Month: September 2026

Book Marketing is Hard!

photog 0 Comment Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , ,

Okay, so I’ve figured out how marketing books gets done.  You write what you think is a good book.  The first variable is whether it’s in a popular genre or not.  Currently the old genres like science fiction and crime are sort of old fashioned and neglected.  The popular sub-genres combine the old genres with romance or outright pornography.  Apparently, the largest segment of the book-reading population consists of frustrated women of various reading predilections but definitely needing, let us be kind and call it, “romantic” content.  Okay, that’s strike one against me already.

So, now that you have the text, you edit it or pay an editor to find grammatical errors.  Not fun but necessary.  I did it myself so it’s probably not 100% but as they say, good enough for government work.  But editors can do a lot more than find typos.  They can critique everything from character description to pacing all the way up to whether the hero rides away into the sunset with or without the beautiful girl.  I thought about hiring one of those but when I spoke to her, I didn’t really like the vibe.  I kinda thought she would object to my tone vis-à-vis blue haired antifa trolls.  So, strike two against me already.

And after that you have to set up your book page and your author page on Amazon and set up your Amazon ads and all that stuff.  I actually paid a marketer to do that stuff and I guess I got a professional result for all the money I spent.  But that doesn’t get you much in the way of visibility.  You’ll sell some hundreds of copies.  A couple of hundred would be disappointing. Six or eight hundred would be extremely good.  So I sold about four or five hundred copies.  Let’s call that a B- result.  No strike against me there.  But not the home run I wanted (if I may mix my metaphors for the moment).

After six months of dissatisfaction with the roll out of my book and viewing a multitude of YouTube videos on marketing books I had a plan to test the idea that book promotional giveaways would be a way to get the “visibility” I wanted.  So, I combined a five-day Amazon Kindle giveaway with a FreeBooksy five-day promo package.  This put my book in front of five different lists of book readers (one each day) who match up with the subject of my book.  FreeBooksy (and associated lists) claim that their lists have hundreds of thousands of readers.  So I plunked down about four hundred bucks for this plan and voila! halfway into the plan I’ve gotten over two thousand books given away.  So, I think this worked.

Now there are lots of caveats.  How many of the people who went to Amazon will end up reading the book?  How many would spend actual money to buy a sequel?  How many will bother to put up a rating or a review on Amazon?  So, the jury is still out on some aspects of this strategy but as of this morning (third day of promo) my book is number sixty (60) on the top 100 Free in Kindle Store list.  And before this I never got higher than 78,000.

Of course, once I write my sequel, I’ll have to do this whole thing over again so that people who liked “The Sniper” will buy (WITH MONEY!!!) the sequel.  But that’s alright.  Proof of concept gives me confidence that I can bring the horse to water.  It’s up to him to decide if he wants to drink (or read) Boy, these metaphors are getting really strained.  So that was what I did on my summer vacation.

The Lessons of 9/11

photog 4 Comments Current Events, Trump ,

Today is the twenty fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Well, I’ll leave it to the professional pundits to try and wax poetic about the deep historic meaning of the day.  What I will say about 9/11 is where I have now found myself.  I won’t review my personal links to the New York attack and my visceral desire for revenge and justice against those responsible for the attacks.  All that is now ancient history and buried under the aftermath of the politicians and bureaucrats who reshaped our world using our support as a tool.

All that I learned from everything that was done by the American government is that politicians as a class are at best useless idiots and at worst our mortal enemies.  Almost without exception the Republicans proved themselves almost as awful as the Democrats.  Their embrace of globalism and the contempt for the well-being of their countryman is stunning and unmistakable.  The Democrats are only worse because they openly embrace the agenda that the Republicans pretend to abhor but follow in stealth.

9/11 and its aftermath are responsible for Trump and MAGA.  He looked at the betrayals and the contempt and he employed the naked truth to drive the likes of JEB Bush and the rest of the useful idiots off the map and then banished Hillary Clinton to the ash heap of history.  And then he learned how Washington works and he relegated Kamala Harris to the position she deserves village idiot.  Trump has made plenty of mistakes.  This Iran war is devastating our wallets with high priced oil.  Maybe he had no choice.  I can’t say for sure.  But honestly Trump is attempting to bring manufacturing back to this country and I respect him for the effort.

