My Concerns for Indy 5 as a Fan and as an Author

Recently Steven Spielberg revealed that the next Indiana Jones movie is not only going to stick with the ongoing story of Indy getting older, leaving Harrison Ford as the title character, but also the story will continue where the Crystal Skull left off.  This concerns me both as an Indiana Jones fan, and as the author of Relic Worlds.

As a fan, I’m concerned for the same reason a lot of people are.  Crystal Skull was awful.  I mean, Star Wars prequels bad.  By declaring that the storyline from this will continue without any acknowledgement of how bad Crystal Skull was, or reassurance that this will be better, Spielberg has revealed a certain amount of tone deafness on his part.  I’m sure he has so many levels of walls around him that he doesn’t hear most of what the public’s saying.  It’s one of the biggest problems with artists reaching a certain level of fame.  But this is one of those times that so many people cried out in horror.  It’s hard to imagine him sticking his head so deeply in the sand.  But he just might have.

As the author of Relic Worlds, I’m particularly worried because Crystal Skull was about Indiana Jones searching for aliens.  This could work greatly in my favor, or greatly against me.  It could give me a lot of great promotion opportunities, or it could cause people to think I’m copying Spielberg.

In any case, it’s clear to me that I need to get the word about Relic Worlds out even more so people know about it before they know much about Spielberg’s next stories for Indy.

http://movieweb.com/indiana-jones-5-continues-crystal-skull-story/

Sci Fi and Comic Book Conventions I Want to Attend

I’ve been talking recently about what worked and what didn’t when I released book 2 of the Relic Worlds series; and more importantly, what I learned.  In one weekend I released book 2, presented the Relic Worlds series at Wondercon, and gave away book 1 in a KDP Select free promotion.  The result was not a lot of immediate sales, but a lot of people who are now following the series.

As a result, I’ve begun to plan for more online promotions on Facebook and Twitter, I’m doing a newsletter campaign on Mail Chimp, and I’ll be doing another free book promotion in conjunction with the second book having a countdown deal.  These are all the online plans, and the other half of the equation is networking in person.  This is best accomplished by going to conventions, so I’ve made a list of the conventions I plan to go to.

I was told that Texans will buy anything.  In fact, I was told that Dallas has the best sales rate of any comic book/sci fi and fantasy convention in the country.  Denver is apparently a close second.  I’ve decided to make my trips to these conventions coincide with trips my girlfriend and I want to take, and since we want to see Austin, I’ve decided my next convention will be Alamo City, which takes place in San Antonio, (just an hour’s drive from Austin.)  San Antonio supposed to be a pretty fascinating city itself, so I’m looking forward to that one.

I plan to keep Wondercon as sort of my “home base” if you will, building a regular following there while I travel to other places just once each to build my following.  I also want to attend Emerald City, which is in Seattle, and Chicago’s C2E2 Pop Culture convention.  Unfortunately, both of those are right around Wondercon, and that might be too much intensity in too short a time, (not to mention the expense.)  So I might only do one of those two.  Finally, I want to do New York Comic Con, though that might be way too expensive.  However, it’s the largest Comic Book convention, even larger than San Diego Comic Con, so it might be worth it.  Or it might just swallow a small project like mine up whole.  Maybe I should do that one a little further down the line.

I’m also looking at Sac Con, which is in Sacramento, and Nerd Con in San Diego, since they’d be close.  I did Loscon, and they want me back, but SO FEW of the people at that convention go into the dealer’s room that it’s not really worth it.

I’ll be looking at more conventions, and I’ll be going to as many as I can afford.

http://alamocitycomiccon.com/

KDP Select Free Book Promotion - My Results

I was releasing the second Relic Worlds book at Wondercon in March, so the plan was to have book 1 available for free on the same three days of the convention.  This way I could promote the free book at the convention while also having it promoted online.  I was hoping people getting this for free would go on to buy book 2.

To prepare for the KDP free promotion, I purchased advertisements on a bunch of sights.  I have learned that, when it comes to promoting your free days, you get what you pay for.  Every time I’ve tried free sites, or just tried to post to places to get attention, I get nothing.  But when I pay for some sort of promotion on some sight, I get a lot of downloads.  I spent approximately $200 on these promotions, and I promoted in a lot of Facebook groups, as well as my own Facebook and Twitter.  I also gave away a ton of flyers at the convention which gave the site where someone could download book 1 for free.  The final tally was 3,277.  1,859 were on Friday, 1,042 were on Saturday, and 376 were on Sunday.  Like my time at Wondercon, this was pretty much what I had expected, but not what I had hoped for.  I had hoped for between 5 and 10 thousand.  I expected somewhere around 3,000.  Unfortunately, VERY few of those led to sales of book 2, at least during that weekend.  The hope is that, after a bit of time, when some of those 3,000 have read book 1, they’ll go on to read book 2.

