Nine Bucks a Pound celebrates its 10th birthday

Ten years ago this week I released my second novel (and second baseball novel), Nine Bucks a Pound. It's possibly my favorite, though sales-wise it ranks a distant third behind The Greatest Show on Dirt and Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed. And in time it will surely be passed up by This Is Who We Are Now.

I didn't realize how fortunate I was with The Greatest Show on Dirt when it was released in 2012, but the Durham Bulls connection there netted a lot of publicity in North Carolina, with several major newspapers running reviews or short features shortly after it came out. It was also still the relatively early days of Kindle sales, and I have never since matched the success of some of the promotions I ran that first year. Even two years later, the market had matured enough that it wasn't as easy to catch that sales wave.

I've also had second thoughts on the title, dating back to even before I hit the publish button. The working title all along was Branded, but it turned out to be not very original. There were, in fact, a number of books already for sale on Amazon called Branded, and they tended to largely fall under the bad-boy romance umbrella. So I reached a little deeper, choosing a name that needed to be explained, which should have been my first clue that it was a poor choice. Then again, there are plenty of very famous books with titles that don't necessarily make it obvious what they're about. The Catcher in the Rye. Bang the Drum Slowly. The Sun Also Rises. Still, going esoteric might not be the best strategy for naming a novel.

The other strong contender for title was Lightning in a Needle. If I could go back 10 years, I think I'd go with that. Combined with the bobblehead holding the bat syringe on the cover, I think that would have done a better job of conveying what the story was about. Which, if you're not familiar, is this:

From the moment he’s drafted, Del Tanner shows the Twins a smooth left-handed stroke and a slick glove at first base. But his path is blocked by players who possess the one thing he lacks—power. When a teammate’s injury is the only thing to spare him on cutdown day, the message is clear: Put more balls over the fence or find a new line of work.

His aspiring agent connects him with a steroid dealer operating out of the back room of a South Florida funeral parlor. After a winter in Mexico, pumping iron by day and riding the bench by night, Del reports to spring training sporting twenty additional pounds of muscle. Suddenly a legitimate power threat, he ascends from the ranks of the unknown to American League Rookie of the Year. Within days of being so honored, allegations surface of his performance-enhancing drug use, forcing him on the defensive as he fights to restore his reputation and repair his personal relationships.

Those who have found it have seemed to like it for the most part. It's currently rocking a 4.2 rating on Amazon, tops among my novels. And those reviews are one of the major reasons I've never re-released it with a different title. No point risking losing all those. That's another thing that seems to have changed over the years. Amazon readers seem a bit stingier with reviews these days. At least based on my own anecdotal evidence.

Lesson learned. Unless I somehow become famous enough to get away with it, cryptic titles are not my friend. You only get one chance to get that name right, and if you don't you may wind up a decade later wondering what if.

Avoiding old pitfalls with the new release

With the recent release of This Is Who We Are Now, I find myself pulled back to 2015, trying to remember exactly how things went in the early days for Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed. Flavor-wise, that is my closest comp title, what with all the family drama and dysfunction. In my memory, Sorry got out of the gate quicker, with more Amazon reviews helping pave the way for early sales.

Only it didn't. Memory is a funny thing that way.

As with this one, I made Sorry available to book bloggers and other reviewers via NetGalley. To date, This Is Who We Are Now has seven reviews on Goodreads from NetGalley reviewers, almost all four-star ratings. Unfortunately, only one has made its way to Amazon to this point. And it is unfortunate, because all seven were thoughtful and largely quite positive reviews that would no doubt help sales.

I had a number of nice reviews of Sorry posted on Amazon by NetGalley readers. But digging back through emails now, most of those went up a month or more after the book went live. I can recall being anxious for the total review count to hit double digits, because that was the threshold for a number of the book deal websites to take a title on. If you wanted to knock the Kindle price down to 99 cents for a few days and advertise the discount, you had to have ten reviews with an average of at least four stars. And once I hit that mark, I discounted and racked up quite a few sales in quick order.

It worked so well I did it a number of times over the first year Sorry was out. This was one of the major perks of being enrolled in Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program, where subscribers could read your book for free, for which the 'Zon compensated you to the tune of about half a cent a page.

And then, several years later, I realized the tradeoff that came with all that. My Amazon Also Boughts were a mess of bargain-basement books. Cookbooks. Romances. Books about the Holocaust. Books readers scarfed up for a buck--or free even. Books they read through KU, where the only real common tie was that it didn't cost them anything. Books that were zero help to me at all.

