Post: #51

They got me at "#5,664 Free in Kindle Store"

Curious how that applies - as obviously it's not the best seller's rank(I wish LOL). Still, there must be a lot of free books on there...

I just drilled down my keywords too and am waiting for those changes to publish; we'll see if they have an effect.

And #60 in Literary Fiction? Definitely ranking over some solid books in that category - the free giveaways definitely seem to make a difference. We'll see how they hold after the giveaway is over, but for now that's got to be a fair amount of eyeballs.

I really need to go do some research on how the rankings actually work though. Off to do that now.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #52

Can you pm me the book?


Thanks

Post: #53

I bought a copy of my book to add to my Paperwhite, it went from #800,000 to #152,000. It's been live for a while and this is pretty typical of the jump so it leads me to believe that around 150,00 and below is where the action is, higher than that are books that aren't selling on a regular basis.

How is yours doing? How many units have been sold/given away?

Here's the website to track your book: http://tracker.kindlenationdaily.com/

You just have to register and then add any books that you want, it has all kinds of statistics you can look at, much better than what they give you through Amazon. I have Roosh's Can I Use A Smiley Face On That for comparison and its' current rank is #105,000.

Post: #54

(06-21-2013 03:53 PM)painter Wrote:  I bought a copy of my book to add to my Paperwhite, it went from #800,000 to #152,000. It's been live for a while and this is pretty typical of the jump so it leads me to believe that around 150,00 and below is where the action is, higher than that are books that aren't selling on a regular basis.

How is yours doing? How many units have been sold/given away?

Here's the website to track your book: http://tracker.kindlenationdaily.com/

You just have to register and then add any books that you want, it has all kinds of statistics you can look at, much better than what they give you through Amazon. I have Roosh's Can I Use A Smiley Face On That for comparison and its' current rank is #105,000.

The real action, in my opinion, is below 10,000.

But anyways, these are my stats right now:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,127 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#33 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

89 free downloads and 7 sales (sales most likely people who know me). A lot of people annoying me because every time I talk to them they rant and rave about the book - beyond just basic flattery - yet won't take the time to pop in and leave a review. This is partly my fault for not getting all those reviews out of the way before the giveaway - and for not having external promotions in place to make sure the free copies weren't in vain.

Not sure if that means they're just BS'ing, but meanwhile at one point I was ranking over books like "Life of Pi" last night but no reviews to back me up. A bit frustrating. I think the key is to have clout when you get your book to pop up that high so that people grab it up.

In any case, it is what it is. Onward.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #55

Awesome! That's really good for a book that's been live for less than a week!

Reviews are tough to get (sorry I'm still only three chapters in), especially from your friends. Hell, I can't even get my brother to give me a review, haha! Same with my friends, but I'm not one to pressure and my books have a very slim audience, nobody I know needs them.

And your friends will never really criticize you over your book, ESPECIALLY if they don't like it. They don't want to hurt your feelings and they know it's something you're passionate about and did a ton of work on it. That's just how it is, you can't really hold it against them.

I like how this thread is going.

Post: #56

(06-21-2013 06:55 PM)painter Wrote:  Awesome! That's really good for a book that's been live for less than a week!

Reviews are tough to get (sorry I'm still only three chapters in), especially from your friends. Hell, I can't even get my brother to give me a review, haha! Same with my friends, but I'm not one to pressure and my books have a very slim audience, nobody I know needs them.

And your friends will never really criticize you over your book, ESPECIALLY if they don't like it. They don't want to hurt your feelings and they know it's something you're passionate about and did a ton of work on it. That's just how it is, you can't really hold it against them.

I like how this thread is going.

Yeah I get that. But these aren't people I'm antagonizing for a review - these are people who won't stop the ranting and are often even sharing with their own friends, unprovoked. Some are starting to buy my short stories after reading the first. As much as I try to keep my head out of my own ass, I think I'm at least coherent enough to know the difference between someone placating me and someone feeling my work.

I've actually had a few people tell me they just can't figure out how to leave a review on Amazon. One swears up and down that Amazon will NOT ALLOW them to leave a review. LOL

It's hilarious, but it's also another reason why Kindle markets are not quite as crowded as we think. People are so tech-illiterate it's insane.

The information age is amazing. But until people start teaching the general public how to use the Internet properly, it will only go so far.

More opportunity for those of us in the know, I say.

I'm starting to think there may be far more leverage in getting people who already enjoy reviewing on Amazon to review your work. Then again, the platforms I've identified for that type of thing so far seem to consist of nothing but writers who sit around half-ass reviewing each other's work to get reviews...in my opinion, far from ideal.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #57

Newest Stats:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,879 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#29 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

93 free downloads.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #58

120 Free Downloads so far.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,020 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#31 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction

I'm really curious to see how fast the literary fiction ranking will change when the free day is over. Will update.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #59

When giving away a free book - I wonder if there are bots/programs you can use to have your book downloaded thousands of extra times? In order to bump up your ranking on Amazon.

