Three Weeks Until Release

I missed blogging last week because I've been so swamped trying to get work done.  I even took time off my day job to try to do everything.

Part of what made me so busy was that I was promoting Relic Worlds as well, which is supposed to be more during the second half of the year, but there was an event last week where I wanted to present it.  Los Angeles's biggest game convention, Orccon, took place February 13-16.  I put on a miniatures game of Relic Worlds where I had a large table in the main room.  We had a banner at the table, books, and bookmarks to show it off.  Jamie (my girlfriend) and Rachel (a friend and soon-to-be neighbor) played the Dark Agents versus the pirates.  Artifacts were scattered around the table, as well as mundane items, traps, and monsters.  This was a way to show off the concept of the series to everyone who passed by, and gamers are a big part of our audience, so it seemed like a good fit.  I also put on a role playing game where the players got to be the pirates from the series, and their actions would affect the spinoff storyline about the pirates that I'm doing.

The effect of both of these were underwhelming.  The miniatures game would have worked better if I'd had the book trailer running, which I forgot to do.  Also, we need bigger settings to attract people's attention.  As for the role playing game, the area was run by a bunch of kids who screwed up where the game was to take place, so no one played.  It was just as well, though; only one person signed up, so that didn't really work out.

All that preparation took time away from setting up Two Gun Hart, which is going into the final stretch.  Now I'm putting everything into that.  I made some fixes to the hardcover and ordered some to take to the local bookstores.  They came in just last night.  I found a small problem in the formatting of the chapters.  It's not a big deal, so I will be taking these to the local bookstores, and I'm trying to make the fixes on Ingram Spark before anyone orders them.  (This has to be done quickly, as I made sell sheets and mailed them out, and paid $60 to have the book added to the Ingram Spark catalog.)

I will also be emailing bookstores this week to let them know about the book's availability.  However, I'm putting that off for a couple days while I get the book fixed on Ingram.  Right now the upload seems to be stuck, so hopefully that will get fixed soon here.  I still have several copies I need to send to bloggers, news outlets, and reviewers.  The time is getting very short for this, however.

I'm also setting up talks at bookstores and libraries.  Most places have been turning me down, saying that signings and appearances don't usually get many people.  I think they're being short-sighted in two ways.  First, just having a signing and appearance is an excuse for radio and newspaper promotions.  Even if no one comes to the signing, there's an excuse for marketing and free promotions.  Second, in this particular case you have a story related to something everyone's heard about, but with lots of new information.  True crime buffs and anyone familiar with Capone is going to want to see and especially interact with his nephew, and learn about this long-lost brother.  They should be seeing this as an exception, but most are not, at least in LA and, of all places, Chicago.

Corey Hart has set up a talk with the Sons of Italy in Salt Lake City.  I also have an appearance at the Burbank Library, and several in Nebraska.  It's amazing how Nebraskans seem to be a little smarter when it comes to these things, or at least less short-sighted.

Putting on Three Games at Orccon This Weekend

I'll be at Orccon this weekend putting on three games.  The first two will be on Saturday, and they both involve Relic Worlds.  The miniatures game between the pirates and the Dark Agents will be from 10 am to 2 pm, and the role playing game will be from 8 pm to midnight.  The results of both games will be counted as part of the ongoing story, and I will be recording them as a story to place onto the website.

On Sunday I'll be hosting a game of Command Combat: Civil War.  Even though the 1864 expansion has not come out yet, this will be the first public appearance of the game, and will serve as sort of a trial run for the campaign system.  The scenario will be the Overland campaign between Lee and Grant.

Jamie Ball and Rachel Gunnerson will be helping me with the first game on Saturday, and we're all going to be in costume.  Dress up like your favorite adventurer and swing on by!

The convention is held at the Hilton Los Angeles, near LAX, and you can read about it here:

http://www.strategicon.net/

The Results of My Free Book Promo.

I ran a free book promo on Amazon for my book The Great Heist this weekend.  I did something a little different each day, and got varying results.

Day 1:  Announced on various sites.  I go down a list I found here:  http://www.trainingauthors.com/47-places-to-submit-your-free-kdp-promotion-for-your-kindle-ebook/  I submit to each of the places that still exist.  Some have been replaced, some just don’t exist anymore.  Eventually I’ll have to get a different list, but this one works pretty good right now.  I got 658 downloads.

Day 2:  I did all of my social media outlets, including posting to groups I belong to on Facebook.  I also retweeted some things and tweeted on my own handle.  Basically, I reached out to everyone I could get to throughout the day.  I mostly posted the book trailer, and where they could find the book on Amazon.  The result was 634 downloads.

Day 3:  I did nothing this day, counting primarily on what I had done on previous days.  (Actually, the main thing that happened is I got distracted with other things throughout the day.)  The result was 176 downloads.

Day 4:  I did two paid ads, one in Freebooksy, at: http://freebooksy.com/editorial-submissions and one at Bookgoodies: http://bookgoodies.com/  The result of these:  2,034 downloads.