It took a bit of time and effort, but I rehabilitated my Also Boughts in 2019-20 by advertising on Amazon, building connections with books I wanted readers to associate mine with. When you have enough common purchases with books by Jonathan Tropper and Matthew Norman and Kevin Wilson, Amazon starts to do some of the heavy lifting for you. Your book shows up on their Also Boughts. Your pay-per-click ads come down in price as Amazon's algorithms calculate the odds of a sale are stronger. It makes a big difference in visible and non-visible ways.

And when you release a new book, you start the process anew.

This Is Who We Are Now enjoys no such ties with the books that Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed developed. We are officially at square one. But this time, I'm taking a different approach. No 99-cent deals. No Kindle Unlimited. The hope is to avoid digging myself into a hole where Fruit Pies: Practical Guide to Homemade Baking shows up in my Also Boughts. I don't need connections like that. Because much like a cover, readers judge a book by the company it keeps. And even more importantly, so do Amazon's algorithms.

Four years later, this is where we are now

I first began playing around with what eventually became This Is Who We Are Now more than four years ago. Henry Bradfield was a Jim back then, at least in the oldest surviving draft still extant on my computer. Technically written on my previous desktop, which was sent to the storage closet six months later, it's a two-chapter beginning, dated July 4, 2019.

There are quite a few interim drafts littering my hard drive (and my cloud backup--you never want to be that guy who loses his WIP). The final version can trace its roots to a drastic revision I started two years ago after being convinced that the book started in the wrong place. Kill your babies, they say. I slashed almost half the book. Maybe someday some of the bits on the cutting-room floor will resurface in another project.

Henry's personality emerged through the rewrites, his extreme passivity identified and coached out of him. His wife Denise became a much kinder person over time, her over-the-top bitchiness eradicated after the top question for Henry became, "why are you still with this shrew?" Rusty and Kyle, their teen sons, remain the most recognizable from those early days, their initial personalities still largely intact.

The same cannot be said for Henry's parents, who were recast multiple times. In early versions, his father was a philandering college professor, whose wife stuck with him largely because she couldn't stand the thought of everyone in town gossiping about her marriage failing if she were to leave. They were turned on their heads when she became the cheating spouse, sleeping with various faculty members at the university where she taught, the scandal made both worse and more understandable by the accident which had left Henry's dad unable to focus on anything long enough to hold down a job due to his ensuing traumatic brain injury. Henry's sister, Margo, was catty and mean, his brother, Danny, generally lazy, at least until he helped their parents convert their home into a B&B. He also may have had a brief fling with Henry's high school girlfriend, Erin.

Looking back through it all now, it's hard to remember some of it was ever in there. Did I mention the revision was drastic?

In the four years and four months since I first began writing this novel, I set it aside several times to work on other projects or simply give it the space and time it needed to find its way into its final form. This time a year ago, I was feverishly writing about baseball, putting every free waking moment into Major League Debuts. I have never worked so intensely on anything in my life, and I was prepared to give it another go this spring until the sales just didn't justify the time, expense, and complete obliteration of any thought of relaxation. I much prefer the pace of writing a novel, at least at the pace I write, which is often dragged out further by detours, such as the three other novels I started since first conjuring up Henry and Denise. One of those stands a legit chance of being the next book completed, and I plan to turn my attention back to it soon, once I get through launching this one.

We are down to little more than a week until release day. You can pre-order This Is Who We Are Now for your Kindle now on Amazon ($5.99), and it will hit your device on Monday, Oct. 23. That is also the day the paperback will be available, though Amazon doesn't allow indie authors to set up pre-orders for those, so you'll have to set a reminder to buy it in real time as soon as it lists ($12.95).

It was a long and winding road to get here, but I think the delays were worth it in the end. I'm very excited about how it came out, though it is, as always, an anxious time releasing something new out into the world. How will it be received? I guess we'll find out soon.

Coming very soon: This Is Who We Are Now

Mark your calendars, kids. October 23 is the big day. The one we've all been waiting for for a good long while now. Well, some of us. Me, anyway.

That's right, the new book is coming out next month. This Is Who We Are Now will be available for sale in both ebook and paperback format 29 mere days from now.

What's it all about? Well, since you asked:

Family vacations can be dreaded, stressful, boring, and contentious. And sometimes they can be even worse.

On the brink of a milestone birthday he'd rather not celebrate, Henry Bradfield returns to his childhood home in Vermont to find his old belongings are the hottest items at his parents' garage sale. When Henry learns that his prized Spider-Man comics were sold to the son of his high school sweetheart, Erin Chadwick, suddenly vintage collectibles aren't the only things making him feel nostalgic.

