Even more fun with Adobe Spark

So I signed up for Adobe Spark this week. They offer a seven-day trial, then a $9.99/month subscription. I wanted to play around with making short videos, which I did over the weekend. Can't say it was a smashing success, but I didn't get hurt, so I've had worse experiences.

Today I took a stab at making an ad graphic for my Nook promo. I'm not going to start applying for graphic design jobs anywhere, but I've seen worse output. Like most everything I've output before. Trying to decide which of these I like better. I think the one with the quieter background is easier to read, but the one with the mowing pattern definitely has more of an at-the-ballpark feel to it.

Thoughts?

Turn Two: Nook BOGO Double Play Video

Special baseball doubleheader: Buy One Get One

A year and change ago, I shared my thoughts on Barnes & Noble's then new advertising portal. (Which, oddly, is my most viewed ever post on this blog, and it's not even close. I must have had just the right cocktail of keywords to intrigue the Russian bots.) When I crunched the numbers, I couldn't come close to justifying even experimenting with their base package of $300 for 25,000 impressions. For the sake of science, I would love to have seen what would have happened. But I couldn't. Even if I hadn't just been laid off (I was still running out the clock on my old job at the time), I couldn't do it.

Maybe I wasn't alone. Out of curiosity, I poked around the B&N site this week, looking for their ad package to see if they had added any lower price points. I couldn't find anything. At least not on an impression or click basis. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but the old link didn't work, and nothing else like that came up.

But they did have something else to offer, which might be even better. Two something elses, in fact. And the up-front cost for both is right up my alley--free. They have a promotional tool for authors and publishers to set a discount on an ebook and create their own coupon code. So you could generate a coupon that readers could use to buy your book for 25 or 50 (or whatever) percent off. Readers buy the book for their Nook at the discounted rate, the author takes a prorated cut of the royalty, B&N keeps the rest, everyone is happy.

The second option is a Buy One Get One deal. In this case the author can choose two or more books and allow readers to pay full price for one and get a second for free. Again, no up-front outlay of money from the author. The only cost is whatever would have been earned in royalty had both books been bought at regular price. But if it generates new sales and expands your reach to new readers, that--to me, anyway--is totally worth it. Considering how much money I've lost on various promotions over the years, I'm definitely willing to give it a shot.

So ... here's my first Nook promotion: Buy either The Greatest Show on Dirt or Nine Bucks a Pound and get the other for free. They're both $3.99, so it works the same either way around. We're all starving for some baseball these days. Here's a great chance to fill a little of that void. Two baseball novels, one low price. And if you don't own a Nook, they have an app you can install.

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.

Jason Van Otterloo is ready for the world

Good morning, World!

Today is the big day. Yes, it's National Bologna Day. Yay. (Disclaimer: I can't eat bologna or baloney any more. I maxed out as a kid.)

It's also Release Day for The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo. Yay! Yes, it's here at last. I know you may not have been counting down like I have been, but we can all enjoy it now just the same. And to properly enjoy it, you might find it handy to actually own a copy of the book. And to that end, here are a few useful links:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JDPQ154

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-first-world-problems-of-jason-van-otterloo-james-bailey/1129736330?ean=2940161919613

Everything else (Apple, Kobo, more): https://www.books2read.com/b/3L0X7w

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.)

Houston, we have a release date

Back in March, on this very blog, I boldly announced my new book, The First World Problems of Jason Van Otterloo, would be "Coming Summer 2018." I figured that gave me a reasonable three month window, three months down the road. Very doable. Or so I thought. Well ... some things just take a little longer than I think they will.

But now, at long last, it is ready to see the light of ereaders everywhere. It is formatted, converted, and ready to rock on multiple platforms. We are not going to do the Kindle-only thing this time around. No, we're casting a wide, wide net in the search for readers. Nook, Kobo, Apple, pretty much any ebook retailer, we will be there. The official release date is October 24, but it's already available for pre-order on the following sites:

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JDPQ154

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-first-world-problems-of-jason-van-otterloo-james-bailey/1129736330?ean=2940161919613

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1438917361

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-first-world-problems-of-jason-van-otterloo

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.