Day 5:  I’m just reminding people that there’s one last day to download the book for free.  It’s so far had about 600 downloads.  Most of these are probably hold-overs from day 4.

The moral of the story?  You get what you pay for.  The Freebooksy and Bookgoodies ads combined came to $100.  Of course all the books are being given away for free, so I get none of that back at the moment, but hopefully it will get attention for the book.  It was #1 in the organized crime category the entire weekend.  It reached number one in nonfiction on Sunday, and is now number 16, and it is currently number 93 in the free category.  (It was even higher on Sunday, but I’ve forgotten exactly where.)

The next few days will tell.  But the point of this giveaway was mostly to get people to know my writing, and to know one of the characters in it, who is featured in the next book, Two Gun Hart, which comes out next month.  To me, the decision to give a book away is to get attention for something else.  It helps with sales of the book itself in that it shows up on people’s searches as “People who bought this also bought…” and they’ll hopefully talk about it and review it.  But I don’t count on those numbers.  I do count on looking at this book leading to looking at another.

If you would like to pick up The Great Heist while it is still available for free today, or for a low price any other day, you can find it at:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Heist-Biggest-Robbery-History-ebook/dp/B00G8ULNX4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423519063&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Great+Heist

The Great Heist Free on Kindle Until Tuesday

My book about the largest bank robbery in history is available for free from today until next Tuesday on Amazon. It's a very wild ride. Some of the gangsters who committed it were the same guys who pulled off the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the district attorney who went after them ran the gambling rackets in Nebraska, it was one of the first uses of the lie detector, the Secret Six were involved, and Al Capone helped get the money back along with the help of his long-lost brother who was a Prohibition officer.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Great+Heist

Sent Books to to NPR/PBS

Today I mailed a whole slew of books to various places.  They were mostly to public television and radio locations throughout the country based on lists I had made.

I started by looking up station information in specific states:  Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois. New York, South Dakota, Idaho, and Washington.  These were all places where Richard Hart lived.  I also included California as that's where I live, and media outlets are more likely to do a story on you if you're a local.  Once I had my list of stations, I went through the website of each one, searching for the contact person to send a book to.  This would usually be programming, or sometimes a producer.  I would always look to see if there was a specific show that handled books, and sometimes I even called to ask if the station did any specials on books.  When a station looked like they only aired programming from other locations, I didn't bother with them, as I've already sent books to the main NPR and PBS production locations.

Once I had the contact information, I looked to see which seemed better, email or mail.  Email is cheaper and easier, and you get an answer without a financial investment, but it's also easier to ignore or not notice when there are hundreds of emails going to some of these locations every day.  It's also easier to say no to someone when all you see is an email IF you even get it.  It's harder when you see a nice book that came for free which has an interesting topic right there on the cover.  So I categorized many of the names on the list.  The ones that were the most important, such as Chicago's public station, and the local LA affiliate, I just automatically got the name and address so I could mail a book.  Some of the smaller ones, and some which seem to prefer doing things electronically got an email with links to the Bandwagon website.

The books that I mailed mostly went with media kits.  Even though I made the media kits to go to stations that weren't getting books, the most important locations got them in addition to the books for two reasons:  First, because they're PBS/NPR, the most likely places to feature books and therefore worth the extra effort.  Second, because at a lot of these places there will be book critics considering doing book reviews, and news departments which might do stories on Richard Hart or the Capone family.

The most important package to go out today was one to The Daily Show.  I managed to get the name of the woman in charge of booking guests, so I packaged up a media kit, a letter, and a book.  This one being a bit more important, I made sure to get a hard cover version of it made since this was so important, and typically you see John Stewart handling the hard cover rather than the paper back.

All of these places could have learned about it through the press release I sent out, but being PBS/NPR locations that regularly talk about books, I wanted to make sure I got in their faces.  So far the emails haven't had much of a response.  Let's hope the mailings have better luck.

I did a number of other things this week that aren't coming to mind right now.  The trouble with me reporting all this is that I work almost nonstop from morning through late into the night.  Many of the things I do just get done and they're not even done being wiped from my plate when I'm on to the next thing.  I almost need someone with a camera over my shoulder to show what I do, as I have no time to write them down, or to hold a camera and show people.

Although I did start one channel.  After seeing a whole bunch of bloggers and Youtubers refusing to review or even look at self-published works, (even though they are self-published,) I became infuriated, and wanted to do something about it.  I also have been aware that i need to stop making excuses and start losing weight.  (My girlfriend doesn't let me forget.)  So I decided to combine the two and I am doing a monthly Youtube program where I pick one independently published work and I read it while I'm out on walks.  At the beginning of the month, I pick the book and weigh myself, and at the end I review the book and weigh myself again.  Here is the first full episode.

Pro Bono Hardcover Now Available

Pro Bono was sort of my first "real book."  I had already done The Table of Truth before then, and had even printed a picture book of my movie Stolen Souls.  But Pro Bono was the first book that I really promoted and distributed.  It's where I learned how to do everything.  Thus, I got a lot of things wrong in the post-promotional period.  Still, it's remained my top selling book.

