There are excerpts on here under the working title, New Life and Reveal. They will be linked in the tags for New Life… that should bring up any excerpts I have pushed to the blog, but know that there have been changes made since they were published. One of the big changes is that the Cooks, Jim and Dave, are now Jim and Dave Chance. Kind of worked with the title.

This book isn’t part of the main story line of the Dixon-Prince series, but Jack and Amy Dixon are prominent through the story. Warren Chestik, Jack Dixon’s head of security is also more prominent, which has lead me to begin writing his story. That one has the working title Sniper, and is about half done. I think that one might keep the title, though. There are also a few excerpts from that story on the blog.

If you haven’t already, you should subscribe to the blog. Posts are generally Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and subscribers get an email on Saturdays telling them what the posts were for the week. A few times a year I also send out a special notice to subscribers… like the one they got when this book opened for pre-order, or if I have a book on sale or free. Subscribers also get the ebook Escape for free.

I would love for you to join me here, Goodreads, Facebook, MeWe or Gab, too. And I always enjoy getting feedback.

Or maybe it is more like a prisoner that can’t get outside.

Several times in the last few days I have had interactions on FaceBook with people on my friends list. They aren’t seeing any of my posts about writing. If I post something political, it is everywhere. Mention a book, invisible.

Perhaps it is the algorithm looking for conflict to create engagement. Or maybe it is related to the 50 ads I get from FaceBook each day offering me more eyes on my posts starting at $5 a day.

Either way… I have become invisible. And without more marketing, my books won’t be read. It’s frustrating. Really frustrating. The flip side of the coin is that there are a million different marketing paths I can take. But… most of them suck. All of them promise massive sales and engagement, but there is always a little hitch.

Regardless, I either have to find a way to break out, or just accept that actually selling books is too far fetched. Personally, I think stealing the spoon from the prison food line and trying to dig under the wall is a lot more attractive than giving up. But the question remains… Will I just dig myself into a different prison?

And then, if we are lucky enough to get a couple of books sold, the next challenge is getting reviews. According to everything I am finding out there on the interwebs, 1-5% is about right for the ratio of books sold to reviews. If I sell a hundred books, I’ll get three reviews, plus or minus two.

Many of the promotional sites require five reviews in order to earn the right to PAY to give away books… which we do in hopes of getting reviews. Some require more. One particularly powerful site requires fifty reviews. My most reviewed book has twelve I think. After a year and a half. A few only have one… and a couple newer books don’t have any, as of this writing.

That is the long way of saying… please give me reviews. If you read my books, please give me a review… Amazon and/or Goodreads. I’ll be forever thankful.

The first one is fans. Not just those that drop a like on FaceBook or other social media platforms, but that take an extra moment and hit the share or retweet button. It can’t be overstated how important that is for our success. Most of the platforms limit our organic reach through our social media channels. Even though my FB has thousands of followers, only a couple dozen will see the posts, the result of “the algorithm.” For the rest, they would have to go looking them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday when I post to it from the blog, or on Tuesday and Thursday when I post up a link of a book for sale, or Saturday, when I post the summary of the blog.

If they don’t hunt down my page, they don’t see it. FaceBook wants me to buy ads so that people that have already “liked” my page will see what my page has posted.

It is only marginally better on my personal FaceBook profile. More people will see the “share” I post on my profile. But the algorithm limits that, too. What is more effective… not only because it hits more people, but hits different people… is when my friends share my posts.

Not just on FaceBook, but also on Goodreads, MeWe, Parler, Gab, Twitter. Anywhere. And not just me, but ANY friend that you have that has any sort of “business interest” they are promoting through social media.

The second one is reviews. I can’t overstate the importance of reviews, either. They are the ultimate marketing. Books that have good reviews, and lots of them, sell. And the books that sell are pushed up in the rankings… getting more exposure… because they sell.

Amazon and every other retailer is in the business of selling. So, if they are going to use their limited space to promote something, they want to promote something that converts. I can pay for ad space (which I do), but those ads only pay Amazon if the viewer clicks through. So, if an ad doesn’t deliver clicks, they are less likely to serve it. At the same time, they make MORE money if after the clickthrough to the ad, there is a sale. Reviews can help drive both of those.

I do spend a little time reading books with no reviews. If the premise seems good, I will give it a rip. But many readers will not spend their precious time or money on a book with no reviews. They want to know that someone else took one for the team and read it… and enjoyed it.

Not only that, but some of the marketing platforms won’t let me promote a book that doesn’t have some minimum threshold of reviews. So, I can’t even pay to GIVE AWAY free ebooks without having reviews on file for it. Oddly, the reason an author will give away books is to get reviews.

Catch-22.

That is why I will often offer up free reads to people, gifting them book through Amazon. The other option is to “buy” reviews. I don’t like that. I have run across several paid reviews that really weren’t “reviews.” In fact, it was pretty obvious that the reviews weren’t real. And fake reviews are worse than bad reviews for conversion… so I won’t buy reviews.

In fact, if I give you a book to read, as I hope for a review, I won’t hold you to it, nor will I be mad if the review isn’t a five-star masterpiece. I’ll hope that you’ll give me four or five stars, but after you get the book, it’s free-will.

So, fan-shares and reviews are the two things that really drive everything for indie authors, and others with a similar business model.

Since reading on Kindle and upping the amount of reading I do, I have moved into the realm of bargains. Not exclusively, but significantly. I have read a LOT of classics, everything from almost all of the OZ books, to a bunch of Mark Twain. Gulliver’s Travels and other classics have been in the mix.

The other thing I have read is a lot of free offerings… Kindle deals. Usually, but not always they are part of a series. A few times, I have been intrigued enough to buy further books in the series. The Adventures of the 1800’s Club is an example. One of those comes out, and I am on it. There have been a few others as well.

But mixed in have been some REAL stinkers. I’m not going to name names… not looking to start a war with other authors. Heck, I might not be as good as I want to be. But in the last several years, there has only been one fiction book that I couldn’t finish. I was horrible. It read like a preface. And nothing happened. With little description. Just a lot of words and a pretty cover.

Right now, I’m reading an action/thriller with a group of ex-Navy SEALs. I don’t think it was researched at all. Which is bad enough. It’s jarring when there are obvious factual issues with the story. So I have worked to look past that.

Only to run slap into HORRIBLE writing. This is a language arts teacher’s nightmare. Mixed up tenses in a sentence. Dialogue that doesn’t make sense, and leaves the reader who is talking. Plot jumps that are Olympian. The characters are paper-thin, and they don’t develop. By the time this posts, I will be finished. There are five more books in the series. Not going to read them.