c2011Shalako
Over the last ten or eleven days, we have given away over 4,900 copies of 'The Handbag's Tale,' a sardonic murder mystery set in Paris, at the height of the Roaring '20s.
I wrote it specifically as a promotional item, not being ready to tackle what would (or could) be my first detective novel. At that time, I was really more interested in science fiction.
It's available right now for the investment of two minutes time from Amazon.
At 11,000 words, the story took me a couple of weeks to write, and I submitted it around a little before deciding to publish it myself according to my 'everything for free' business model.
Necessity is very often the mother of invention and in my own case this is certainly true. What surprised me, was when I found that invention was the mother of virtue! But then I have a strong interest in making it work.
Later tonight or early tomorrow morning, the 5,000th free copy will go out the door, and I suppose someone will have to make a decision whether to put a price on it, or shoot for 10,000 free copies.
I say this because I am presently working on another Inspector Maintenon story, this time set in southwestern England circa 1926 or '27. It's called, 'Maintenon Gets a Vacation,' and he's on a walking tour of the moors when he stumbles across a murder.
This one has a double-whammy of a twist at the end.
I wish I could claim some credit for all of this promotional success, but Amazon lowered the price in a simple price-matching move because I was giving away free copies on Smashwords, one of my other platforms.
During e-book week, I worked my butt off to give away 130 e-books on Smashwords. Imagine my surprise to open up my account and discover that I had given away 1,700 e-books in my sleep.
There are no accidents, or so they say. I sure wish I knew how that happened; but what I did before, I can do again. Who knows, I might even be able to sell them for a buck or something.
You never really know until you try.
Note: the 'everything for free' business model controls overhead very nicely and that is what allows us to keep our prices low while maintaining the highest literary standards.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Excerpt: 'The Aviator.'
c2011Shalako
Note: 'The Aviator' is a small piece of a larger work in progress and is subject to further review.
Cold wind blasted at his face, the stench of petrol ever present. Thoughts of fire danced in his head.
Looking over the side, the village of Bevan’s Knoll passed under his wheels. Huddled in his cockpit against the icy chill, inscrutable in the helmet, mask and goggles, the beauty of the land below, darkened in irregular blotches by patches of cloud, a low mist still hanging in some of the valleys, meant nothing to him.
The clock on the instrument panel mocked his every desire, and reinforced his every terror. If only she knew what he knew, she would never forgive him. But for her, he had sacrificed everything, and it still wasn’t his fault.
It wasn’t his fault and he didn’t want to pay the price. White knuckles gripped the control column, and his head swung on a pivot, dark eyes probing everything in rapier-sharp focus. He had no choice in the matter.
The fearful burden that he bore must go with him to his grave, for surely the truth, a truth so obvious, would never be accepted. It would never be accepted of him, never in a thousand years. One little lie to get somewhere in life, and it had led him to this inescapable moment in time. The barrier looming ahead made his lower guts tighten up in anticipation. Heavy straps tugging at his body in the sudden turbulence gave little reassurance.
The white fog obscured all vision and even dulled the sound of the motor. Rarely for him, the tension rose a thousand-fold, but this was different. There was no going back now. He stared at the turn-and-bank indicator in fixed concentration. What people said was absolutely right—there was just no way to tell if you were in straight and level flight inside of the cloud, or if you were in a one-way, one-gravity death spiral, with the cold and indifferent earth rising up to meet you. If the instruments had shaken, or tumbled, or gone off in any way, he felt he might have given up and died by choice…but they were serene in their confidence to measure simple forces.
The parachute bulging so uncomfortably under him was of no comfort at all. The thought of using it for anything other than an emergency, a fire in the air perhaps, terrified him.
People also said you couldn’t really tell the difference between vertigo and sheer horror. They said it was a kind of physical, totally-detached temporary insanity, where the whole world was spinning on you. In his experience, people said an awful lot of stupid things.
Normally a very confident young man, he was finding out that this one was true as well.
Perhaps it would be just as well if he did lose control. He could at least die with some dignity and his honour intact.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Fifteen Minutes of Fame.
c2011Shalako
On Sunday, I got an e-mail notification that Amazon had dropped the price of 'The Handbag's tale,' a highly-satirical short story involving the murder of portly playboy banker Emile Danton in Paris, 1924.
That was because I was giving the book away on Smashwords and they have a price matching policy.
Okay, that's fine, but on Sunday night my computer went down. Somehow I turned off the POP settings or something incredibly stupid like that...imagine my surprise to open up my account Tuesday morning and see that I had given away about 1,700 copies at that point.
The reader may imagine what I was thinking: 1,700 x $1.00 - 35%, right?
