Bublish

Yesterday, I listened to a webinar produced by Kathy Meis of Bublish about Ingram’s bookstore initiative, Aerio. An exciting concept that allows an author, or anyone else to set up a bookstore with access to the millions of books in Ingram’s catalogues. No cost to set up although there are some subscriptions available that might be useful down the road.

I spent the afternoon setting mine up and uploading one of my books(print and ebook) as well as a collection of books that I have enjoyed in the past. Most of these are in themystery/suspense genre, although I’ll add others soon.

On the whole, an easy set-up with only one minor glitch.

When I’ve finished re-editing my books, I’ll move the titles over from Create Space to Ingram and add those(print only). Most of my books are in Kindle Select so will remain with Amazon.

Black Willow Books is live on this page.

I’ve been busy over the last few months marketing Painting of Sorrow and reediting the other books. Murderous Roots is almost done and it’s the last.

I’m also plotting a sequel to The Jewelled Egg Murders and one to Painting of Sorrow as well.

I have a request. If any of you have read Painting of Sorrow and not yet reviewed it, please do. Stars and a brief review on Amazon.com will go a long way in helping me with marketing. This is also true for any other indie author. Getting the word out is the toughest job.

If you want to know what I’m up to without waiting for it to appear in a blog, sign up for my reading group. The pop-up and an offer of a free short story will appear with the page.

You might remember that we have a new puppy, A black Standard Poodle, Cully, now almost 8 months old. Here she is a week or so ago.

That’s about it for today.

SaveSave

Another chilly Sunday in the Kawarthas and it’s April. At least the ground here is bare of snow for now.

I’ve been working for the last few weeks on re-editing The Facepainter Murders and I’m happy to say that the new, better version is up on Amazon and Create Space.

I’ve also explored some further advertising opportunities.

Bublish

I’m in the midst of a 2 week free trial with this company, in which a membership costs 99$ US a year. A lot, but that lets me upload all my books and get them before the thousands of people who follow the site. Every weekend, Bublish hosts a twitter campaign that ends with a virtual bookstore on Monday. Whichever bubbles(see below) are new the week before are featured.

The bubble includes an author biography, an extract from one of the books and an insight section. The latter is a short paragraph about what ever the author might think would interest a reader, such as an introduction to why the book was written or how the writer coped with a particular scene. I started with book 1 of my Dangerous Journeys series last week, wrote two bubbles and have had 187 views so far and 2 clicks thru to Amazon. I’ll see how it goes by Thursday.

Amazon Ads.

You know the books that appear below the one you have searched for on Amazon? Those lists result from Amazon Ads that are written by the author or publisher. Amazon runs a bidding programme so that each ad, once clicked upon, costs the author what she bid for placement of that particular ad. It’s not a great system. The results are delayed, sometimes by as much as six weeks and the sales are not in real time. However, the clicks data and the information about sales form Kindle Direct can help determine whether or not an ad is working.

Brian Meeks wrote a book on the subject called Mastering Amazon Ads, which is helpful although a bit confusing for a non-analyst(Brian is one). There is also a oa free course in the subject. You can find it here. I’m in the midst of both the book and the course and setting up ads. I think it’s useful to do all three in conjunction. Brian runs a Facebook group about the ads as well.