Click here to see the Halfway to Hell trailer, put together as a favour by a friend: Bob Martin of Production Cues.
Bob did this entirely off his own back, and spent a lot of time working on it. It looks great, and when you Google Halfway to Hell, this comes up way before the Facebook or Amazon pages, so it looks like it's getting some rotation.
If you like what you see and could use a fully scored and edited video to produce your book (or movie, cupcake business or... anything else, really), you could do a lot worse than checking out the Production Cues website. Bob does good work, and his rates are very reasonable.
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Sunday 18 March 2012
One Shot
One Shot, my collection of three crime stories is available for Kindle free all day today.
Get it from Amazon US or Amazon UK.
If you like it, I'd really appreciate a review. You could also check out some of my other books, including Halfway to Hell, of course.
ONE SHOT
Three short stories of crime and obsession.
In THE LUCKIEST CORPSE IN THE RIVER, a body is dragged from the River Clyde at high noon. Reporter Jack Wood is on the scene, and he knows it’s nothing out of the ordinary. But then a potential sidebar turns into a dead-cert page one, because the dead man is carrying a winning lottery ticket…
In ONE SHOT, Faith Badder needs to catch a vicious killer. To do so, she has to follow in the footsteps of his latest victim. It’s a one-shot deal, and the stakes are higher than she knows….
And finally, Dr Jeff Cairngorm is a single father with a dark secret in his past. A quiet evening in a new home explodes into horror as AUDREY returns to her family…
* * *
Three stories of mystery and suspense in one great package. This trio of dark thrillers draws on influences as diverse as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock.
This collection also includes an exclusive free sample of HALFWAY TO HELL - Gavin Bell's full-length thriller novel.
Get it from Amazon US or Amazon UK.
If you like it, I'd really appreciate a review. You could also check out some of my other books, including Halfway to Hell, of course.
ONE SHOT
Three short stories of crime and obsession.
In THE LUCKIEST CORPSE IN THE RIVER, a body is dragged from the River Clyde at high noon. Reporter Jack Wood is on the scene, and he knows it’s nothing out of the ordinary. But then a potential sidebar turns into a dead-cert page one, because the dead man is carrying a winning lottery ticket…
In ONE SHOT, Faith Badder needs to catch a vicious killer. To do so, she has to follow in the footsteps of his latest victim. It’s a one-shot deal, and the stakes are higher than she knows….
And finally, Dr Jeff Cairngorm is a single father with a dark secret in his past. A quiet evening in a new home explodes into horror as AUDREY returns to her family…
* * *
Three stories of mystery and suspense in one great package. This trio of dark thrillers draws on influences as diverse as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock.
This collection also includes an exclusive free sample of HALFWAY TO HELL - Gavin Bell's full-length thriller novel.
Monday 12 March 2012
Singles
I got my Kindle in Autumn of last year, a generous leaving gift from the folks at my old workplace.
It was a very appropriate gift, given that they knew I love books and that my new job involved a substantial commute. It was pretty much perfect in fact, except that it meant my wife had to revise her Christmas plans for me.
I was surprised by just how easy and straightforward Amazon makes it to buy and download books to your device. My first purchase (as opposed to all the free classics I, like everyone else, downloads immediately and then doesn't read) was this mini-short story collection by Michael Connelly.
I got it because I'm a fan of Connelly, particularly his Harry Bosch books, and because it was cheap: 99p. This micro-collection contained three Bosch stories, all pretty good. As much as I enjoyed reading it, though, I was more interested in the marketing strategy behind the book. One of the main reasons I bought it was the low price (interestingly, it's more expensive on the US Amazon site, at $2.99).
If I'd been totally new to Connelly, I might have bought this as a sampler, liked what I read, and been more likely to buy another of his books. Even though I'm not a Connelly newbie, and have read four or five of his books already, this was still a good opportunity for me to be reminded how much I enjoy his work, and - yep - make it more likely I'll buy more of his books. A classic example of reinforcing and expanding the reach of the brand.
The really smart thing they did, however, was to include the first few chapters of the newest Connelly book, The Drop, as part of the package. That changes the purpose of the package (apart from the 99p it generates itself of course), from raising general awareness of the author to promoting a specific product from the author.