I also scheduled advertising to take place directly after the free book sale ended.  So from Monday to Friday I had ads running on Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, (where I had the book trailer running as an ad.)  Something very interesting happened here.  I got very few sales, so it would appear this was a failure.  However, I got a TON more followers on both Facebook and Twitter.  On Facebook I went from about 40 followers to 250.  On Twitter I gained a couple dozen, but a lot more people started retweeting my things and talking about Relic Worlds.  So it was successful in that more people learned about it.  This goes along with what happened at Wondercon, building my following, though in the short term I didn’t sell that much.  I’m hoping that turns into sales later on.  I met someone at Wondercon who makes her living just writing, and she told me this is the way it usually works, so hopefully I’m on the right track.

My plan for the next step is to use my last two free days of day 1 at the same time I do a countdown deal of book 2.  I’ll talk about how that goes later.  In the meantime, here’s a list of the places I promoted the KDP sale:

More Than 2 Weeks Before the Sale

Ereader News Today: http://www.ereadernewstoday.com/

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/home/

Pixel of Ink: http://www.pixelofink.com/

Digital Book Today: http://digitalbooktoday.com/free-book-listing/

2 Weeks Before the Sale

Kindle Nation Daily: http://kindlenationdaily.com/

Kindle Book Promos: http://kindlebookpromos.luckycinda.com/

Freebooksy: http://www.freebooksy.com/editorial-submissions/

Indie Book of the Day: http://indiebookoftheday.com/authors/free-on-kindle-listing/

Free Books Hub: http://www.freebookshub.com/authors/

EBooks Habit: http://ebookshabit.com/about-us/

Awesome Gang: http://awesomegang.com/submit-your-book/

One thing to consider is that I got turned down by Bookbub and Ereader News Today.  Both of those are the most important lists to get on, but they’re the hardest.  I seem to have had my best luck with Freebooksy, but it’s hard to know for certain.

All in all, what I’ve learned is what I began to suspect when I started down this journey, that it’s best to do series, because short term results in independent publishing are typically slim.  Even the 3,000 downloads I got are relatively small.  If that was the only book I was releasing, I would think it’s really said, because only about 1% of those will probably turn into real sales of other people down the road.  But since this is a series, it’s only the first step in a much longer road.

http://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Secret-Padrone-ebook/dp/B01BHPM4SW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1461127428&sr=8-2&keywords=Relic+Worlds

My Wondercon Experience - Sunday

Sunday is known as the dead day at any convention, but it’s a very overlooked day.  This is actually the day that people are most likely to buy.  The ones who are there for the whole convention spent Friday looking around, then Saturday making the big purchases from major companies.  Then Sunday is the day they’re buying everything else that they’ve been taking a look at.

That’s not exactly the way it worked for me.  I made a few sales on Sunday, but Saturday morning was the big one.  And on Saturday afternoon someone bought the whole series.  However, Sunday was the day when more people picked up the flyers and other things, and wanted to take it home to look at it.  So it’s a great networking day.

It’s also a good day to network with other vendors at the convention.  Since it’s the day the convention is wrapping up, they’re less busy.  I managed to talk with some people at the Nerdist, and they took a copy of one of the Relic Worlds books to consider it for a story or a review.  One of the people from Joss Whedon’s company came over and took a look at Relic Worlds.  He seemed to be considering something, but I don’t know what.

And I had a great personal moment as I reconnected with Amber Benson.  She had been the first person I cast in my project The American Game in 1996 when I was first trying to make it into a movie.  I brought her a copy of the book.  She was signing copies of her book, but I told her that this one was for her, and that… I got only part way through talking when she leaped from her chair and gave me a big hug with a huge smile.  She was super excited to see me, and I was excited to see her.  I gave her my card and said I’d like to reconnect, and she said she would.

At last, at the end, I had a lot of time to contemplate how the convention had gone, and what I would do differently.  I figured out a lot of what I have said in these past few posts, and in general about independent publishing.  I realized that the convention is not about selling, but about getting followers.  And you need to make that task as easy as possible.  You’re going to lose money doing a convention, but if you do it right, you’re going to build your numbers.

And when you combine this with online promotions, it will pay off.  In this case, I had a KDP free promotion going on during the same weekend, so one of the flyers I was giving away was a link to where one could download it for free.  I had also done social media marketing and advertisements regarding the free book promotion.  Next week, I’ll talk about that.

All in all, I would say that my experience at Wondercon overall was what I had expected, but not what I had hoped.  I had expected to grow awareness of the Relic Worlds brand, but I had hoped to have a few more sales.  Oh well.

But the bottom line is, if you do a convention to raise your numbers, and combine that with online social networking and promotions, as long as you’re doing a series in a niche market, you have a chance.

Running Two Books on Sale in Tandem on KDP Select

The first two Relic Worlds books went on sale today on Kindle, and they'll be on sale through the end of the week.  I made the first one free, and the second one on sale for 99 cents.  The idea is to entice readers with the first, and since the second is just a buck, hopefully the audience will just go ahead and buy it.