Tensions in the house rise as a long-simmering rivalry with his younger brother heats up, all while Henry's own teenage sons are butting heads. His wife, Denise, becomes increasingly distant toward him and his parents, who she feels have never truly embraced her. Amidst the chaos, another chance encounter with Erin leads Henry to ponder what might have been. His only confidant is his alcoholic sister, Margo, who is wrestling with her own relationship issues.

When Denise disappears without saying good-bye, Henry must decide whether the thrill of rekindling an old flame is worth risking his stable, if all too routine, marriage.

At this point, it's down to crossing some i's and dotting some t's. Once I get the final cover files, the book will go up for presale on Amazon in both Kindle ($5.99) and print formats ($12.95). And then time will start speeding up on me (in a good way, mostly).

Stay tuned.

Amazon cracking down on AI "authors"

Call me old-school, or just call me old, but I am so not interested in AI anything. I remember when AI stood for Allen Iverson. He was a heck of a lot more real than today's AI, Art Ificialintelligence.

New-school AI is taking over everywhere. We're supposed to cogitate on how we can utilize it at work. Job seekers use it to craft their resumes. Companies use it to sift through those resumes and determine who's worthy of an interview. You can't scroll your LinkedIn feed for two seconds without passing three stories about it, posted by the usual suckups who are trying to impress their bosses, if not their future robot overlords.

Lawyers use it to craft briefs, sometimes to hilarious effect, at least for those of us who weren't sanctioned by the judge for including made-up legal citations. College students use it to write essays. Musicians use AI to craft new songs or to clean up old ones. And some non-musicians use it to create songs as well.

Sorry, but as an old-school old guy, it just all feels like cheating to me.

Some of it literally is. We now have people publishing AI books under the names of legit authors, earning the ire of best-sellers like Jane Friedman, whose name was affixed to books written neither by her nor any other human. Amazon took action, removing them from the world's largest online book store.

It is now taking things a step further, asking self-publishers to declare whether AI was used in creating their new release. Authors are asked, "Did you use AI tools in creating texts, images, and/or translations in your book?" As long as they're not attempting to defraud readers, as in the case where they listed books under a legit author's name, they can still publish the work. And as of now, I can't find any indication on book listings to indicate the author used or didn't use AI. My guess is that will come soon.

Amazon is also implementing rules to limit self-publishers on its Kindle Direct Publishing platform to three titles a day, which crystalizes their overall goal here a bit. They are cracking down on ebook mills. This is really all about fraud.

And I'm so here for that.

Writing books is hard work. Writing music is hard work. Writing legal briefs is hard work. And if you take shortcuts, well, maybe that's a good thing in some cases, but it ought to be noted. I want to know if a book was written by a human or a robot. Because I'm not paying robots to write books. I don't care if I can't tell the difference (though I bet I could).

When I find an author I like, I tend to read a lot of their stuff. I go a bit fan boy on occasion. I identify with them. I want to support them, advocate for them. Same with bands. If I like a group, I will gladly buy their CDs (yes, CDs, I wasn't kidding, I'm old). I will follow them on social media. I want to know when they're on tour, even if I'll never get to see them play live. I want to know when their new album is coming out. I want to feel like I know them well enough to know they're decent human beings.

That they're human beings, period.

I don't care if AI can craft the catchiest earworm, I'm not listening to it. I'm not paying one rouge centime for it.

I listen to different music at different times to suit the mood and emotion of the moment. Human moods and emotions, matched by music written and played by humans who have felt similar emotions. I read fiction to scratch a similar emotional itch. I'm not reading any tear-jerkers crafted by a robot who can't cry. I'm not laughing along with text written by a robot who can't laugh.

And, yeah, I get it, AI isn't written by actual robots. Just one more strike against it, really. I might read Rosey's memoir to learn what it was really like to work for the Jetsons. And tip me off when Marvin the Paranoid Android's account of life on the Heart of Gold hits the press.

But let's just say no to robots with no personality, no pedigree, no legitimacy, and no credibility.

And let's thank Amazon for taking this very small, and quite possibly not significant-enough step to slow the AI roll. Even if all we're doing is slapping "Non-GMO" labels on our organic books, at least we're acknowledging the issue. It's a start.

The namesake club expands by one

I'm closing in on a milestone that has been a long time coming. I'm a chapter and a half away from completing the first draft of my sixth novel. Wrapping up a first draft leaves me a long, long way from the finish line, but it's a major step. There will be second, third, fourth, and fifth drafts before this thing sees the light of day, but none of them would be possible without a first.