I thought this was a pretty good idea, so of course I've stolen it.
Short stories are often the best introduction to a new author. They're like singles: you hear a couple you like on the radio, and you're more likely to buy the album, go to the concert, whatever. If I can use some of my shorts to direct some of the traffic towards my novel, I'm happy for them to be up on Amazon as cheap as they'll let me make them.
I have three short story bundles up just now. Naturally, they all contain the first two chapters of Halfway to Hell and a Facebook link at the back. They're all loosely crime stories, but they run the gamut from noir to psychological thriller to urban horror to Hitchcock riff. Rereading them (most of them are at least five years old), I'm struck by the Stephen King influence in more than one of them. I did the covers myself, so they're nowhere near as good as John's work.
It was a very appropriate gift, given that they knew I love books and that my new job involved a substantial commute. It was pretty much perfect in fact, except that it meant my wife had to revise her Christmas plans for me.
I was surprised by just how easy and straightforward Amazon makes it to buy and download books to your device. My first purchase (as opposed to all the free classics I, like everyone else, downloads immediately and then doesn't read) was this mini-short story collection by Michael Connelly.
I got it because I'm a fan of Connelly, particularly his Harry Bosch books, and because it was cheap: 99p. This micro-collection contained three Bosch stories, all pretty good. As much as I enjoyed reading it, though, I was more interested in the marketing strategy behind the book. One of the main reasons I bought it was the low price (interestingly, it's more expensive on the US Amazon site, at $2.99).
If I'd been totally new to Connelly, I might have bought this as a sampler, liked what I read, and been more likely to buy another of his books. Even though I'm not a Connelly newbie, and have read four or five of his books already, this was still a good opportunity for me to be reminded how much I enjoy his work, and - yep - make it more likely I'll buy more of his books. A classic example of reinforcing and expanding the reach of the brand.
The really smart thing they did, however, was to include the first few chapters of the newest Connelly book, The Drop, as part of the package. That changes the purpose of the package (apart from the 99p it generates itself of course), from raising general awareness of the author to promoting a specific product from the author.
I thought this was a pretty good idea, so of course I've stolen it.
Short stories are often the best introduction to a new author. They're like singles: you hear a couple you like on the radio, and you're more likely to buy the album, go to the concert, whatever. If I can use some of my shorts to direct some of the traffic towards my novel, I'm happy for them to be up on Amazon as cheap as they'll let me make them.
I have three short story bundles up just now. Naturally, they all contain the first two chapters of Halfway to Hell and a Facebook link at the back. They're all loosely crime stories, but they run the gamut from noir to psychological thriller to urban horror to Hitchcock riff. Rereading them (most of them are at least five years old), I'm struck by the Stephen King influence in more than one of them. I did the covers myself, so they're nowhere near as good as John's work.
A Living
The Misfortune Teller
One Shot
These are all 99p in the UK, 99c in the US. That means they only bring in 35% royalties because they're below the threshold Amazon likes to see you listing books, but then they are all much shorter than a real book. They're around 8,000 words, which should still give people half an hour of enjoyable (I hope) reading. I've been using the KDP promotion manager to make one at a time free on weekends (which seems to be the time most people shop). This weekend I'm going to make One Shot free on Sunday for UK Mothers Day.
The aim is not for these books to generate much income, it's to get people reading my stuff, and hopefully liking it enough to tell their friends and maybe buy Halfway to Hell.
I've no way of telling how many of how many book sales have been enabled by my 'singles', but I do know one thing: they're not hurting.
Saturday 10 March 2012
Pricing experimentation
Amazon's pricing structure is interesting. They won't allow you to list a book for less than 99 cents (although if you enroll in KDP Select, which makes you exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, you have the option to make your book free for 5 of those 90 days), and the maximum you can charge is $200. I'd love to know if anyone has managed to get $200 for an ebook.
But what's really interesting is the way they incentivise pricing within a not-too-cheap, not-too-expensive window. If you price your book between $2.99 and $9.99, you get to keep 70% of the price. If you price outwith those limits, that drops to 35%. This lets Amazon exert an element of control over the price of the bulk of the ebooks sold on their site, and over what people expect to pay for ebooks in general.
