Price Reduction

I just decided to lower the price on all the print books available.  State books are now $8.50 across the board (Wilderness, Successes, Heights and Nature) as this is the price I sell them when I do in-person events.  Finally Home is now $9.99 and "Train of Clues" has been reduced to $5.99.  Hopefully sales will pick up with these price reductions across the board.

I've been thinking about this for a while now because I do generally well at in-person events with these prices and should be able to do well through Amazon with the same prices.  See you all in the postings - E :)

The Tulip Kiss - new cover

Some of you may remember when this story was first published as it was the first place winner in Echelon Press's Fast and Frigid contest in January of 2007 as an ebook only. Since the story was unpublished about June of 2007, I've just been letting it sit for a bit, not really thinking of republishing myself. These past few months, I took on revisions/rewrites of Finally Home and decided it was time to put out a few of my old stories as well (hopefully boosting sales for all my stories out there). I've already republished "The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story) as an ebook and now with a new cover for "The Tulip Kiss" will be putting this out in the next few days.

Below are the two covers of "The Tulip Kiss" for comparison (the new cover first, the previously published cover which was done by Karen at Echelon Press) and the cover for "The Proposal". All my covers done from June of 2010 through the present (to include State of Wilderness (the reprint version), State of Successes, State of Heights, State of Nature, "Train of Clues", State of Acceleration (to be published the first part of 2012), Finally Home, "The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story), and "The Tulip Kiss") are by Heather C. Paye and her work can be found here. Check her out if you are in need of a cover or any type of graphic design work. She is young and aspires to one day work for Disney/Pixar and with her talents and the portfolio she is building I believe she will end up with them. I can't say enough good things about Heather's work because she is such a wonderful young lady to work with that words can't do everything she does justice. I will let my covers speak for themselves.

The Tulip Kiss - 2011 version

The Tulip Kiss - 2007 version

The Proposal - released 2011 as an ebook - available on kindle, nook and smashwords


For the State of ... covers, please visit the JGDS website and click the "books in the series" tab.

Be on the lookout for a special sale the week before Christmas; details will be posted next week. E :)

Finally Home - 1 week stats

Finally Home was officially released last Thursday (Thanksgiving day) morning as both a print and ebook. It is available on smashwords, kindle and nook as well as on amazon.com and createspace in print. As of 12/01/2011 the following stats are what I've seen: Smashwords' views = 24, sales = 0; Nook views = ?, sales = 2; ranking = 247,000 (not exact but I don't remember what the number was); kindle views = ?, sales = 0; no ranking on amazon as I've not had any sales and no sales from any source showing on my createspace account. This is disheartening to say the least since I've been posting for quite a while now that Finally Home would be released soon and I've spent the last two months (maybe a few more than that) talking about this book.

So I'm thinking I need to follow suit with Sybil Nelson (aka Leslie Dubois, author of YA novels with a dark edge to them), Author of the Priscilla the Great series, in her posting from either 11/30 or 12/01 and that is "take the McDonald's approach" to marketing. Sybil states in her posting (you can view the full article here), and I'm paraphrasing here, that everywhere you go you can see McDonald's ads, billboards or even McDonald's themselves. So why not as an author take the same approach? Obviously McDonald's is a billion or trillion dollar company and can afford to place ads everywhere (and those 30-second spots aren't cheap nor are the billboard placements) to make sure their name is out there, so some of the marketing approach for authors wouldn't be cost-effective or even feesible since we are in general poor and need other jobs to supplement our writing, but why not do some marketing that gets your name out there.

It isn't enough to just blog every once in a while or update a website every once in a while but we as authors have to stay in the limelight so to speak; we need to place "ads" everywhere to get known.

Within the next 2 weeks or so, I will be re-releasing three more stories that have been previously published and have placed in various contests, winning small monetary awards and other prizes. I've decided that after the first of the year, once I can get back on track with my state series (for more on the JGDS series, please visit the JGDS blog or the JGDS website) that I'm going to do a major marketing campaign.

I've done a few Skype visits with classes other than Mr. Hughes' to help with some writing aspects (one in Indiana for the Lunchtime Writers' Club and one in Washington state during NaNoWriMo) but that isn't enough. Hopefully, my marketing campaign will help some other writers as well.

I need to start seeing my books taking a turn because my job is getting frustrating and I would love to start traveling to all the states within the next couple of years or so (before I get too old to really enjoy the travels). I had set a goal to have my state stories supporting me by 2013 but that doesn't look like it is going to happen. I may have to move that goal to 2015 and by then I should have at least half of the states published along with my five other stories, oops - six (forgot about a children's story I will probably ebook publish too).

I'd like to know what some other authors out there are doing marketing wise. I also would like to see half the followings of some of my fellow authors (I still only have less than 100 folks following this blog with only a handful, less than a dozen, actually subscribing to receive the blog notices in their emails. I have half the number of followers on my JGDS site as I do on this site, which means I'm not reaching the audiences like I need to, so any suggestions from my fellow friends and authors on how to reach more people would be greatly appreciated.

I follow over 1000 blogs but don't read all of them on a daily basis and I comment on blogs that I've signed up for the email postings a good bit of time; I leave my links in my signatures on most places (some of them won't accept the comment with hyperlinks so I have to just hope that folks are stopping by my websites on those blogs) and yet I hardly see any traffic on my blogs or websites. I wonder how many of those 1000 blogs I follow actually take time to read their comments and respond back to the commenters or even check out the blogs or websites of the persons who leave comments on their blogs. I wonder how many folks who comment on blogs take the time to actually look at other commenters' blogs and websites. The answer is probably less than a dozen or so.

Vici Howard is running her 1-year marketing plan here. Of course, you can always follow Sybil's postings here. If you know of any other authors who have a marketing campaign going on and would like to share, please leave a comment with the link to that person's blog or website.

I definitely would love to hear from you all and hope you will spread the word to your friends. Let them know about some upcoming authors who are trying to get their name out there. E :)

Finally Home revisions completed!

I put the final touches on Finally Home tonight. The manuscript has been sent to Heather for her magic touches and hopefully next weekend I'll be able to upload to Nook, Smashwords, and Kindle so it will be available as a download first. Hopefully the print version will be shortly thereafter. I will order the proof copy on the 7th of November and should have that by the end of the week so that I can sign off and say that Finally Home is published.

Don't forget once it is published, you can request an e-signature/personalized message (kindlegraph) here. You don't have to have a kindle to receive a kindlegraph but you do need a twitter account to log in to kindlegraph and start requesting them. A valid email addy will get the file sent to you as PDF.

For more stories and what's coming, visit my website. See you all in the postings - E :)