StoneHouse University. What is a blog tour and why should I care?

I wanted to do a post and talk about this upcoming Blog Tour Class. It is Feb. 1st and is a Webinar. That means you can log in and join via your PC/Mac or call in and be on the phone. So, no matter where you are you can join.

There is a cost, $50-but that is not bad considering what you will learn.

But what is a blog tour, why do I need to know how to run one and what good will it do for me and my book?

All good questions. A blog tour is like a book signing tour but instead of going to bookstores and sitting there trying to sell 5 books, you are doing the interview or signing online on different blogs. Way cool and you can reach more people.

Bloggers and their honest reviews are huge! Did I say huge? If I had a choice to be reviewed by the New York times or by a well followed book blogger I would choose the blogger. They review a book and it gets readers. They say, yup, good book their peeps go and buy the book. A review in the NYT gets you a pat on the back.

So you DO want your book reviewed by book bloggers. But what is a tour you may ask? It is where you plan to have your book reviewed by 15-30 bloggers in a short time frame. Like a month or 60 days. So almost everyday you are reviewed and you are exposed to people. This review is posted on Amazon and goodreads and other sites so you get reviews as well. You see how this is good?

This class is to show you how to do this without pissing off the bloggers and how to do a good tour and sell a lot of books. You never know what a tour will do, it may just make your sales bump, but it may like Vincent Zandri take you to #3 on Amazon and sell over 100k books.

Here is a link to K.C. Neal's blog to give you an idea of what a tour looks like. She is also the one teaching the class. HERE

See all the stops and the different bloggers? They will all post their review on that date. It is a crazy building thing that every author should know how to do.

That is the blog tour. Now, here is a link to sign up, you just need to pick a time and pay. After that you will register and you are in. Please share this with others and take your writing seriously. If you don't no one else will...

TIME: 10am-noon and 5pm-7pm *Mountain Time Zone
DATE: Feb. 1st 2012
LOCATION: Online
AVAILABILITY: Limited
COST: $50.00

To register hit the Paypal button and pay, it should redirect you to the registration page after you have paid.

Blog Tour Online Class. Feb 1 2012

To register for the 10-Noon class click below:
*All times are MT (Mountain Time)

Blog tour Class (10am-Noon)

To register for the 5-7pm class, click below:
*All times are MT (Mountain Time)

Blog Tour Class (5pm-7pm)

Now that I have your attention lets touch on Amazon. The next class is all about how to Work the systems that run Amazon. Most if not all bestselling indie authors know how to tag and what all the rankings mean. I will show you how to do it, how to get noticed on amazon. This is key in selling well on Amazon.

If you follow J.A. Konrath he is very open about this. Go HERE to read about what he has to say about Amazon.

"Writers aren't buying my fiction. They aren't buying my non-fiction either--I have an ebook called "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing" and it is among my lowest-selling titles.

The people who buy me are readers, and the vast majority have never heard of me. Readers find me on Amazon, because Amazon has made it easy for my books to be discovered."

You can do a million things but it is all about being SEEN. and Amazon is the big monkey.

"The majority of my sales come from Amazon and my ability to use the tools they provide. So far I've played my cards right. I write fun books with good covers and sell them cheap, I have a lot of virtual shelf space, and readers like my writing."

"5. Study Amazon and how it sells ebooks. Experiment. Take chances. If one of Amazon's imprints offers to publish you, accept. Right now they are the only publisher who can increase your sales."

Convinced yet? Amazon is where it is at, one day that may not be the case but right now it is...so, on Feb. 8th I will drop it all, show you the truth and not hold back on how to game the game. It is one big game people, and if you know how to play you WILL win.

Sign up for both classes as we only have 50 spots so first come first serve. Don't miss out on this if you care about selling your eBook or book on Amazon. Just to let you know, my sales are up every month, my book Sweet Dreams is 3 years old and sold more in December than it ever has...on a OLD book, this is like 45 in book years, but it is still moving. You can learn this stuff, it is easy, and fun...
That is all.

