collar.

He looked up at Grosjean.

“Personal effects?”

“Haven’t looked yet. Quite frankly, I was leaving that for you boys.” He gave Gilles a considering look. “I know when I’m a little out of my depth.”

“There’s no obvious signs of violence, Boss.” Levain tentatively sniffed the air.

There was vomit on the floor. The man’s face was frozen in a rictus of agony. He had died with his eyes open and full awareness. Gilles studied the man, standing over him. There were signs of bruising where he must have fallen.

“He was lying face down according to our witnesses.”

Just the usual smell—a lot of urine. The outline of the stain was still there, but it had dried over time. He wondered exactly how long that would take under these conditions. Not all goners shit themselves, a fact for which Levain was truly grateful at times.

Levain had his cotton gloves on and was going through the pockets.

“The deceased is one Daniel Masson, deputy assistant manager or something. Third from the top in the local food chain. He was authorized to enter the vault, which he would normally do only during business hours. There’s a time lock, and we’ve called the makers. They should be here any time now, and we’ll see if the time lock has been fiddled.”

Maintenon nodded thoughtfully, watching Levain and looking around.

Levain pulled out a set of keys, house and vehicle. There was a wallet, a few hundred francs, small change, a packet of cigarettes and a heavy gold lighter in the jacket pocket. As might be expected, the clothes were very good in the fit, and relatively expensive.

“Hello.” Levain’s jaw dropped and he pulled an apple out of the right side jacket pocket.

“There’s another problem.”

“Ah. There always is, isn’t there?”

Inspector Gilles Maintenon, unusually clean-shaven.

Grosjean grinned wryly at the Inspector.

“Yes, sir. Ah—according to the manager, the main vault looks okay—he says he’d have to do a proper count, but it looks undisturbed. Otherwise there would be one hell of a panic. As it is, they’re merely scared shitless. On the other hand. We have all of these safe deposit boxes.”

Maintenon’s eye swept the room. They were all closed and none of them appeared to be damaged or disturbed at first glance.

“Yes.”

Grosjean let out a long breath.

“What we were thinking, sir, was to have the manager call a few people, hopefully discreet people…and have them come around and check their deposit boxes.”

“Hmn.”

It definitely was a ticklish sort of situation.

Gilles nodded sharply. Yes, they had damned well better get some answers.

“Yes, but first. We’ll have the bank’s people check all the empty boxes. They can use their records, and we’ll eliminate them first…n’est pas?”

“Sir?” Grosjean was slightly baffled but not the argumentative type.

Levain rose stiffly, accepting a bag from one of the attending technical people and carefully signing and dating it. In went most of the materials.

“Check that apple for prints.”

“Ah, yes sir.” There was this look on his face, but one never knew of course.

There was one more item, this one from the right-hand jacket pocket. It was a small, heavily creased bit of shiny paper. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed it suspiciously. There was the hint of something…perhaps fruity? A candy wrapper. He shook his head and put it in the envelope as well.

Levain looked at Gilles.

“This looks like one big, fine mess, Boss.”

“You can say that again—but please don’t, Andre.”

Grosjean stood there, staring at his crime scene, slightly hunched at the shoulders, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. They really had their work cut out for them on this one.

This case had pressure from above and inside job written all over it.

***

Under the gun as they were, Gilles made a quick decision.

“All right. We’ll have a bank employee standing over us as we work. I’ll have to make a quick call to Chiappe—the Commissioner. But I honestly don’t see what else we can do.” The thoughts of dozens, or hundreds of citizens, going by the number of safe-deposit drawers in the room, God-damned civilians, coming and going to check on the contents of their box, was appalling.

Yet it probably would come to that—off the cuff, he couldn’t think of a similar situation or he might have had a better idea of how to proceed.

That was a last resort.

“When you open a drawer, it should be empty. If it’s not, photograph the contents, dust for prints, tag it and bag it for the lab.”

“Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

Andre winked at Gilles.

“Nope.”

“Very well.” Turning, Gilles beckoned Grosjean to come along. “Let’s make that phone call and then we’ll speak to the manager.”

Grosjean had brightened up considerably, now that he had some competent help on the scene. 

The thoughts of speaking to Chiappe, whom he had never met, were not all that welcome.

End

Check out Architect of His Own Destruction, the fourth in the Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery Series.