Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World free on Kindle

It's that time; time to give away free promo copies of the book on the Kindle to give everyone a look.

I'm always wary of giving away my books for free.  After all, I spent months on them.  This particular Relic Worlds story has been in my mind since 1997.  So I'd rather get something for my efforts; after all, I promised my girlfriend a hammock and a lifetime supply of Bon Bons!

It is a bit frustrating to see mainstream books never having to go through this phase, but it's a necessity for independent books to get noticed.  I've made it a regular practice now to come out on the Kindle first, do the KDP Select program for 90 days to promote it with this free giveaway and other promotions, then do a wide release with other e-readers.

So today (May 29, 2014) to Saturday (May 31, 2014) Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World, will be free on the Kindle at: http://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Search-Promised-ebook/dp/B00JSW7EBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401383605&sr=8-1&keywords=Relic+Worlds

Twitter versus Instagram

I’m not the best when it comes to social media.  I find it to be more or less a necessary evil.  It’s not a horrible thing really, but all things being equal, I’d rather be writing my next book and let it speak for itself than be finding things to talk about on Facebook, Twitter, or even a blog.  Even now, I had to force myself to do this before getting back to my next book.

So for the wide release launch of the first Relic Worlds novel, I’m getting a social media guru to help me.  She gave me a choice of two platforms through which she would help.  Facebook is a must, and the other can be either Twitter or Instagram.  My first thought is for Twitter, but she recommended Instagram.  She said that Instagram is more popular with young people these days.

I therefore have to consider the pros and cons of both platforms.  I’m not crazy about either of them as I’m someone who prefers to have longer, deeper conversations, which are not conducive to the brief Twitter posts, or the picture-only Instagram.  My promoter said we could post things relevant to Relic Worlds such as scientific photos and science fiction pictures.  We couldn’t do much in the real world as pictures of me would involve me in the chair in front of my computer, then me in the chair from another angle, then me with a cat on my lap, etc.

This wasn’t a bad idea, but then I got to thinking that the reason why Instagram is more popular with younger people is because many of them are more interested in images than words.  If I was doing Relic Worlds as a comic book, this would be a good idea, but I’m not.  I want to attract people who are interested in reading, in taking in words, brief or otherwise.

One of the most important things I’ve learned in marketing is that you have to market to people who may actually buy your product.  Marketing to anyone else may seem like you’re casting a wider net, but you’re really just wasting time.  It’s for this  reason that I’m probably going to go with Twitter promotions throughout July.

I’m no expert at this, though, so if anyone reading this has further insight, I would love to hear it.

The Difference Between a Screenplay and a Book

For years I worked on a screenplay about a baseball game between enemy soldiers in the Civil War.  I was never able to get it made, so now I’m turning it into a book.  As I do so, I have to be careful because one cannot simply transfer the actions and dialogue over.  You have to rework it into its new art form.

Movies and books have basic elements that separate them.  I didn’t used to recognize this, as I felt that a story was a story, and should be transferable as is between styles.  However, as I read and watched more, I realized that certain elements simply work better in one style than another.  A movie is experienced viscerally, the viewer gaining a lot of information visually, as well as every other sense.  I used to think this made movies superior to books until I realized that the equivalent in books is in their ability to let the reader create their own experiences in their mind.  In a movie, you have only the filmmaker’s vision, but in a book, you have the vision of each reader.  Thus, in a book, the writer needs to be aware of that and give the reader room to envision it.  Don’t direct too much; give them the space to envision their own interpretations.

Something else I used to think was superior about movies was that they can be more readily experienced by a group, or enjoyed alone.  Books are pretty much all experienced alone.  However, as John Green beautifully put it in his Carnegie Hall appearance, a book is a shared experience between the author and the reader as if both had fallen in a hole together and they live the journey together.  While this may seem simply poetic, I think the point is that it can be more personal than movies.  And so, when writing a book, one needs to dive deeper into the mind and soul than is possible in a movie.

This reveals the strengths of both.  In film, emotion is your greatest asset.  Once can say more with a simple look on the face than in a thousand words.  However, once that image is burned onto the film, no other image can be placed there; which is where the power of a book comes in.  In a book, the reader can see something new every time, and so when the author provides enough detail to be sifted through, yet enough room for the reader to fill in the spaces, the reader can have a different experience ever time.