Here is the info:STONEHOUSE UNIVERSITY AMAZON CLASS

Learn how to use Amazon to increase sales and build a fan-base!

TIME: 10am-noon and 5pm-7pm *Mountain Time Zone
DATE: Feb. 8th 2012
LOCATION: Online
AVAILABILITY: Limited
COST: $50.00

Amazon is the biggest bookstore in the world. They move more product and reach more people than any other bookstore. By understanding how they work and their systems such as tagging, customer recommendations, book lists and the ranking system you can sell more books and be "seen." We will teach you how to use Amazon and their systems and get them to work for you instead of getting lost in the millions of books and eBooks listed on their site. Stand out and be sold!

To register just click the Paypal button of the time you want and after you pay it will redirect you to a registration page.

10am-Noon (MST)

5pm-7pm (MST)

Thanks for Tweeting and sharing this link and information. If you know of any other classes you would like to see in the future feel free to comment and let us know what you want to learn.

One last quote from J.A. Konrath, "And feel free to tweet this. It won't help me sell many eBooks, but it could help your peers."




Author Aaron Patterson: Blog: The Worst Book Ever.

To DRM or not to DRM that is the question. Or is it?

I get asked all the time about DRM and is having your work out in eBook form safe? Will someone copy and steal it and ... and... and what?

Is it really a question anymore? Do we really think that protecting our work is even worth the effort?

I will start off with a question of my own, this goes to you the author. Are you important enough to steal from?

See, the DRM question all leads to this thought. If you are Stephen King yeah I might take some extra steps and maybe put the DRM on my eBooks. But are you Stephen King? And if you are, don't you make enough to not have to worry about it?

Many authors have tested this theory and all came to the same answer. The more people that read your book the more you make. Even if it is stolen you will still get new fans as maybe the next book they but cuz they got a virus from the site where they stole your first book from. Maybe they have friends and the thief talks all about how great you are. In all it is one more person that knows who you are.

Now I am not for stealing but I am not going to stop it by myself. Might as well not worry about it and move on. J.A. Konrath put one book up for free one month and gave the Word doc away so it could be stolen and his sales went up 60%.

What is easier? Cutting the spine on a print book and scanning it in, or trying to get the thing off of a Kindle or Nook?

Is it worth the time and virus you might get to steal it when you can buy it for about 4 bucks or less? Sometimes it is just easier to buy the dang thing. Besides they were never going to buy your book anyway. People who steal are going to steal, just be glad you got another fan if they like your book.

What about free books? If you gave away 100k free books and half of them became fans you would make a good living. How is this different? Yeah, it is wrong but in the end you got your work in the hands of a person.

So, it will not hurt sales
It will not hurt your growth
It will not hurt anyone really... so what was the question again?

Oh, that's right, you are so in demand that everyone is stealing you book! I forgot... lol

I hope this help you sleep a little better at night. I am going to go steal your book now... cuz I'm cool like that! =)

Author Aaron Patterson: Blog: The Worst Book Ever.

Guest Post by CJ Lyons: Jack be Kindle, Jack be Nook: What you need to succeed in E-pubbing

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have seen the name CJ Lyons in the eBook and publishing new feeds all over the internet. She has a book in the top 10 on Amazon right now and made it to #2 beating out Lee Child. This is no small thing and as a blogger and writer I want to not just talk all about eBooks and the new way to publish, but I want to give you real life examples of other authors doing it.

We have seen Amanda Hocking, john Locke, Vincent Zandri and others all hit the Amazon top 10 list and what happens after that is always fun to watch. CJ was kind enough to grace us with a post so here she is... Thanks again CJ.