But then I decided to let it ride. That was because a quick calculation showed that I was giving away 400 copies per day, and that is an achievement in anyone's book.
Right now we stand at about 3,800 copies and it's only Saturday night. But I am wondering if I can give away 5,000 copies of 'The Handbag's Tale,' in one week.
Right now it's at #19 in the Amazon UK Kindle Store, under the site's free crime>thrillers>mystery category, and at #63 on the overall free fiction list in Amazon UK. This has actually dropped down from #15 and #41 respectively just yesterday.
Also, the book is at #272 in the US Amazon Kindle free fiction rankings, down from a high of #251 observed yesterday or this morning. As you can imagine in the cyber-world of e-comemrce, the ranks are pretty fluid, changing even over the course of an hour.
The temptation to meddle and to extend my fifteen minutes of fame is admittedly there, but after not having my computer for a week or so, it's almost like I need retraining...I don't even really know what to do next.
Hopefully I will think of something.
On Sunday, I got an e-mail notification that Amazon had dropped the price of 'The Handbag's tale,' a highly-satirical short story involving the murder of portly playboy banker Emile Danton in Paris, 1924.
That was because I was giving the book away on Smashwords and they have a price matching policy.
Okay, that's fine, but on Sunday night my computer went down. Somehow I turned off the POP settings or something incredibly stupid like that...imagine my surprise to open up my account Tuesday morning and see that I had given away about 1,700 copies at that point.
The reader may imagine what I was thinking: 1,700 x $1.00 - 35%, right?
But then I decided to let it ride. That was because a quick calculation showed that I was giving away 400 copies per day, and that is an achievement in anyone's book.
Right now we stand at about 3,800 copies and it's only Saturday night. But I am wondering if I can give away 5,000 copies of 'The Handbag's Tale,' in one week.
Right now it's at #19 in the Amazon UK Kindle Store, under the site's free crime>thrillers>mystery category, and at #63 on the overall free fiction list in Amazon UK. This has actually dropped down from #15 and #41 respectively just yesterday.
Also, the book is at #272 in the US Amazon Kindle free fiction rankings, down from a high of #251 observed yesterday or this morning. As you can imagine in the cyber-world of e-comemrce, the ranks are pretty fluid, changing even over the course of an hour.
The temptation to meddle and to extend my fifteen minutes of fame is admittedly there, but after not having my computer for a week or so, it's almost like I need retraining...I don't even really know what to do next.
Hopefully I will think of something.
Rankings: Boom or Bust
c2011Shalako
My computer blew up last Sunday night, which was a little bit traumatic. I went to my sister's house on Tuesday, just to check my e-mails. Going to my Kindle Digital Text Platform dashboard, I started clicking around and was startled to see that I had given away quite a few copies of 'The Handbag's Tale,' an 11,000 word short story featuring Inspector Maintenon and a murdered banker.
'Murder at its most French,' as I am calling it. 'Murder at its most sardonic.'
That price change only took effect Sunday or Monday and they were just flying off of the shelves!
Right now, (Saturday, May 14, 2:30 a.m.,) that book stands at #15 on the Amazon UK Free E-Books Crime>Thrillers>Mystery rankings, and is #45 in the UK Free Store. It stands at #256 in the US Free Kindle Store, and I watched it drop five places in the space of five minutes...interesting feeling.
In less than a week, I have given away over 3,500 e-books on Amazon US and UK.
Just to put all this in perspective, I worked my, er; 'butox' off during e-book week (Mar 5-12,) on Smashwords, and gave away a total of 130 copies of my five titles. Since my computer was out of service this week, I only used a borrowed machine for an hour a day, and put out on Twitter and Facebook no more than half a dozen links at best. They were not all for this title.
Also to put this in perspective, my best selling title is 'Heaven Is Too Far Away,' which now stands at around #55,000 in the Amazon UK store.
What's the big difference between the two books? About a buck, or approximately 0.71 Great Britain Pounds last time I checked. Some of my other titles are down in the three hundred thousand rankings! But down at that level, all you have to do is to sell two books and you rocket up the charts into the low two hundred thousands.
Have a pleasant morning, or evening, or day, or whatever.
(It's not like we don't earn it.)
My computer blew up last Sunday night, which was a little bit traumatic. I went to my sister's house on Tuesday, just to check my e-mails. Going to my Kindle Digital Text Platform dashboard, I started clicking around and was startled to see that I had given away quite a few copies of 'The Handbag's Tale,' an 11,000 word short story featuring Inspector Maintenon and a murdered banker.
'Murder at its most French,' as I am calling it. 'Murder at its most sardonic.'
That price change only took effect Sunday or Monday and they were just flying off of the shelves!
