Hey, remember me? Things are settling down now, but it's been a busy week or two. With the launch of The Winds of Heaven and Earth in the rear-view mirror, and a few promotions put to bed, I can take a breath and turn my full attention to The Dark Paths of the World, the second book in the Keystone, Lodestone, Clarion series.
As exciting as it was to see the book in print and watch the first sales and reviews trickle in, I'm looking forward to getting into a gentler rhythm and just letting the creative juices flow. I'd like to have DPW out by mid-spring, and as of this writing it's about one-fifth of the way through the first draft. I stated in an earlier post that picking up an in-flight story is a lot of fun: no world-building or character development to get bogged down in, since those elements have already been established and planted in the reader's mind; it's just pure action and movement. Even as early on as it is in the tale, the story rips.
And on the promotions: I put up A Fairy for Bin Laden as a free Kindle download for five days (with a preview of WHE as bonus materiel), and it did pretty well, but not as well as some of the previous giveaways of the novella.
But the promotion I'm really pleased about was the Goodreads giveaway. I put up a signed copy of the print version of WHE as a seven-day drawing, and over 750 people entered with about half of them adding the book to their "To Read" shelf on Goodreads. The exposure from that promotion was phenomenal and based on the response from that I'm planning on making that a regular monthly item.
The winner was Stacey F from Bridgeville, Delaware. Congrats, Stacey--enjoy!
Remember: independent authors don't have the marketing machinery of the Big Six publishers behind them; we depend on word-of-mouth and reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. The biggest favor you can do me--or any Indie author--is to leave reviews and spread the word about books of ours that you like to your friends and fellow readers.
Happy reading!
Now back to work.
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