At the Clarksville Writers Conference, which I attended a couple weeks ago, one of the tips offered by Peggy DeKay, the author of several e-marketing books, was to offer KDP Select titles for free on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. I've had good results from this program, but I've always made my books available on weekends. The first time around I got about 450 downloads of "The Job," and in subsequent promotions would get 200-240 or so. So for this latest promotion I switched from the weekend and tried Thursday-Friday. As a result, 400 copies of "The Job" were downloaded, which is particularly important since I've included a story from "A Time for Poncey" in the updated edition. That's an increase of at least 60% over my other promotions (excluding the initial one). So there are 400 more readers with a copy of both "The Job" and "You Can't Count What Isn't There" to be seen and read and passed around. Look for future promotions to fall at the end of the work week.
In other news, "You Can't Count What Isn't There" is up and running on Kobo. I don't know what a Kobo reader is, but for the thousands of you who use them, today's your lucky day. The story is also available at the iTunes store, for all your iPad and iPhone reading apps, but since you don't get there through the web, I can't give you a link. But here's what it looks like:
One of the biggest cogs in the publicity machine for "A Time for Poncey" is the first story, "You Can't Count What Isn't There." The story is available at St. Celibart to read online, and in every e-book format you can think of at Smashwords. Absolutely free.
On top of that, I've included it as a bonus in the Kindle versions of "The Job: Based on a True Story" and "Feallengod." Just go to the end of the book, and there it'll be. I may add it to "Wars of the Aoten" as well, but that's later to be determined. I'll let you know.
Many months, perhaps a year, ago, I sent a copy of "The Job" to Big Al's Books and Pals, a review blog. I had no reason to, except that he was embroiled in a shouting match with another author and had gotten quite a lot of buzz, so I thought it was a good outlet. In May he finally posted about the book, which is no slam on him but indicates the backload of books he must have. The review appears here. As you can see, his approach is simply from a political perspective, and so he misses the greater points of the book. (Still gave it three stars, though.) But this is the way we want it to be.
What artists should want more than anything else is to leave room for the reader (in the case of literature) to bring something of himself to the party. If the point of a book or poem, or painting or piece of music, hits the audience over the head so hard that there's no room for interpretation left, then you've lost everyone who does not agree with you 100% already. I placed "The Job" within a corporate setting simply to give it a point of familiarity to westerners, and most particularly Americans, and "Big Al" took that to be an apologetic for capitalism. And maybe that indeed is what evangelicals look like to the world, or even to themselves. But it's not the point of the book. That's the price you pay as an artist, however, and my best hope is that there's enough of "The Job" stuck in his head that he'll reconsider the themes.
The marketing effort begins today for "A Time for Poncey - And other Stories out of Skullbone." Check out the video here.
Dr. Hurley's Snake-Oil Cure has posted the first part of "Madness Is In Their Hearts," so please give it a look. Even if you don't want to read it, click on the link and give them a page hit. The story is part of "A Time for Poncey," for which I will soon start turning the marketing gears, looking at a Sept. 1, 2012 release. It's classic Southern Gothic writing based on Ecclesiastes, with a wicked twist of humor. So please help get the word around by directing folks to Dr. Hurley's. I think you'll find some other interesting arts there as well. Thanks.
Did you do it? This is the day of the final tweet of "You Can't Count What Isn't There." Did you follow it? It took six months almost exactly. It is perhaps the worst method of reading a story ever devised. But, in the process, I probably tripled the number of followers I have, mostly from re-tweeting things with the hashtag #ian1. That stands for Independent Authors Network, which I'm not an official member of. Check them out. And stay tuned here for other appearances of stories from "A Time for Poncey," and publication announcements yet to come.