Right now, (Saturday, May 14, 2:30 a.m.,) that book stands at #15 on the Amazon UK Free E-Books Crime>Thrillers>Mystery rankings, and is #45 in the UK Free Store. It stands at #256 in the US Free Kindle Store, and I watched it drop five places in the space of five minutes...interesting feeling.
In less than a week, I have given away over 3,500 e-books on Amazon US and UK.
Just to put all this in perspective, I worked my, er; 'butox' off during e-book week (Mar 5-12,) on Smashwords, and gave away a total of 130 copies of my five titles. Since my computer was out of service this week, I only used a borrowed machine for an hour a day, and put out on Twitter and Facebook no more than half a dozen links at best. They were not all for this title.
Also to put this in perspective, my best selling title is 'Heaven Is Too Far Away,' which now stands at around #55,000 in the Amazon UK store.
What's the big difference between the two books? About a buck, or approximately 0.71 Great Britain Pounds last time I checked. Some of my other titles are down in the three hundred thousand rankings! But down at that level, all you have to do is to sell two books and you rocket up the charts into the low two hundred thousands.
Have a pleasant morning, or evening, or day, or whatever.
(It's not like we don't earn it.)
Saturday, May 7, 2011
A New Project Makes Me Happy
c2011Shalako
I have a new project and that makes me happy.
Because it was so much fun to write 'The Handbag's Tale,' my first detective story, and because I like detective or mystery stories, and because there is a market, I was definitely interested in doing more of them.
As far as story length, that really doesn't matter. If it's not a novel, so much the better. That's because the short-term marketing strategy is to submit it. If I can place the story somewhere, make some money and gain some new readers, that's fine.
The story is 'maintenon gets a vacation,' and Inspector Gilles Maintenon is on a walking tour of the moors in southwestern England because as a boy he read a lot of Serlock Holmes...and then of course there is a murder and he gets to solve it.
The whole thing revolves around a mysterious missing aircraft and one dead pilot who just happens (or happened) to be under consideration for an international seaplane racing team.
As usual in a Maintenon story, there are plenty of twists and turns, and surprising characters that say the damnedest things.
Luckily, I already know whodunit! In the first Maintenon story, I had to write it to find out.
The really great thing about writing the same character is of course marketing. With a half a dozen short mysteries featuring Inspector Maintenon, I can package them up in collections, publish them as Amazon 'shorts,' or when I develop some more relevant skills, develop it into a TV pilot/proposal.
It is nice to take a break from the incessant round of social networking and sales/marketing, and do some actual work for a change.
Gilles hasn't actually said this yet, but I suspect he will before the end of the story:
'A change is as good as a vacation.'
And now if the reader will forgive me, I must rejoin Maintenon and a certain Esther Phelps, a tall, athletic, brown-haired woman in her late thirties or early forties. They're at a remote farmhouse on the verge of Exmoor, and Jimmy is about to arrive on his sidecar-motorcycle and break the news...a lady down the road has a body in the parlour and would the nice inspector like to come and have a look at it?
I have a new project and that makes me happy.
Because it was so much fun to write 'The Handbag's Tale,' my first detective story, and because I like detective or mystery stories, and because there is a market, I was definitely interested in doing more of them.
As far as story length, that really doesn't matter. If it's not a novel, so much the better. That's because the short-term marketing strategy is to submit it. If I can place the story somewhere, make some money and gain some new readers, that's fine.
The story is 'maintenon gets a vacation,' and Inspector Gilles Maintenon is on a walking tour of the moors in southwestern England because as a boy he read a lot of Serlock Holmes...and then of course there is a murder and he gets to solve it.
The whole thing revolves around a mysterious missing aircraft and one dead pilot who just happens (or happened) to be under consideration for an international seaplane racing team.
As usual in a Maintenon story, there are plenty of twists and turns, and surprising characters that say the damnedest things.
Luckily, I already know whodunit! In the first Maintenon story, I had to write it to find out.
The really great thing about writing the same character is of course marketing. With a half a dozen short mysteries featuring Inspector Maintenon, I can package them up in collections, publish them as Amazon 'shorts,' or when I develop some more relevant skills, develop it into a TV pilot/proposal.
It is nice to take a break from the incessant round of social networking and sales/marketing, and do some actual work for a change.
Gilles hasn't actually said this yet, but I suspect he will before the end of the story:
'A change is as good as a vacation.'
And now if the reader will forgive me, I must rejoin Maintenon and a certain Esther Phelps, a tall, athletic, brown-haired woman in her late thirties or early forties. They're at a remote farmhouse on the verge of Exmoor, and Jimmy is about to arrive on his sidecar-motorcycle and break the news...a lady down the road has a body in the parlour and would the nice inspector like to come and have a look at it?
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