I'm a re-writer. Over the years, I've come to realize I enjoy the subsequent iterations more than the first, so getting the initial round out of the way is a big deal to me. I started working on this book in early July.

Of 2019.

That was six months before the world even heard of COVID-19, to put that in some perspective. It's been a slog. But I'm finally to the point when I can at least envision my next book hitting Amazon.

Or maybe it already has.

I was crawling through my Twitter timeline tonight when I came across a review by Larry Hoffer, who was kind enough to review Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed way back in 2015, of a new novel called The Flip Side. By James Bailey.

Wait, that's me. Isn't it?

Okay, I don't have the most unusual name on the planet. I'm no John Smith (that would be my neighbor), but I'm a heck of a lot closer than, say, Gary Shteyngart. According to the U.S. Census, Bailey is the 66th most common last name in the United States. Per the U.S. Social Security Administration, James is currently the sixth most popular name for a male baby in this country. That has ranged from No. 1 to No. 19 over the past 100 years, including a stretch of more than 60 years in the top 5.

James Baileys may not be quite a dime a dozen, but we're somewhere on that discount rack near the front of the Name Stop store.

This newcomer--and his bio says this is his first novel, and it was published just 10 days ago--is only one of many in the club to publish in a variety of genres. We've written fiction and non-fiction, memoirs, sci-fi, even chemistry textbooks. And if you want to expand the club to welcome Bailey James, well, we've also got some steamy-looking romance on tap.

So, welcome to the gang, Mr. Bailey. And seeing as your book is currently higher in the sales rankings, how about sharing a few readers with the rest of us?

Sometimes no review IS the review

Reviews are the ultimate chicken/egg for authors. We need sales to get reviews, but we need reviews to get sales. Lack of reviews, or more precisely, lack of positive reviews, can kill a book launch.

Take The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo for example. Maybe I suck at marketing (a non-zero possibility), but I just couldn't get that one off the ground. The reception when I submitted it to places like Net Galley was crickets. Whereas Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed resonated there. In fact, the thoughtful reviews Sorry got there (not all four- and five-star, but detailed and informative) really helped it find its audience. No coincidence it's my best-selling book. And I can't move First World Problems--or Dispatches from a Tourist Trap, its sequel--to save my life. There will someday be a third book to finish off the trilogy, but it's hard to prioritize that project when it seems destined to die in its crib.

I am a very regular (read daily) consumer of Carolyn Hax's advice column in the Washington Post, and have been for years. Friday, during her weekly live Q&A chat, someone wrote and asked for advice on how to deal with an author acquaintance who had asked for a review of a book they didn't care for.

Q: Honesty in Reviews?

Here's one I don't think you've tackled before. I know at least 4 people who have published books on Amazon. All have asked me to please leave a review. Three of the books were fairly good (one was really great), but one was really hard to slog through. Three would have benefited from being trimmed to half their length. I have navigated through real-life situations by finding something honest and positive to say about most situations ("What do you think of this dress?" etc.) and I can do that with written reviews. But what do I do about star ratings and remain honest? They're pretty black and white. If I can't lie (and I won't, because then reviews are worthless), should I decline to leave a review at all? So far I've just put it off, but I'll be asked again. Is there any way I can decline that's not hurtful?

Instant Classic: Limped Mail Order Bride and Her Dejected Cowboy

I subscribe to a couple of ebook bargain emails, chiefly because I have from time to time runs specials on my own books, though I also snag the odd $1.99 read when one strikes me. The list I read most regularly is Book Gorilla. Like most such services, it allows you to specify which genres you're interested in. I selected Baseball and Literary Fiction when I signed up.

Many days there will be a handful of classics sprinkled throughout the list I receive. Today, for example, it included Dune, Gone with the Wind, and Limped Mail Order Bride And Her Dejected Cowboy (A Western Historical Romance Book), by Florence Linnington. A stone cold bargain at only $0.99.

Not familiar with Limped Mail Order Bride And Her Dejected Cowboy? Oh, you will be soon. This one has instant classic stamped all over it. Here's the tempting pitch on Amazon:

There is nothing wrong for a mail order bride to desire children. But what happens when her husband is unable…
At 26 years old, a limped Cora Duke wants to stop being a burden on her family. She decides to marry herself off to a stranger, by means of becoming a mail order bride.
Cowboy Derek Masters is a man of solitude. A man running from a troubled past and seeking to build a family at his ranch.
When a beautiful and confused Cora sweeps into his life, however, old wounds resurface, especially on the touchy topic of childbearing.
Despite their growing affection for each other, a combination of insecurities, haunted pasts and natural dangers of the west threaten to push Derek and Cora apart.
Derek and Cora struggle to cling to what they have as they realize that they are as different as two people can be.
In the end, they must ask the question: does true love really conquers all?
And, can they finally have children?