Jack be Kindle, Jack be Nook: What you need to succeed in E-pubbing

Aaron asked me to tell you guys how I got my start as an Indy author/publisher. It's one of those a funny thing happened on the way…type of stories.
You see, I initially sold to a major NYC publisher. That book, my dream debut, was a nice hardcover deal, a pre-empt, and garnered cover quotes from a dozen NYC bestsellers, including Sandra Brown. The editor wanted the sequel and it was already in the production line when the first book, my debut, was pulled from publication.

Why? Cover art--something I had no control over. But it meant my dream debut had crashed and burned.

I'd already made a leap of faith and left my medical practice after 17 years to pursue my life-long dream of being a full-time writer. And suddenly I was unemployed with no contract.

So what did I do? I kept writing. A few months later another NYC publisher came to me and offered me even more money to create a new series for them, which led to the Angels of Mercy medical suspense books. With the first book, LIFELINES, I became a National Bestseller.

I was able to pay my bills with my writing but I had several manuscripts that had undergone revisions and edits with NYC editors but never made it to publication for a variety of reasons--including those first two books. It nagged at me that these were books that had passed muster with NYC but the reading public would never see.
Then came Kindle. And Smashwords. And Nook.

Being a total cyber-klutz, I wasn't sure I'd be able to learn how to format and submit manuscripts, but with the help of Mark Coker's Smashword Guide, I mastered it. And so, by January 2010, I had four books on Kindle.

(new to e-book formatting? I made a short video walking you through the basics. You can find it here: http://www.norulesjustwrite.com/break-free-from-the-slushpile/)
I'd done my homework and read folks like JA Konrath who were true pioneers with self e-pubbing, but I was skeptical about his advice on pricing books at $1.99. So I priced mine between $2.99 and $4.99.

Then the Haiti earthquake struck. I decided since this was all an experiment anyway, I'd have nothing to lose by giving away my proceeds to Doctors Without Borders' relief efforts. In one month I sold 1800 e-books and was feeling pretty good about myself.

Even better was when the reviews began coming in. Not just from readers but from some wonderful bloggers who'd discovered my e-books.

I had several more manuscripts finished, so I hired a freelance editor who'd worked with NYT bestsellers and an artist to create new covers for all my books. By the end of 2010 I had eight books up, with fans clamoring for more, and was poised to make more in a year from my indy e-books than from my NYC contracts.

All this without any advertising other than listing the books on my website and including them in my monthly newsletter.

I continued to experiment with a variety of price points and for the first time ever, actually was able to track sales to see what worked and what didn't--something NYC publishing could take a lesson from! After discovering that one of my books, SNAKE SKIN, had great reviews but lackluster sales, I decided to experiment with giving it away in an effort to help it find its readership.

Giving away books has always been my main promotional effort. Before e-books, I would buy extra copies of my print books and mail them to my newsletter subscribers as special reader appreciation gifts. Now I routinely give away e-books and have built a Street Team of fans eager for a chance to read and review my new books.
(interested in how it works? You can find more info here: http://cjlyons.net/for-readers/join-cjs-street-team/)

Smashwords allows you to give a book away for free, but Kindle and Nook don't. So I set SNAKE SKIN for free on Smashwords and around three weeks later the free price finally propagated to Amazon. I woke up on Saturday morning to find 5,000 people had SNAKE SKIN on their Kindles.

Within 48 hours that number climbed to over 24,000 and at my agent's urging, I changed the price to 0.99. By the end of the month almost 40,000 people had downloaded SNAKE SKIN. Not only had SNAKE SKIN found its readership but sales of the rest of my books increased by 280%

I didn't like the 0.99 price as a full-time price because I thought it was "cheap" and under-valued my work. BUT as a special sale price it certainly was effective--gaining me new readers without losing me any money.

That was on a book that wasn't selling well. Could I risk reducing the price of my bestselling book, the one that paid the mortgage, from $4.99 to 0.99?

I decided it was worth a try. So for a limited time, my bestseller, BLIND FAITH, is on sale for 0.99. I don't know what will happen as far as long term sales, but in the first three weeks I've sold over 35, 000 copies, hit #1 on the Amazon Indie Bestseller list and #2 on the overall Kindle Bestseller list, so I'm pretty darned pleased.