One thing I really wanted to do, but I had no idea how to do it, was make a hardcover version.  I couldn't do it on Createspace, where I do most of my publishing, so it went by the wayside for a while.  Then I discovered that I could do hardcovers on Lulu.  The problem was that by the time I got around to figuring that out, I had moved on to other projects.  So I've been trying to find time to do this ever since.

Meanwhile, as I was going to various talks, readings, and signings, people shared with me their memories of the Starkweather murder spree, and the ensuing trials.  I got more and more information, including an entire other case where the district attorney falsely accused another man of murder, and that man later sued the state for hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.  This other case was being appealed at the same time as the Fugate one, and the man's lawyers were often in the same courtroom just before or after my grandfather and father tried their cases.  I got more about this, and other elements of the story, out of my dad in the months after the Pro Bono paperback came out.

So now the hardcover is available here on Lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/jeff-mcarthur/pro-bono-the-18-year-defense-of-caril-ann-fugate/hardcover/product-21985962.html

January Update of Promotions

Two Gun Hart has been available for pre-order for a month now and I’ve been doing all the pre-release publicity for it.  Every day it’s been going out to various locations to get attention for it.  Since we’ve been in the first of three months of promotions, I’ve been primarily focusing on places that need time to have an effect.  They include the following:

Reviews:  I went down the list of reviewers on The Indie View (http://www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/) and I listed each one that showed some interest in non-fiction historical.  (Oddly enough, it’s a very small number.  Most on The Indie View are interested in sci fi and fantasy.)  I then went through each one on that list and followed their submission policy, sending the book when requested.  I was not very picky, but I weeded out any that I figured wouldn’t have much of an interest.  There was one, also, that I weeded out because her instructions were written in a way that can only be described as “bitchy.”  She almost seemed to be daring someone to ask her for a review.  I’m not afraid of bad reviews, but I don’t have time for people who have a bad attitude from the outset.  I also sent the book to several select places that would be interested in this subject, such as the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska, and a couple places in Chicago.  One of my next steps is to send it to newspapers and other places with reviewers and hope that it can get reviewed in time.

Speaking Engagements:  I’ve contacted a number of bookstores and libraries to have talks after the book releases.  I’ll be having an event here in Burbank when the book releases in March.  I’ll then be heading to Nebraska and Iowa in April, and will have an event in Chicago in May.  I’ll then be speaking in San Francisco near the end of May, and will have a couple more events in Nebraska and one in Austin in October.  Several places are lined up, but I’ll have more specifics later on.  In trying to plan these, I’ve discovered that a lot of locations prefer to have multiple authors do readings/signings at the same time, as individual ones don’t usually bring in crowds unless they’re somehow a celebrity.  As such, I’ve been trying to emphasize the fact that I’ll be coming with the son of Richard Hart, (and nephew of Al Capone,) via Skype.

Interviews:  I’ve been following up former leads to do interviews; people who have asked me to let them know when this specific book was coming out.  I wanted to make sure they had the first opportunity to get the story before anyone else.  One of the podcasts, Outlaw Radio, will have an interview with me the weekend before it releases, (March 14.)

Goodreads giveaway:  I began a Goodreads giveaway that will end on February 1^st.  I will then get the book to those who won it so they can start talking about it.

Press release:  I did a press release through PRWeb and got a very good response.  Tens of thousands saw it, and close to 5,000 read the article.  Then a few hundred ran the story.  It said simply in the headline “Al Capone Had Long Lost Brother Who was Prohibition Officer”.  That caught a lot of people’s attention, so it was easy to do.  This is a story that is easy to sell to news stations because it is real news.  The difficult part is then converting readers of those stories into buyers of the book.  It also helped that I purchased the $250 level from PRWeb, which expanded the viewership.  The only problem is that few people seem to have purchased the book after the story ran.  I’m thinking it might have been a little too far away from the release date.  I’ll probably run one more story, this one focusing on his involvement in getting the money back from the largest bank robbery in history, closer to the release date.  This time I’ll probably just use the $100 release.

Preparing for Bookstores:  I’ve been studying what needs to happen to get books into bookstores.  The main ingredient is getting it listed with Ingram Spark.  Ingram Spark makes it sellable at bookstores because it will take returns.  This unfortunately means I have to pay $150 to register with Ingram Spark, and another $125 for an ISBN.  This ISBN can only be used for one format, so I chose to have it be hardcover.  That way the hardcover will sell at bookstores,  the paperback will be available through Amazon, and the ebook will be available through Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, Apple, Google, etc.

Physical pre-orders:  So far, Amazon only allows ebooks to be pre-ordered.  However, I want people to be able to purchase hard copies in pre-order.  Therefore, I’m going to be having a Kickstarter campaign which is not intended to raise money for the book, but rather to have a place where people can order paperbacks and hardbacks.  Getting the orders through Ingram Spark is expensive and difficult, so the books for this campaign are being printed through Lulu.  It doesn’t come with a barcode, but books going through them are only intended for giveaway type situations.

So January comes to a close with the initial phases of beginning word of mouth being done.  Now it'll be time to start ramping up interest in the push to release.