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.

Use Scrivener's Keywords to Manage Your Series

I'm having a little break from writing The Ravening Deep, so I thought I'd share a technique I'm using now that I have moved my entire Armada Wars operation from Open Office to that unbelievably good writer's app: Scrivener.

In this article, we'll start with the premise that you are writing (or starting) a series of novels set in the same universe. Here not only will you discover how to manage the books from your series in a single project file, but you'll also learn how to make the most of the keywords feature in Scrivener by setting up keywords in a structured fashion.

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Don't forget that this blog is now for behind-the-scenes reporting on the Armada Wars universe, and RCV's posts on writing and for writers. All of the current news and events going on in the Armadaverse can now be found on the all new web site at www.ArmadaWars.com!

Announcement: Get to the Choppa!

It's an auspicious day!

I'm proud to announce that the official Armada Wars full web site is now up and running.

ArmadaWars.com

You'll notice the new site has its own blog (called "News" in the main menu), and you might well wonder what use two blogs are. Here are my thoughts on that:

Although it is branded as the Armada Wars blog, I've used this blog here for quite a lot of posts about my experiences as a new author, and writing posts advising other writers who are publishing virgins. I'll continue to do that here.

There will be some minor re-branding, but this will become the RCV blog, carrying articles and pointers relating to the writing experience.

All blog posts about the Armadaverse will now appear on the ArmadaWars.com news page.

Old posts relating to the Armadaverse will remain here; for posterity, for link validity, and for the sake of Google's sanity.

And yes... there is already new news on the new news page. Go. Go now.

There are Many Ways to Read

Just as a little follow-up to my previous post about the Kindle App, this post is about the various ways there are to read the Armada Wars books.

First things first: all the books released so far have not one but two paperback versions. Each one has a standard paperback, and a cheaper 'compressed' paperback, which has a smaller text size and therefore a lower page count.

To find the paperback version of the book you want, just look on the Kindle version's Amazon product page for the link to alternate versions. Or search for the title in books only.

Newcomers to Kindle might not realise it, but depending on where you live there is more to the Kindle store than simply "buying" an eBook and downloading it to your device. Amazon have put a couple of different methods in place for customers to get access to the books they want to read without having to make a one-off purchase.

• Kindle Unlimited,
• Kindle Owner's Lending Library / Amazon Prime.

Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited could be viewed as the eBook equivalent of Amazon Instant Video. You just pay a monthly fee, and you have unlimited access to eligible Kindle eBook titles.

What makes an eBook eligible? It's a choice made by the author/publisher. They have to flick a switch at the back-end to decide if the eBook will be included in the Unlimited library.

Eligible eBooks have a second button next to the "Buy Now" button, which says "Read for $0.00 with Kindle Unlimited".

Kindle Owner's Lending Library

The Lending Library is for Amazon Prime customers. If you have a current Prime membership, you can borrow eligible eBooks as frequently as once a month. As with Kindle Unlimited, it's up to the author/publisher to enable their eBooks to be borrowed.

Eligible eBooks will have the Prime logo displayed on the product page.

Don't worry about authors missing out on royalties if you borrow instead of buy. Both Kindle Unlimited and KOLL remunerate authors on a "per page read" basis.

All the Armada Wars books published on the Amazon Kindle platform are (and will be) eligible for both Kindle Unlimited, and KOLL.