I'm going to monitor its progress and report how it goes, continuing to try to figure out how this self-promotion thing goes.

Here's how I prepared this time.

Two weeks before the sale, I applied for the big guys.  That's Bookbub, Ereader News Today, and Digital Book Today.  As usual, Bookbub and Ereader turned me down, but Digital Book took it.

One week before the sale, I went tot he paid sites that seemed to do pretty well before.  This includes Book Butterfly, Free Booksy, Book Sends, and Ebooks Habit.  I also posted it for free in Awesomegang, Indie Book of the Day, Ignite Your Book, and OHFB, and for $3 at Free Ebooks Daily.  In every case I chose one of teh books to post except for one of the sites, Ebooks Habit.  They were low price enough that I posted both.  The hope is that someone will see one, then the other, and realize they can get a couple books in the series for a deal.

Throughout the week before the sale I was very active in Facebook groups that I belong to which involve sci fi books and Kindle reads.  This was to sort of prime the pump, and for people not to think I'm just going to post my book and am not interested in what they had to say.  I didn't just post on these sites, I reacted to what other people said.  I made my presence known as much as I could.

The day it started, I registered for any site that only takes submissions on the day, such as Facebook groups that do free Kindle promotions.  Most importantly, though, I posted the announcement to Relic Worlds' Facebook page and I shared that with other groups.  The first step is very important; to post in my own page first and share it.  When I post in other groups, it links back to me.  But when I share from my page, it links back to the page, which is the series I want them to get into.

So that's where we are right now.  It's 4:30 and I'm at 635 free downloads of book 1, but 0 purchases of book 2.  Strangely, there have been a couple downloads of my other books, but that might be just coincidence.  I'mhoping the actual sales pick up.  I'll let you know as it continues.

For now, here are the links to the books on sale:

Relic Worlds, Book 1:
https://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Search-Promised-ebook/dp/B00JSW7EBY?ie=UTF8&keywords=Relic%20Worlds&qid=1465240389&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Relic Worlds, Book 2:
http://www.amazon.com/Relic-Worlds-Lancaster-Secret-Padrone/dp/1530464692/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1465240389&sr=8-2&keywords=Relic+Worlds

My Wondercon Experience - Saturday

Saturday is always the biggest day at any of these conventions, so I pulled out all the stops.  I had two volunteers: Laura and Rachel, who took care of the booth.  I also had two models who I had hired to walk around the front area in costume.  I did this because I had noticed that tons of photographers take pictures of cosplayers who look great.  I wanted to take advantage of this, and am I ever glad I did.  The costumes cost a couple hundred dollars, and so did the models, but they really grabbed attention.  They had just arrived and I had just given them the flyers to give out when there a line of photographers formed.  Before I left, they were literally mobbed by photographers as though they were celebrities.  I had intended for them just to give out business cards and/or flyers to select photographers when they felt it would be beneficial, but they went above and beyond, giving out flyers every time, and sometimes to non-photographers.  They got really excited about the characters and posed in character.  And they even posed with the books.  They were phenomenal, and I realized I had gotten my money’s worth.

To be clear, I didn’t not make a profit off of them.  Laura and Rachel were selling books upstairs, (far more than I sold all day Friday,) but the sales didn’t come close to the $400 I put into the models and their costumes.  But that wasn’t the point of Saturday or the convention in general.  It was to get attention, and I definitely got it.  At one point I passed someone who was talking about our models when we weren’t anywhere around them.  At another time I saw someone in a different part of the convention who asked if I was the one with the volcano.  People were getting to know who we were, and they were beginning to learn the name Relic Worlds.

I had also signed up to put on a game in the gaming area during the day.  This one was actually in the convention center, so taking the miniatures was much easier.  This once again got a lot of attention as people saw me moving the volcano, and they got to see the whole, six foot diorama set up.  The best part was that there was a slow moving line right next to the gaming area, and people kept gawking at it.  The game itself only had a few kids, but a bunch of people took flyers because they wanted to learn more.

Part way during the day we started telling people that they could have a free drink if they signed up for the mailing list, which went over well.  We had twice as many people signed up than completed the treasure hunt, so the mailing list grew.  We also figured out how the booth itself should look.  (It helped to have a volunteer who was a designer.)  I learned that the best look for me was to have all the books and flyers on one side of the table, a diorama on the other side of the table, the horizontal banner at the front of the table, and the two vertical banners of the books in the back, with the name tag the convention provides hanging on the wall between them.

And prominently displayed all on its own either in the middle, or on the far side, is the all-important mailing list.

This setup was one of the most important things I learned that day.  I also learned that I need to have a separate person to run a game if I do that, (which is a good idea because it spreads out my exposure.)  It’s also a worthwhile expenditure to have cosplay models who catch a lot of attention at the front.  But it’s important to not just have them in the outfits of your story, but rather a mixture of something established, (one was in the Princess Leia slave outfit and the other was in steampunk.)

Next week I’ll conclude this story with Sunday at Wondercon.