I'm sure I am not the first to think of this.

Post: #60

(06-22-2013 10:28 AM)cardguy Wrote:  When giving away a free book - I wonder if there are bots/programs you can use to have your book downloaded thousands of extra times? In order to bump up your ranking on Amazon.

I'm sure I am not the first to think of this.

Good idea. But at the same time, I'm not sure it would be worth the risk of sacrificing a relationship with Amazon, considering how much of the market they have cornered.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #61

Hey beyond Borders james this book is good so far. There have been a couple times while reading this Thst I picture what is happening. It's almost like a movie in my head. For some reason I keep picturing the main character looking like the child version of Sterling Archer

Post: #62

(06-22-2013 10:54 AM)kickboxer Wrote:  Hey beyond Borders james this book is good so far. There have been a couple times while reading this Thst I picture what is happening. It's almost like a movie in my head. For some reason I keep picturing the main character looking like the child version of Sterling Archer

Cool, Man - glad you're feeling it. I'd say that kid probably does look quite a bit like him.

I'm editing the manuscript on my computer at the moment, polishing up a lot of that passive voice that Painter (and AmericanInBangkok) mentioned. Finding some other typos too.

I've got 154 free downloads now. Not sure how good that is, but hopefully some of those people actually read it. LOL

Got the rest of today on the giveaway and then I'll probably do another one in a couple weeks or a month to provide another boost.

EDIT: By the way, I might have pm'd some interested parties with the wrong closing time for the giveaway. It ends at 11:59 PM Pacific - not 1:59 PM!

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #63

(06-21-2013 03:29 PM)pitt Wrote:  Can you pm me the book?


Thanks

Ah, here's your message. I was wondering what you were talking about because I didn't see any other PMs from you. LOL

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #64

So how'd the post-release go? I think I might try finish a short story tonight and release it in the next few hours or something

Post: #65

(06-24-2013 10:30 AM)Architekt Wrote:  So how'd the post-release go? I think I might try finish a short story tonight and release it in the next few hours or something

Hey Man - sorry, I haven't been in here. I'll probably be in here a lot less as I want to focus on getting as much work done as possible right now.

Things are going okay. I don't think the giveaway had much of an effect. I'm not seeing any reviews from the hundreds that downloaded it and the rankings seemed to drop as soon as the giveaway was over. My guess is a lot of people just grab up freebies because they're free and don't get around to reading them. At one point, I was very high up in the literary fiction category. I don't remember the number exactly.

Anyways, I am still getting sales every day - just a couple, but I think as long as response to the book is good that should pick up later on after I add more books. I have three books up now - my novel and two short stories. I have two more short stories and a novel in the works. I think one of the short stories should be done within the week.

So just moving forward as planned and am not concerning myself with any big marketing efforts other than interlinking my books and seeding Amazon with more work.

I've also started reading short stories again to recapture the feel for writing that I used to have and wrap my head around what makes a short story really good. I used to read a lot of fiction, especially short fiction, but that was ages ago. I really do feel like the two most important things to do if you want to be a great writer is read and write a lot.

If you're just starting out, I'd even venture that reading a lot is more important than writing.

Ah, one more thing. Painter mentioned checking out "On Writing" by Stephen King and I went and grabbed it up; it's a fantastic book that I've read before, and I really agreed that it's what I need right now. I've already dug through the majority of it.

But now I'm also reading a lot of short fiction by King - he's the best at this form, in my opinion, always has been - and I'm finding that he goes against his own "rules" A LOT. I mean, I suspected and knew that he broke them sometimes, but it turns out he breaks them RELIGIOUSLY - especially in his old work, which was what originally made him famous. I imagine if I were to go dig up criticisms of the work this has probably been pointed out quite a bit already.

Examples of what I'm talking about include passive writing ("hads and was's, etc), adverbs (like surprisingly or quickly or slowly), and doctoring up dialogue so that you say things like "he mused" or "she hissed" instead of "he said" every time (King stresses sticking to the latter).

I love Stephen King's work and even though a lot of people shy away from him because they don't like the horror genre, I feel he's one of the best out there - if he wasn't, he wouldn't be so successful.

But while "On Writing" is solid, I must say that he's a total hypocrite in that book; I suppose he had to say something about writing in that book though. lol I say read it but take it all with a huge grain of salt. You can learn a lot more by reading his fiction than you can by reading how he advises writing fiction - and indeed that's probably true for just about any author. And the guy is a genius in my book, so if you plan on writing in any genre, I say definitely follow his work.

In the end, I've always found good writing to be a very intuitive thing. You just have to get a lot of exposure to it and it becomes very natural, though I've lost a lot of that over the years because I don't read and write fiction as much as I did when I was younger. With that changing now, I'm finding it's already coming back to me.

I've always found writing workshops to be mental masturbation for this reason - you can get a lot further by getting out there and just doing it and evolving as you go.

Cheers!

EDIT: By the way, that's great you're releasing a short story. Let me know if you need an early reader.