But very soon he will be leaving center stage and it will be time to find a new champion.  At this anniversary of 9/11 I think it is time to start looking at the next generation of MAGA politicians and have them start auditioning for the top spot.  I don’t expect Vance or Rubio or DeSantis to start doing a bad Trump imitation.  It wouldn’t make sense and it isn’t necessary.  Trump already smashed the fun house mirrors and let us see the Republican and Democrats for who they really are.  What is needed now is for the new guys to speak honestly and clearly about where we go from here.  Trump was the disrupter.  Now we need builders.  The next president has to communicate with anyone left in the middle who hasn’t picked a side and convince them it’s time to move forward.  We have to put in place a program to reduce government to a size that allows us to end the deficit and begin to reduce the size of the debt.  And hand in hand with this is a program to continue Trump’s efforts to reindustrialize America.  These two goals are the key to reinvigorating this economy and country.  And finally tying back to 9/11, the next president has to finish the work Trump has begun closing the borders and deporting all the illegal aliens.  That would truly be the best tribute we can pay to the victims of those attacks.

Promos and Painter’s Tape

photog 8 Comments Book Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , ,

Update:

Best Sellers Rank: #100 Free in Kindle Store (!!!!!!!!)

#1 in Political Thrillers & Suspense

#2 in Military Thrillers (Kindle Store)

#2 in Technothrillers (Kindle Store)

Overall promo update total 9/10/2026, 8:00 pm 1,762 e-books

9/10/2026 8:00 pm update 1,002 e-books

Order total for 9/9/2026: 760 e-books

Today is the second day of the Based Book Sale  https://basedbooksale.substack.com/p/call-for-authors-2026-basedcon-basedand my 5-day Amazon giveaway promotion for “The Sniper” https://amazon.com/dp/B0G7WRJJPH

 

 

 

I have to work Thursday but what I’d rather do is check my Amazon dashboard every thirty seconds on day two of the promo.  Currently I’m # 286 in the Kindle Free Store.

Best Sellers Rank: #286 Free in Kindle Store
#1 in Military Thrillers (Kindle Store)
#2 in Technothrillers (Kindle Store)
#2 in Political Thrillers & Suspense

Previously the highest I ever got was # 3,692.

Of course, I have to wonder what kind of numbers the top ten are pulling.  So as of 11:30 p.m. the dashboard says 700 orders have been processes.  Interestingly one (and only one) of those orders was a paperback book bought for $9.99.  Kaching!  And even more absurd I sold one solitary page on Kindle Unlimited today.  I think that’s about $0.005.

Well, this is panning out better than I expected.  At this rate I guess I should have a few thousand orders when all is said and done.  So, let’s say the first step is on course to be completed successfully.

Now comes the part that is completely unknown.  Will having a few thousand copies of my book out in the world improve sales?  According to the experts, it should.  Of course, assuming the promo readers like it.  If they don’t like it then maybe it will actually decrease my sales.  But currently I’m sort of in the dark about what to look for and how quickly I should expect any reaction to the promo.  But, being an engineer, I will immediately start building a spread sheet and perform a statistical analysis comparing the pre-promo and post-promo sales numbers.  I’ll submit the report to the ghosts of the “Big Three” (Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein) and await their comments.  But I will say I think I’ve acquitted myself of my responsibilities vis-à-vis marketing my book.  From now on it’s up to the big dumb reading public out there to hear about my book and buy it.  The free ride will be over after September 13th and they’ll have to plunk down ten US simoleons ($9.99) for a paperback or a fin ($4.99) for an imaginary copy.  I think I’ve been more than generous with my promos and price reductions and general easy-going attitude about receiving the moolah.  So, wake up readers, you’re on notice!

My biggest real problem is that my lawn mowers are both on the side lines.  The ride-on mower needs an oil change (since last year) but I’m too lazy and disorganized to do it.  So, I’ve been using my 2016-vintage Murray 20” walk-behind mower with Side Discharge, 7” wheels, and Briggs & Stratton 300E series 125 cc OHV engine.  But the damn thing is falling apart at the seams.  The lower handle is wobbling around and the wheels look like they’re gonna fall off.  But being the lazy good for nothing I am, instead of tightening it up, I took some painters tape and tried to hold the lower handle onto the sleeve that it fits into.  You know, it didn’t work.  So, after work tomorrow I’m going to try and reshape the lower handle so it wants to fit into the sleeves.  If that fails, I’ll probably go to Home Depot and buy a new one.  After all, this one has been working continuously through the era of Trump and that is not an easy thing to do, I can tell you that.