For today only, get Remnants, book 1 of the Remnants Saga, for free on Amazon Kindle!
If you enjoy it, please leave me a review on Amazon! I love to receive your feedback.
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
How to Price Your eBook: Why Luxury Brands Don't Compete On Price and You Shouldn’t Either
One of the biggest struggles I’ve had as an indie author is switching
caps between my Writer Self and my Business Self.
For me, my Writer Self is the one who loves writing,
creating, imagining, and dreaming. I’d rather focus on the fun stuff – the craft
of writing, if you will. It’s why I do this in the first place.
However, my Business Self is what needs to kick in when it
comes time to actually sell books. “Sales” can seem like a bit of a curse word
to people who are focused on their craft, but it’s something we all need to
learn if we’re to achieve that ever-distant dream of supporting ourselves with our craft.
Making Good Art should definitely be a focus. You won’t feel
proud selling it if it isn’t good. But, if you have generated a quality piece
of work, applying some business sense to the mix will do wonders for you. And
some of that business sense means knowing your value, i.e. knowing what to
charge.
One of the top mantras you’ll hear in most business models
is as follows: Don’t
Compete On Price. What does that mean? Don’t try to always have the
cheapest product. Cheap products attract
bargain shoppers. While we can all understand shopping on a budget, luxury
and entertainment purveyors (which includes authors) don’t make a living by marketing
to people who claim they can’t afford certain products.
The problem with offering the cheapest product is that it’s
possible to eventually get priced out of the market. If your goal is to
actually make some money, it’s a lot harder on 99 cent eBooks at
a 35% royalty rate than on something more reasonable, and more reflective
of your time, effort, and talent.
My Writer Self balks at that lesson. I want to share my
craft, and be accessible, and frankly, I feel very hurt when critics suggest my
price is too high. I struggle between wanting to be an artist and wanting to
support myself doing what I love.
Here’s the thing: you can experiment with pricing. You can
have promotions to offer people more opportunities to buy your book, and you
can optimize
your pricing to find the best range for your target readership. But, don’t
feel like you must impoverish yourself for the sake of your art. You have a
dream, and your dream is valid.
You may get the occasional nay-sayer, who leaves you a bad
review without ever even reading your book, merely to complain, “This isn’t
worth the $2.99 price tag! You should price your book at 99 cents!” This type of review says more about the bitter,
haughty reviewer than it does about you. Other, more reasonable people recognize that. Don’t get sucked into
the price wars that do a disservice to you, your readers, and your fellow
authors.
And, really, here’s what’s at issue: is a 2 dollar price
difference really that substantial when it comes to buying a book? The effect
of 2 dollars on a single reader’s pocket book isn’t huge; but the cumulative effect
it has for you as an author who wants to be in the business of writing is
game-changing. On Amazon, it’s the difference between 35% and 70%, and being
that much closer to your dream of supporting yourself with your writing.
You work hard to turn your dreams into reality, and it takes
strength to share your writing with the world and to be vulnerable to other
people’s comments and criticisms. When you deliver a quality product, you
deserve to have it recognized, and to have pricing that reflects that. For the
readers who love you, it isn’t about price, but about delivering the best work
you possibly can to them.
My new dystopian young
adult book, Remnants, is available on Amazon Kindle for the
reasonable price of $2.99. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you
think!
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Why Do Fans Love Dystopian Stories?
The Apocalypse.
The End of the World (as we know it).
Dystopia.
Whatever you want to call it, we’re pretty obsessed with it.
From The Walking Dead to The Hunger Games, plus hits like Divergent and just about every zombie movie ever made, we are fascinated with depictions of the end times. We ruminate over barren wastelands, isolation, and the musings of what a desolate future might hold after a world gone mad.
The End comes in any number of ways. Drought. Nuclear war.
Disease. Undead. Asteroid. The result is always the same: small pockets of
survivors strive to endure, confronting challenges that range from murderous
hoards to depleted resources. Plus, there are always those who want to take
advantage of the misfortune of others for personal gain.
Whatever the focus, these
types of stories are dark. The future of mankind is bleak, the setting is
usually harsh and unforgiving, and despair and hopelessness are omnipresent.
So, why on Earth do we love reading about this stuff? What’s
the appeal of post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows? Are we all just crazy
gluttons for punishment? Here, we’ll take a look at a handful of reasons why we
love dystopian stories.
1) The Select Few
Endure
As depressing as these stories are, we love to follow the
heroes and heroines, envisioning ourselves in their shoes. How would we react
if we were one of the chosen few? What steps would we take to become Certified
Badasses capable of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world? How would we help
rebuild society?
Dystopian fiction provides some of the escapism we all
need to step back and get perspective on our lives, and stepping into the
shoes of a strong hero for a little while can help us feel empowered and
refreshed.
2) We Can Rebuild
When the real world is already full of hopelessness, why pile
on? Because dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories are about more than
devastation: they are about survival after the worst has happened. Underneath
the despair is the glimmer of potential: we can overcome these challenges, and make a
better world.
3) We Kind of Want
the World to Burn
Wait, what?
No, you read that right. Many of us are psychologically
inclined to want
the end of the world to happen.
Contemplating the end of the world triggers certain fear
responses, which some people are wired to crave. Whether it’s a case of needing
validation, a fatalistic outlook on life, or a desire to escape individual
responsibility, dystopian stories give us the psychological rush we need.
It’s not entirely unhealthy, either. In fact, “preppers,”
people who actively prepare for a doomsday scenario, are engaging in
goal-oriented behavior that therapists often recommend to people in crisis.
What about you? Are you into the dystopian genre? What’s the
appeal for you? And what are your favorite dystopian movies, books, and
authors?
If you enjoy dystopian
fiction, I invite you to check out my latest novel, Remnants, now available on Wattpad and Amazon Kindle.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Enter to win your free eBook copy of Remnants!
Interested in winning a free eBook? Follow me on Twitter and you'll be entered to win! Must use the link provided, no purchase necessary: click here to enter.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Remnants Now Available Via Kindle!
So, after spending the past couple months re-working parts of the book and editing some more, I released Remnants on Amazon today. Give it a look, and leave a review if you enjoyed it! Thanks everyone for your support. This has been a long-running project and I've really had fun working on it, and I look forward to seeing what it holds for me in the future.
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