EDIT 2: I also raised all my prices tonight - fuck competing on price. I'm asking $2.99 for short stories and $4.99 for my novel. Most online marketers getting into this business charge $0.99 and $2.99, respectively. We'll see what kind of effect this change has.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #66

I imagine Cardguy is talking about journalists who write for newspapers and such. Photojournalism, I am sure is a different animal.

Secondly, I believe you said you were in your 50s somewhere on the forum.

If that is true, then you would have learned journalism in a time where journalists were not as lazy as they are now.

In which case, you are a dying breed.

Carry on.

[quote='anamericaninbangkok' pid='471006' Journalists are lazy? In the twelve years I've been working as a photojournalist I've busted my ass to make any decent money. If I was lazy I made peanuts.

If you send me the first chapter BB, I'll give it a look. If it's good, I'll keep reading. But I'll be honest.

As far s the marketing - send me a PM with the chapter and I'll give you some pointers on how to market yourself and your book.
[/quote]

Post: #67

I don't know why my previous post is not showing anything.

Post: #68

(06-25-2013 02:56 PM)Walderschmidt Wrote:  I don't know why my previous post is not showing anything.

Most likely because you got the tags wrong - in the "[". Sometimes when I quote a post but fail to open and close the tags correctly, it hides my post until I fix it. Maybe go to "edit" and have a look.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #69

Still reading it! I will definitely review it once I'm finished

Post: #70

BB,
Congrats bro on the first of a looong series of book to come! I am totally convinced that you will be a prolific and successful writer as you do have a natural talent for writing that is both convincing and compelling. I've seen your work and I can totally vouch for it. Regarding your book, I'd be happy to read and review it amigo.

Cheers!

Post: #71

(06-25-2013 05:21 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  BB,
Congrats bro on the first of a looong series of book to come! I am totally convinced that you will be a prolific and successful writer as you do have a natural talent for writing that is both convincing and compelling. I've seen your work and I can totally vouch for it. Regarding your book, I'd be happy to read and review it amigo.

Cheers!

Hey VP, thanks for the kind words of encouragement, Man.

The Amazon giveaway is already over - I only get so many days; I've saved some for later and may do them later this month or next month. But if you still want to check out the book, pm me for a link. I'll give you an update when I plan another free day.

I've also got some short stories I can send over any time if you want to give those a peek - I could use a couple more reviews on them.

Cheers

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #72

I finished your book, good job! Very dark. Your characters are well developed and the story takes a nice twist that's a definite surprise. It's well written too, you should be very proud.

I do think it needs some editing to speed things along a bit. Some people may not be able to hang in their because it's so dark. I like how the story unfolds but I think it needs a stronger beginning, something to really pull the reader in so they have to stay with it to see what happens, I'm thinking of a certain scene about 3/4's of the way in should either open the book or come after the first chapter.

Definitely a good read, it's obvious you put a lot of work into it and I hate to be critical and say it would be better by cutting out a lot of fine writing but I think the story needs a faster pace to get to a very good payoff. I don't want to give any of the story away in the thread so I'll send you a pm when I get the chance, just wanted everyone to know this is a good story and that you are a talented writer.

Post: #73

(06-25-2013 08:46 PM)painter Wrote:  I finished your book, good job! Very dark. Your characters are well developed and the story takes a nice twist that's a definite surprise. It's well written too, you should be very proud.

I do think it needs some editing to speed things along a bit. Some people may not be able to hang in their because it's so dark. I like how the story unfolds but I think it needs a stronger beginning, something to really pull the reader in so they have to stay with it to see what happens, I'm thinking of a certain scene about 3/4's of the way in should either open the book or come after the first chapter.

Definitely a good read, it's obvious you put a lot of work into it and I hate to be critical and say it would be better by cutting out a lot of fine writing but I think the story needs a faster pace to get to a very good payoff. I don't want to give any of the story away in the thread so I'll send you a pm when I get the chance, just wanted everyone to know this is a good story and that you are a talented writer.

Hey Painter - Nice, I'm glad you liked it, Man, and thanks for the feedback. I agree with your sentiments on cleaning it up a bit and possibly shortening it. There's a bit of extraneous stuff in there I've really been thinking about whittling down.

Overall, I think it was a pretty ambitious novel for a first go - I'll probably keep it a bit more simple next time and work on the flow.

Anyhow, I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions. Do hit me up when you have the time.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #74

For those awaiting a next post, my book pretty much dropped off completely on sales since my last. Not a big concern with me as I'm still sold on the method of just writing a ton of books and working towards the tipping point. About 10,000 words into my newest novel right now and have another short story that just needs a cover before it goes live.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #75

(07-13-2013 03:25 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  For those awaiting a next post, my book pretty much dropped off completely on sales since my last. Not a big concern with me as I'm still sold on the method of just writing a ton of books and working towards the tipping point. About 10,000 words into my newest novel right now and have another short story that just needs a cover before it goes live.

Just wondering, how many words have you written for your short story that is about to go live?