So much good, useful words, for so little of the money. And so many questions.

Let's start with the most obvious one. "Limped"? As an adjective? I must need an updated Merriam-Webster's, because it's missing from mine. It does have "gimpy," though perhaps that wasn't the vibe they were going for.

Is Florence Linnington a human, or was this an AI generated novel? I mean, hats off if you can program a computer to write a book that's even half plausible written in something close to standard English, which is about what was accomplished here.

If Florence Linnington is human, is she a composite human? Because she has (they have?) been very, very busy. She has released five of these books in 2020. Each title as enticing as the one before:

• Mail Order Bride's Baby And Her One-Arm Indian
• Pregnant Mail Order Bride And Her Brave Sheriff
• Half-Deaf Mail Order Bride And Her Heartfelt Pastor
• Big Beautiful Mail Order Bride And Her Lost Man

[Note: No, I did not make those titles up. Those are real Kindle books currently for sale on Amazon.]

And that's just this year. Amazon offers 25 such titles, all cranked out since 2017. Prolific doesn't feel quite strong enough.

I know for me coming up with a title is almost as hard as writing the book. It's got to be doubly so for Florence, considering the formulaic nature of these novels. They seem to just write themselves. Change a few names, an ailment here, a job title there, and, voila, a new book is born.

In the spirit of goodwill, I've come up with some titles for future releases, which should fit right in with the rest of the catalog:

• Left-Handed Mail Order Bride and the Color-Blind Rustler
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome Mail Order Bride and the Cross-Eyed Camp Chef
• Necrophiliac Mail Order Bride and the Bowlegged Undertaker

That last one sounds like a perfect romantic pairing, and might be an ideal way to end the series. Or segue into a new one involving mail order brides and the afterlife.

Thank me later, Florence. I'll take 10 percent.

FREE! isn't free, but sometimes it's worth paying for

There was a point in the early days of indie publishing when the FREE! book promo was one of the go-to gimmicks. Tales spread among the author blogs about huge sales tails that would follow a 3-4 day run on the Kindle free lists. These surges would more than pay for the advertising required to spread the word back in the glory days of free in 2010-11.

I released my first novel, The Greatest Show on Dirt, in February 2012. I ran a free promo on Amazon, gave away 5,124 copies in April of that year, and saw a modest sales bump when it returned to regular price. Maybe I missed the window on free, maybe my book wasn't quite the right genre to ride the wave. I wasn't sold on free, but I wasn't ready to completely write it off, either.

In July 2015, I dabbled with free again with my second novel, Nine Bucks a Pound, also a baseball-themed story. According to my records, which I have no reason to doubt, I didn't spend anything on advertising this time. I moved 1,147 units. I sold a handful at regular price afterward. Again I was left wondering whether there was more potential for this. Certainly advertising would have helped generate interest, but would it have meant more paid sales after? And how many free downloads would be required to result in a bona fide sales spike? I could only guess.

The last time I bothered with a free promo was March 2018, when I ran one for my third novel, Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed. This time I spent $78 on a total of three ads, and I saw 3,668 free downloads as a result. Sales spike? Not quite. Depends on your definition of spike. I was disappointed enough that I figured I wouldn't bother with free again.

Yet here I am, giving it one more try. This time I'm giving away The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo, my fourth novel, from Thursday (9/5) through Sunday (9/8). And I'll be honest, free is something of a desperate measure here. This book just hasn't seemed to catch on. It's received some decent reviews (and a couple of lame ones), but not enough overall.

New books available in old-school format

Exciting news in the world of print books! The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo and Dispatches from a Tourist Trap were both released in paperback format today. So if you don't Kindle and want to read them, you can now order them on Amazon.

I held off on formatting First World Problems for print when I released it last fall, mainly because sales of my other books as paperbacks were so sluggish. But they've picked up quite a bit over the past four months, enough to motivate me to make all five of my books available as both ebooks and paperbacks.

I was also a little hesitant to deal with the conversion process, as I've struggled with formatting for print some in the past. But I have to say this time it was much easier than I'd feared. Maybe I'm learning a thing or two along the way.

Dispatches has been dispatched

Today's the big day for the new book. Dispatches from a Tourist Trap released today on Amazon for the Kindle. Yes!

Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q2DRWH4

Only $2.99. A bargain at twice that.

At one time last year I had hoped to release this book at the same time as The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo, the first book in the series. But then the reality of editing and rewriting hit and it became obvious that would only push everything back. I was also hoping that by releasing Book 1 in the fall, there would be a rabid corps of Jason Van Otterloo fans salivating for the second book by now. That hasn't quite happened. This series is more of a slow burner, I guess. We'll get there in time, but for now still building one sale at a time.

I'm in my last week of unemployment before starting my new job next Monday. I've been busy, busy, busy with book stuff over the past few weeks. The top priority was getting Dispatches ready to go, but there's been a lot more going on.

Paperbacks

Yes, I have finally gotten the formatting done to release both The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo and Dispatches from a Tourist Trap in print. I am in the process of getting the covers created. Once those are ready I'll just need to upload my files to Amazon, order proofs, make sure everything came out right, and release. I'm hoping to have them ready for public consumption by the middle of the month.

Reviews

In addition to doing review copy giveaways on Library Thing and Booksprout, I had a very long, detailed review run on a site called The Irresponsible Reader. And I don't know if I really understand the name, because the guy who runs it seems quite responsible, as well as prolific in his reading. He had some nice things to say about The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo, and will also be reviewing Dispatches from a Tourist Trap soon.

An Author Q&A

In addition to reviews, The Irresponsible Reader also runs author Q&As. Mine was posted this morning. I've done a few of these in the past, but this one was great because he seemed like he put some serious thought into the questions, instead of simply sending the same handful of questions he asks everyone else.

So, plenty going on here. I keep thinking I'll wake up one day to a short to-do list and have time to lounge on the couch watching TV, but it keeps not happening. And we're down to three days of "vacation," so it's looking less and less likely. Oh, well.

Dispatches from a Tourist Trap now available for pre-order

At long last, I'm pleased to announce the second book in the Jason Van Otterloo Trilogy is available for pre-order on Amazon. It's called Dispatches from a Tourist Trap and will release in Kindle format officially next Tuesday.

What's it all about? Glad you asked. Here's the blurb:

Thanks to his parents' separation, Jason Van Otterloo is starting his sophomore year of high school three hours away from all his friends--including his new girlfriend, Sian. Tiny Icicle Flats is a quaint Bavarian-themed mountain village that has been trapped in time since long before his mother grew up there. That she was willing to return is all down to her new boyfriend--who also happens to be her new boss. And judging by all the makeup found in his bathroom cabinet, Jason's dad isn't wasting time waiting for her to return.

Jason begins a blog to share details of his new life with his old friends, but some news isn't meant for wide distribution. Fortunately, his sage-but-sarcastic best friend, Drew, is always just an email away. Would it be so wrong, Jason wonders, to ask a local girl named Leah to the Homecoming dance? "Just as a one-time date, nothing more, obviously." "Why are you asking me and not Sian?" Drew replies. "Wait, I think I know the answer." If only Jason would ever take his friend's advice, he might spend less time climbing out of the holes he digs for himself.

Pressed into afternoon and weekend duty at his grandpa's hardware store, Jason still finds time to join an after-school book club that specializes in controversial classics. When Leah's brother reports the book club to the school board, Jason and his fellow readers are forced underground--until they emerge again to enter a protest float in the Icicle Flats Christmas parade. The ensuing brouhaha makes for the most exciting holiday season Jason can remember. And for once, it's not his parents' arguing that takes center stage. With the new year comes a new scheme: If the local busybody brigade was upset by a few old books, pirate radio will surely blow their minds. Who ever said life in a small novelty town would be dull?

Told entirely through Jason's email exchanges and blog posts, Dispatches from a Tourist Trap picks up where The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo left off. Come and spend a little time in Icicle Flats--just don't forget to pack your lederhosen.

Well, there it is. Order your copy today for just $2.99. Or read it free if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber. And tell all your friends. Thanks!

Take my book--please! (a.k.a., the review conundrum)

There's a distinct Catch-22 when it comes to promoting a new book. You need reviews in order to run most promotions, but you can't get reviews if you haven't promoted the book. This leads many desperate authors to harangue their family and friends into reviewing their latest release, and some unscrupulous ones into buying reviews, a practice that Amazon has banned, though it's practically impossible to stamp out.

For those who want to play it straight, the options are limited. It would be great to have a big enough mailing list to shoot an email to your followers and simply offer review copies to anyone willing to write an honest review. At the pace I'm building mine, I might get there by 2050. (This is the part where I include a link so you can join my mailing list. Please.) Failing that, you're left to try some of the sites that offer ARCs (Advance Review Copes) to willing readers. The largest of these is probably NetGalley, though there's another called Hidden Gems that may rival or exceed it.