Compared to what an author gets on a printed book, 70% is pretty damn fantastic, and even 35% isn't too shabby. But then of course the overheads are practically nil, so to look at it another way, Amazon is getting 30% - 65% of your sale for minimal effort.
Anyway. When I first listed Halfway to Hell, I thought I'd go in at the bottom of the 70% threshold: $2.99. After all, I'm not a big name author and the cheaper the book, the more likely someone is to buy it, right?
Then I read this excellent blog post from Elle Lothlorien on 'imputed value' - basically the phenomenon of higher prices actually attracting more sales. In a nutshell, if people see something is a little more expensive, they assume it has value.
As someone who has worked for Dominos pizza, and has delivered cold, mediocre pizza to members of the public who then happily fork over about the same as they'd pay for a sit down meal in a decent Italian restaurant, this is something that should have occurred to me sooner.
It does make sense in theory for ebooks. A lot of people are going to price at $2.99 because it's the lowest you can go and still attract 70% royalty. Pricing a little higher (not too high, I certainly don't want to rip people off), implies confidence in the product. And I do have confidence in the product. I don't think anybody is getting a bum deal paying a little more than that for my book. If it's true that a higher price acts as a signifier of quality, makes the book stand out from the crowd, then all you have to worry about is the quality of the book justifying that signifier.
I sold about a dozen copies of Halfway to Hell in the last couple of weeks of February, and I'm sure a lot of those were my friends kindly supporting me after I posted about the book on Facebook. Sales tailed off a little at the end of February, and then three things happened: I got a couple of good reviews on the .co.uk site, I made all of my books free for a day on World Book Day (bumping everything up the rankings), and finally, I raised the price to $3.99.
So far in March, I'm selling just over a book a day on average. I've now sold more than I did in February when I got my Facebook friends bump. Now, while those are not exactly Grisham numbers, if this continues for the rest of March, I'll have made enough to cover my utility bills.
Which is actually better than I was expecting this early...
But what's really interesting is the way they incentivise pricing within a not-too-cheap, not-too-expensive window. If you price your book between $2.99 and $9.99, you get to keep 70% of the price. If you price outwith those limits, that drops to 35%. This lets Amazon exert an element of control over the price of the bulk of the ebooks sold on their site, and over what people expect to pay for ebooks in general.
Compared to what an author gets on a printed book, 70% is pretty damn fantastic, and even 35% isn't too shabby. But then of course the overheads are practically nil, so to look at it another way, Amazon is getting 30% - 65% of your sale for minimal effort.
Anyway. When I first listed Halfway to Hell, I thought I'd go in at the bottom of the 70% threshold: $2.99. After all, I'm not a big name author and the cheaper the book, the more likely someone is to buy it, right?
Then I read this excellent blog post from Elle Lothlorien on 'imputed value' - basically the phenomenon of higher prices actually attracting more sales. In a nutshell, if people see something is a little more expensive, they assume it has value.
As someone who has worked for Dominos pizza, and has delivered cold, mediocre pizza to members of the public who then happily fork over about the same as they'd pay for a sit down meal in a decent Italian restaurant, this is something that should have occurred to me sooner.
It does make sense in theory for ebooks. A lot of people are going to price at $2.99 because it's the lowest you can go and still attract 70% royalty. Pricing a little higher (not too high, I certainly don't want to rip people off), implies confidence in the product. And I do have confidence in the product. I don't think anybody is getting a bum deal paying a little more than that for my book. If it's true that a higher price acts as a signifier of quality, makes the book stand out from the crowd, then all you have to worry about is the quality of the book justifying that signifier.
I sold about a dozen copies of Halfway to Hell in the last couple of weeks of February, and I'm sure a lot of those were my friends kindly supporting me after I posted about the book on Facebook. Sales tailed off a little at the end of February, and then three things happened: I got a couple of good reviews on the .co.uk site, I made all of my books free for a day on World Book Day (bumping everything up the rankings), and finally, I raised the price to $3.99.
So far in March, I'm selling just over a book a day on average. I've now sold more than I did in February when I got my Facebook friends bump. Now, while those are not exactly Grisham numbers, if this continues for the rest of March, I'll have made enough to cover my utility bills.
Which is actually better than I was expecting this early...
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