I’m gonna be on the Fantasy Fiends podcast Dec 20 with Andy Peloquin and Steve – pretty excited as it’s my first time to be interviewed live. They send a preview kit which I just filled in – and of course I put forward my days as an adventurer as my topic. Yeah. I don’t talk about my ruins exploring days much – but of course I still know all this stuff, and remember all the adventures. I suppose I carry it all around with me, and even though I’m not actively exploring/adventuring anymore, it absolutely drives who I am …
Trying my damnedest…
For the past couple of days I have been trying my damnedest to join Amazon uk’s marketing scheme. My word, they don’t half make it difficult. First I signed up for an Amazon Advantage Account. Then I used that to sign up for the AMS Marketing account, waited a day, and got rejected! In the rejection they sent me a link to the Amazon US marketing scheme with the advice that I ‘re-register’ with a new email. But my US AMS ads are working fine! I want to be in the UK AMS! I emailed their contact person. We have …
Writing Update 2018 week 47
Yesterday I took my heart in my mouth and sent a message to one of my favorite thriller authors – someone I’ve corresponded briefly with before. I just finished one of his books and loved it. There was much in common with the thriller I’ve just written – human trafficking, white supremacists, a hero damaged in childhood now pursuing a Dexter-like vigilante revenge. So in my message I asked if he’d be willing to take a look at my book and maybe offer a blurb. Unfortunately, he replied within minutes with a considerate but firm no. He was busy, which …
Indie Guides: How to get a great book cover artist
As a self-publisher for 5 years now, with fourteen novels, two short story collections and a non-fiction book of my Japan ruin adventures, you can bet I’ve commissioned a lot of book covers, and thus have a lot of experience (even wisdom?) I can pass along. Added all together that’s 17 covers commissioned, right? Well, not exactly. I think I’ve taken just about every route to a cover that is possible, including making one of them from scratch myself. So then that’s 16 covers commissioned? No again, because my three cyberpunk I’ve had re-made FOUR times (count ’em, for five …
London Indie Authors group November Meetup
I haven’t yet mentioned on my blog about the group I co-organize on the Meetup.com website, called London Indie Authors. I joined the group some 2 years ago, back when it was just about still being run by Orna Ross, who founded ALLi, the Alliance of Independant Authors. A year later I was invited by then-organizer and my bud Jerome to co-organize alongside him. We meet monthly to discuss marketing of our books. The group has changed a little in the last year, largely in the way we plan the agenda. We used to get speakers in about half the …
3-book promotion
This evening I set up a three book (I should say ‘product’) promotion- The Last free, The Loss (book 4) free, and the box set books 1-3 99cents, starting on April 18-22. It took two hours to get it all done, and in total if all promotion sites accept me, it’ll cost $510. It looks like a lot. It is a lot. But the last time I did this I spent $630 and ultimately got more than double that back. Plus- Mark Dawson, King of book facebook ads, spends about $20,000 a month on advertising, and gets more than that …
Facebook ad results for The Last, The Lost, The Least box set
For the past week I’ve been experimenting with Facebook advertising to push my box set, books 1-3 of the Zombie Ocean: The Last, The Lost, The Least. http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lost-Least-Box-Books-ebook/dp/B01CDK32PO It’s not my first time to run facebook ads, but my first time to make some effort. On previous occasions I didn’t design the ad image or pay much attention to the ad copy. It failed. It seems to have failed this time too :(. Despite this lovely ad I made: You can’t have much text on Facebook ads, though book covers are exempt. There is text allowed around it, and I …
Adventures in Book Marketing: The Last
The Last is without doubt my most successful book yet. It has sold close to a thousand copies since release 4 months ago, with several hundred more in Kindle Unlimited borrows, and close to 10,000 copies given away free. Why is this happening? It surely has been down to three things: title, cover, blurb. In a nutshell- the book’s marketing. This post is about the marketing path to the current title, cover and blurb. DESIGN ONE I started off with a wordy, opaque title which I thought was clever, silly and fun. It tied in perfectly to the book, being …
Adventures in Book Marketing: Mr. Ruins
If you follow this blog, you’ll see I’ve been pushing my latest book, Mr. Ruins- which had a cover I poured all my ideas into, but people thought looked like a bunch of worms sitting on an eyeball. :(. It wasn’t meant to be that. So now I’m talking about…
Adventures in Website Marketing: michaeljohngrist.com 5.0
A few days ago the 5.0 version of this site went live. I’ve been hard at work redesigning and coding for the past few weeks, learning how to do all the things I wanted to do through simple CSS and html. It can be an incredibly frustrating experience at times- but when finally the pixels click into place, the target image floats properly left, it can feel like a momentous achievement. Big changes include: – everything is now within borders and wrappers – the front page is laid out as a magazine – it’s a calmer and more serious color …