I only recently learned of Hidden Gems, and while I'd love to try giving away review copies there, they're booked through December, so I'd need a time machine in order to set something up. NetGalley is easier to get into, at least if you use the side entrance. For an independent author like myself, the way in is through a co-op, which buys up ARC slots in bulk and resells them to individual authors. This actually puts indie authors on even footing with big publishing houses, because reviewers who use NetGalley will see your book listed among the big press titles. I had good success with NetGalley when I released Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed back in 2015. It was reviewed by a number of book bloggers, who had at least enough of a following that their reviews reached people I couldn't myself.

Unfortunately, I had less success with The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo when I tried NetGalley last October. I got two reviews on Amazon and a couple more on Goodreads. And that was it. Boo.

Print is undead, long live print!

When I first saw the notices last summer that Amazon's CreateSpace publishing arm for print books was going away and I needed to migrate my titles to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Print, I did what I often do when bombarded with unwelcome information: I ignored it.

The notifications kept coming, however. Every time I logged into CreateSpace to check my nonexistent sales, I was hammered with more messages. Move your books now! Eventually, I did click one of the links and made a half-hearted attempt to migrate one of the three titles I had published through CreateSpace. But the options I saw on the screen didn't match what Amazon said I should be seeing and I literally couldn't submit the changes. So I gave up.

After procrastinating a little longer, I tried again, ran into the same roadblock, and ignored the entire thing again, as if it might somehow go away. No surprise, it didn't. Finally, I contacted the KDP Help with my question, was told how to get past the obstacle I had encountered, and ... well, it wasn't so hard in the end. By Halloween I had moved all three of my books.

I'll chalk up my reluctance to bother with the entire migration ordeal to my pathetic print sales. Over the first 10 months of 2018, I had shifted a grand total of six print copies of my three books. Combined. That came after a whopping eight units were moved in 2017. To say print sales were a sore subject would be an understatement. While my Kindle sales were nothing to brag about, the futility of print was downright laughable. So why bother, right?

Moving the Also Bought needle

I'm not giving away any secrets if I tell you I've become obsessed with my Also Boughts on Amazon, and in particular how my ads can influence them. My last post, earlier this month, was an in-depth breakdown of all 97 books linked from my third novel, Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed, in its Also Boughts. At that point, the books linked to were still almost exclusively--well, there's no polite way to put it--shit.

They were showing the scantest glimpses of life. But for the most part the books that were being linked to had no logical ties to my novel. There were cookbooks, romances, psychological thrillers, and World War II sagas, particularly of the "escape from the Nazis" variety. And I don't mean to cast aspersions on any of these (other than the cookbooks, which appeared to be a little on the sleazy/scammy side), but none of those fall within the sweet spot for my book.

Fast forward two weeks and change and ... things are moving in the right direction. My sales have been consistent in February. Not spectacular, but nothing like the anemic totals I saw the last two years or so. The Amazon keyword ads I'm running definitely work. I've learned and tinkered and learned and tinkered, and I've finally hit upon a formula that is cost effective. My ads no longer run at a loss. And that's huge.

Has Kindle Unlimited cooked my Also Boughts?

I've become obsessed with Amazon's Also Boughts, mostly because the ones appearing for Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed have been so random/nonsensical recently. I posted about this last month, when the first three books appearing were cookbooks. At that time, none of the Also Boughts that I clicked on linked back to my book. Not good, right? I mean, the point of the Also Boughts is, "Hey, you there, shopping for books, if you like this book, you might want to check out this other, somewhat similar, book." But if these relationships are a) broken, and b) only flow in one direction, there goes one of the most valuable discovery tools in book-selling.

I strongly suspect I'm paying the price for not being more active about marketing my books last year. I was seeing less and less return on the pay-per-click ads I had up on Amazon, so I gave up on them early in 2018 and figured I'd wait until I was ready to release The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo in the fall before investing any more. More books = more bang for the buck, at least in theory. If a reader clicks an ad and buys a book and enjoys it, maybe they'll seek out another of an author's titles.

So I waited it out as my sales shriveled, with as much as 50 percent of my Amazon revenue coming through KDP Select, the program where Kindle Unlimited subscribers can download your book for free, and you get paid for the number of pages they read. And even that wasn't anywhere near what it was a couple of years ago. It was so lame, in fact, I decided to drop out of KDP Select in the fall. I removed my first three books by November, and never enlisted First World Problems.

