A Jumping-Off Point for New Authors

Yesterday I was at the Sci-Feb convention, promoting Armada Wars (and you can read about that experience here). Towards the end of the day I was approached by a creative writing student who asked what I could tell her about getting into writing as a self-publisher.

What followed was possibly not the most coherent and logically structured info-dump, but I like to think there were some helpful nuggets in there. If you're in the position of wanting the same information, then here is the clear and comprehensive version.

Use SumoMe to Drive Sales from your Book Site

It's every author's nightmare.

Your new site is looking awesome. You are about to hit "go" on some well-tuned Facebook advertising, and you hope this will give sales a bump, since most of your books' rankings have started to drop off on Amazon.

The advert goes live. Impressions start coming in, and soon you are racking up the conversions. Yes, people are going to your site through the ad! Money well spent.

But then the book sales don't really move. At all. They stay stubbornly on trend, and that trend is "meh".

What to do?

Well, as luck would have it, this exact scenario happened to me shortly after I created the shiny new ArmadaWars.com web site. Because I don't believe in holding back strategies that would help other authors (you're my colleagues, not my competition!) I'm going to share my solution with you now.

Announced: "The Ravening Deep", Armada Wars Book 3

With the launch of List of the Dead coming up in just under a month, it's time to officially announce the third book in the current five-book story!

The title of book three was sneaked onto Goodreads (and this very blog) a few months ago, but for those of you who missed that the title will be The Ravening Deep.

Because there is a major plot event at the end of List of the Dead, and a major event for some main characters, I am not going to share any story details for The Ravening Deep just yet. So let's just say things will be going downhill for our plucky protagonists! Darkness awaits.

The eagle-eyed amongst you might notice the release date for TRD is 21st September 2015. Who can wait a whole year, right?

Worlds Will Fall.

Beware Pirate Scam Sites

As part of my marketing strategy, I have a couple of saved web searches which let me see quickly what is being said about Armada Wars and Steal from the Devil. Something I have noticed becoming increasingly more prevalent in the search results is a particular type of pirate site offering a "PDF copy" of SFTD.

After I found the first one, I filed a DMCA notice. But before that notice could even be processed, the site had been taken down by the host company for breaching their terms (i.e. for being pirates).

By modifying my saved search slightly, I found a good half a dozen more similar sites. One thing has become clear as I examined them: these sites are not simply pirate sites; they are scams.

The scam goes like this:

• The scam site "scrapes" stores like Amazon for trending and popular digital items;
• A product page is made for each interesting item. This often includes bogus information such as a "stock" number which changes at random every time the page is loaded (how exactly would one keep a stock of eBooks anyway?)
• Clicking on the link to "Download the PDF Now!" opens a new window which requires the "shopper" (read: cheap, gullible future con victim) to complete an "offer" first;
• Assuming the "offer" points to a genuine site, and not a nest of malware, the scam site owner profits from farming out a paid task;
• The "shopper" gets either nothing, a PDF full of junk, or a download that turns their computer into a zombie or holds the personal drive to ransom.

I can understand why people wouldn't want to invest $4.49 (£2.99) in an untested author. But there are other ways to get Steal from the Devil for less, and even for free. I'd much rather people put it on their Kindle wishlist and wait until it's on offer, than pull the double-whammy of circumventing my rights as the author and putting their own computer at risk. It's just the better option all around!

In short, I would rather take a hit to my own royalties than see the scummy, thieving, pretend pirate sites cream a neat referral profit by exploiting readers.

Seriously. Wishlist. Discounts and giveaways are announced on Twitter and/or Facebook, so just give me and Armada Wars a follow/like.

Launched: "Steal from the Devil", Armada Wars Book 1

Steal from the Devil was launched on the Kindle platform on 20th December 2013, marking the beginning of the Armada Wars universe.

The novel is the opening to the first five-part story arc, and introduces some of the key people, planets, and concepts.

All alone at the edge of human territory, a clandestine Imperial facility has suddenly fallen silent, and operative Elm Caden has been tasked by the Empress herself to find out why. Haunted by his past, in a series of unprecedented and increasingly unnerving episodes, Caden wants and expects a straightforward mission with a simple conclusion. What he finds is a woman whose mind is missing.

As the evidence of a hostile incursion mounts, and the Imperial Combine begins to mobilise a massive retaliatory strike against a neighbouring power, Caden and his companions discover a web of intrigue which becomes steadily more disturbing. One thing is clear: the threat is very real, very dangerous, and it has its origins somewhere in the Deep Shadows. Out there, in the darkness between the bright arms of the galaxy, something subversive and malignant is preparing for a conflict capable of changing the face of the entire Milky Way.

Driven by its personable characters and heart-thumping battle scenes, and eschewing the traditional clichés of science fiction, Steal from the Devil imparts a sense of believable events unfolding in a realistic universe. After all, in a galaxy with billions of stars, sometimes reality is stranger — and more terrifying — than any fiction...

Fill the Silence. Light the Dark.

 

"Steal from the Devil" is available on all the regional Kindle store fronts. You can find all regional links on the official web site.