Today my blog received its 20,000
hit, meaning 20,000 (and likely more by the time you read this) people have chosen
to click on my blog and read my posts.
Although my blog has been active
for less than 2 years, over that time I have come in contact and have conversed
with many fellow writers, marketers and a number of fun and interesting people.
And for those who look forward to
reading my posts and are a bit annoyed at the lengthening of time between them,
I apologize. In my defense I can assure you the scarcity of new posts is not
due to laziness but to the rapidly increasing workload involved, especially
when it come to writing, publishing and marketing books.
To my fellow writers out there it
has been brought to my attention that if you are a relatively unknown author, any
book you write should not exceed 300 pages. Because the number of pages your
book has that exceeds 300 the less likely someone with take a chance on buying
it. This has nothing to do with the price. People will pay top dollar for a
novel from a favorite author. The problem is the amount of TIME the reader is
willing to spend on a book by an author they’ve never read before.
I’m sure you’ve picked up a lengthy
novel and realized a third of the way in that the author isn’t very talented
but you’ve invested this much time already so you might as well slog through
the rest just to is if anything interesting happens on the way there.
Usually nothing does and so a significant
period of your time has been wasted.
However, this also hurts novelists who are quite
good but whose books are a bit on the lengthy side. (For example, my Noon books
weight in at around a little under 600 pages each.)
It has been suggested that if
your sales aren't as good as they should be and your book has a high page count, but good reviews
(again like my Noon series) you should break it into smaller books, serialize
them and lower the price. (This of course
only applies to eBooks)
Also take another look at your
cover. Both my Noon books had professional covers that could hold their own
against any Grisham or Turow novel. Very professional looking and respectable.
The problem is that my books don’t
have the advantage of extensive advertising and the backing of a massively
large publishing house. So I had to reconfigure my covers to be more aggressive.
Yep. Respectable and professional is out and WTF is that??! has now stepped up
to the plate.
Richard Nixon, the consummate
politician once said that in order to get noticed, take a very radical stance
at first and then once you collect followers slowly move toward the center.
I believe the new covers will, if
nothing else, catch your eye.
Here are the two original covers
now retired.
And here are the new covers with the
original Noon: The Rise to Power being split into Revolution in America: Noon’s
Rise to Power and Revolution in America: The Night of the
Scarecrows. And with Noon 2: The Resurgence being split
into Revolution
in America: Resurgence and Revolution in America: Unknown Soldier.
I also believe the new covers
better reflect the stories inside. The Noon series was never just about Noon
anymore than the America Revolution was only about George Washington. It
encompasses a number of flawed yet engaging characters and how they react to a very
dangerous environment where the average person’s life is in almost constant
danger.
The first 280 page Noon’s Rise to
Power is scheduled to be a free download on Oct 17, 18 & 19 (The reason I
scheduled it for three days instead of one is because I have had problems with
free promotion dates in the past and will likely kill the last day if
everything goes as it’s supposed to.
So if you want to download a free
copy on those dates he’s the link:
Then again, since its only $2.99
and you likely have a rainy weekend ahead of you, maybe you’d rather not wait
and download it now.
But then you wonder, okay I can
easily swing the $2.99 but is this guy really any good? Are his stories worth
investing my valuable free time reading?
The 20,000 readers of this blog
seem to think so.