Speaking of details, another strength that books can have is to go into other aspects of a story that would seem too distracting in a movie.  You can say in a couple sentences that an entire political movement was rising in another part of the world, and explain how it may be impacting the area where the characters are living.  In a movie, it would feel distracting to the audience to suddenly jump to another part of the world and go through a multitude of characters just to show that something big was happening there that had a minor impact on the main storyline.  Also in books, you can put an appendix at the end which goes into detail that some readers will want to read, and those who don’t care don’t have to go through it.  In a movie, everyone would be forced to sit through something that only a small amount of the audience is interested in.  A movie’s strength is in visualizing these places that are sometimes hard for many people to comprehend.

To me, the easiest way to bear in mind the difference between books and movies is to consider books to be full novels and movies to be short stories.  No matter how long the movie seems, it has the basic structure of a short story.  You get in, explain quickly who the main characters are using caricature tools as a shortcut for the audience in understanding their personalities.  You provide the setting through an establishing shot, which is the equivalent of a quick explanation of a setting type, and you jump into the problem and how the lead character deals with it.  In a novel, you’re going to go more into detail about character backgrounds, why they are where they are and who they’ve become.  You’ll put more detail into the settings, sometimes giving its history and what sort of people live there.  As the characters take their journey through the book, you’ll explain the impacts they have on the settings through which they travel.  And the ending won’t always be wrapped up so neatly.  Often the climax is less built up into a single moment, but is rather spread out over a series of events that conclude the story.

I consider the greatest adaptation from book to film to be Lord of the Rings.  I think I’ll make another blog about that sometime as this comparison will be very long, and I’ve filled up enough space as it is.

76 Places to Submit Your Free KDP Select Promotion for Your Kindle eBook - Training Authors for Success

I'm getting ready to have a second free promo for the Relic Worlds novel.  I did one that lasted 2 days, which was intended to give a free copy to loyal Relic Worlds fans, and to get copies to people who will hopefully do reviews.  The second one, lasting 3 days, is intended for the public.  It's goal is to shoot my book up the Amazon list, at least in its category, and to get people to know the series.  To me, the most important goal of this first book is to generate interest in the series.  Being that there will be plenty more books, it's more important to generate fans than to make a big profit on this first one.



I've therefore been studying blogs that list placed to list the book is free, and I came upon the following article.  I'll have to narrow it down somehow.  Do any of you have a suggestion of which ones are best?



76 Places to Submit Your Free KDP Select Promotion for Your Kindle eBook - Training Authors for Success

Relic Worlds Novel Free Today on Kindle through KDP Select

My latest novel, Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and theSearch for the Promised World, is now available for the Kindle on Amazon.  I had been releasing the series on Drivethru Fiction, and had even done this book as a serial there, releasing each chapter as I finished it.  As such, I was going to have the novel come out on Drivethru and all the other e-readers upon release.

However, I looked over the results of my last two books, Pro Bono and The Great Heist.  I released the former through the free on Kindle program, and even though I gave thousands of copies away for free, I sold thousands more after the promotion.  That book still sells better than any of my others.  Meanwhile, I put The Great Heist through Amazon’s other promotion program, Kindle Countdown Deal, where it is sold for a lower price for a limited time.  I had almost no luck with that, selling only a few copies during the promotion period, and it’s never taken off, despite the fact that the subject matter is even more appealing to the general public than Pro Bono.

Of course, none of the other major e-reader platforms have a good promotion program other than Drivethru, which, unfortunately, is not a site highly trafficked enough to get a huge amount of sales.  So as a result, I’m going exclusively with Amazon to give away those copies for free so hopefully those people will spread the word.

I am doing this promotion in two stages:

First promotion:  I’m making it free for two days over a weekend to give it away to all the fans of Relic Worlds and people who have been following me on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It’s a bonus to them, and hopefully those people will begin spreading the word in time for the second promotion.

Second promotion:  About a month later, I’m making it free for three days.  I will be promoting this one far more widely.  Those areas include:  Book Bub, Pixel of Ink, Facebook sci fi sites, Google + sci fi sites, Kindle Daily, etc.  This is the one I’ll really be pushing, and trying to get people to purchase.

The intent is to generate interest while there’s still time left in the exclusive Kindle deal.  The reason this is helpful is because it maximizes the book’s exposure in one area, making it more likely to get on their top books list.  If people have multiple readers, they purchase it on Amazon, and that pushes me up the Amazon list higher.  If it was on multiple readers, the book would go more evenly up multiple lists, thus making it so the book never reaches bestseller status on any one site.

Since the other e-reader sites do not have promotions that support independent artists like Amazon does, I chose Amazon Kindle.  Simple as that.  They all bemoan Amazon for having unfair business practices, but they do that while not improving their own services for independent authors like myself; so I don’t feel too sorry for them.