And now that I'm digging into these Also Boughts, I'm even more convinced leaving KDP Select was the right move. Because I suspect most of these shitty Also Boughts that have nothing whatsoever to do with my novel came about because of indiscriminate Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Barnes & Noble's new ad portal too rich for my book

Ever since I opted back out of KDP Select on Amazon last November, I've been searching--fruitlessly--for ways to kick-start my sales on other platforms. I've had sales here and there in the past on other retailers, in between my KDP Select stints (which require exclusivity to Amazon for ebook sales). Barnes & Noble's site is one I've had a trickle of purchases in years past, but since making my books available for the Nook this past fall, the royalties there have added up to a nice, round number.

The roundest.

Yes, zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

So when I saw Barnes & Noble was offering a new advertising option, I was intrigued. I have had some success with Amazon's pay-per-click ads, particularly for my third novel, Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed. If B&N was going to offer something similar, at perhaps a slightly lower price point, considering the relative unit-shifting potential compared to Amazon, well, that might be just what I needed.

Um ... not quite.

My also boughts are cooking

One, potentially, helpful mechanism for selling books on Amazon is the Also Boughts. As in, "Customers who bought this item also bought" all this other stuff. As an author, you're hoping your book gets linked up with some other similar titles so readers might find your book while they're browsing selections in your same genre.

At the moment, my also boughts for Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed are not really what I need. The top three are cookbooks.

This mystifies me a little. I first noticed the cookbooks there a month or so ago. Admittedly, I had somewhat given up on my sales last year while I was working to get The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo ready to release. These days, to generate much in the way of sales on Amazon, you have to play around with Pay Per Click ads. I've had mixed success at best in the past with those, and by early last year they were no longer cost effective. So I stopped advertising for most of 2018 and my sales swirled the toilet bowl.

I found a helpful blog post on Amazon PPC ads a few months back and gave them another go in November. I've had better luck than I did previously, at least with Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed. It does much better than my other books, probably because it's reaching into a more vibrant readership band, where fans of Jonathan Tropper, Matthew Norman, Jess Walter, and others hang out. Ideally, those would be the books that show up in my also boughts.

And maybe if my sales keep growing over the next couple of months as they have in December and January, we'll start to see those associations taking root--as opposed to the Mediterranean Diet Cookbook and Fruit Pies. Which are probably lovely books. But not really what I need.

Of course, what I really need are enough sales for my books to show up on their also boughts, so their readers see mine. But that's two steps down the road. At the moment, I'll settle for the first step of booting the cookbooks out of my kitchen.

Casting a wide net--again

Stop me if I've said this before, but I'm done with selling ebooks exclusively on Amazon. I've gone back and forth on this in the past, but the benefits of being Kindle-only have really dried up over the past year. By mid-November, I should have all four of my novels available on all channels.

As of today, my third novel, Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed, is no longer Amazon-only. If you do Nook, Kobo, Apple, etc., you can now get it in whatever format you like. Here are a few links:

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sorry-i-wasnt-what-you-needed-james-bailey/1122021881?ean=2940156934812

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1439860272

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sorry-i-wasn-t-what-you-needed-1

My new book, The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo, releases on all platforms tomorrow. And my first two books will be made available around November 14. (Their "exclusive" period ends November 13.)

Opting out of KDP Select

It's been 4 1/2 years since I first released The Greatest Show on Dirt. A lot has changed since then. While I just missed the days when indy authors were riding free promos up the Amazon rankings, I saw some steady sales figures that first year, with relatively little promotional effort on my part. I went off and on between exclusivity with Amazon and branching out to other ebook retailers, before eventually settling on an Amazon-only approach about 2 years ago.

The tradeoff was worth it for me, because I never seemed to gain any traction at B&N, Kobo, Apple, etc. The little revenue that had ever trickled in from those sites was more than offset by the money I earned from borrows via Amazon's KDP Select program. And when that started to slow, I was able to push it back up with Amazon's pay-per-click ads, which paid for themselves once I found the right price point.

But over the past few months, those have flattened as well. And I've decided to give the other ebook retailers another crack. Effective immediately, my first two books will no longer be exclusive to Amazon. Both The Greatest Show on Dirt and Nine Bucks a Pound are already available on B&N, and I'm working to get them live on other sites as well. In time, I may go the same direction with Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed as well, though for the moment that still seems to be faring okay in KDP Select.

Publishing is a game where you need to be flexible and willing to try something different, just to see what happens. It's time for me to experiment. We'll see how this goes.