What was the trick? I didn't do any big time promo for the BLIND FAITH sale. Just my normal newsletter and a few tweets and website/Facebook updates. So I can't take credit for this surge of sales.

I think it was a question of SNAKE SKIN already being on a roll, allowing everyone who viewed or bought it to see my name. Plus BLIND FAITH has a great cover and already had stellar reviews, so building on SNAKE SKIN's momentum was easier for it than an unknown book.

Could someone with only one book do this? Honestly, I think it would be very difficult. I'm learning that with online sales momentum builds more momentum until you reach a tipping point. You need plenty of books in your arsenal (I'd recommend at least 5-6) so that you can keep the momentum rolling from one book to the next.
No fancy tricks, no sleazy sales techniques, no expensive ads or trailers or sponsorships. Just readers who resonate with my brand of Thrillers with Heart and keeping an eye on my sales trends, ready to make those price adjustments when need be.

(in my mind, I imagine log rollers dancing across timber streaming down whitewater rapids—try that, NYC publishing conglomerates!)

Bottom line if you want to achieve success as an Indy: be nimble, be quick, be fearless. And never forget: it's ALL about the reader!

Thanks for reading!
CJ

About CJ:

As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge thrillers. In addition to being an award-winning, bestselling author, CJ is a nationally known presenter and keynote speaker.

CJ has been called a "master within the genre" (Pittsburgh Magazine) and her work has been praised as "breathtakingly fast-paced" and "riveting" (Publishers Weekly) with "characters with beating hearts and three dimensions" (Newsday).

Her newest project is as co-author of a new suspense series with Erin Brockovich. Learn more about her writing at http://www.cjlyons.net and find the tools you need to help you finish your novel and find your audience at http://www.norulesjustwrite.com


Author Aaron Patterson: Blog: The Worst Book Ever.

Her Story: J Carson Black, Guest Post

Aaron, thank you for inviting me to your blog today.

When I decided to write a new thriller, I had several ideas on the table. None of them made the final cut. Then the idea for THE SHOP came out of the blue.

One evening while eating dinner, my husband (and publisher) Glenn and I were watching cable news. John Mark Karr’s plane was coming into Boulder, Colorado, where he would face charges for killing JonBenet Ramsey. He’d been flown over from Europe, dining on shrimp cocktail and entertaining his captors—federal marshals—and generally having a great time of it. Now the press was lined up along the airstrip in Boulder to cover his arrival. Picture the private jet coming in for a landing with all the pomp and circumstance of the Space Shuttle. The reporters, the news vans, the cameras, the microphones, the breathless reporting on the ground and in the studio: an absolute frenzy!

Glenn and I looked at each other. This was a farce worthy of commentary. What we were seeing was the new American way: celebrity conjured out of nothing. It turned out later that John Mark Karr was playing everybody. He didn’t kill JonBenet Ramsey. But he’d fulfilled his purpose—he’d fed the hungry maw of the media for a short time.

Something could be done with this—the distraction of celebrity. That was the seed for my story, THE SHOP.

In the opening scene of THE SHOP, celebrity Brienne Cross is killed in her Aspen chalet, along with the four finalists of her reality show, SOUL MATE, and the producer of the show.

I knew right away who killed them. But why? Even the killer wants to know why. And so he sets out to find the truth.

Sometimes stories come from strange places, and sometimes they come from cable news.

I’ve been writing most of my life, and sold my first book, a ghost story, in 1990. My career went like this: I would sell a book or two for very little money, get kicked off the carousel, and then write something much better, get on again, get thrown off, go back to the woodshed and improve my craft, and sell again. I think the important thing here is the “getting better” part.

I ran into a buzz saw when my agent tried to sell my new thriller, THE SHOP. She absolutely believed in the book and thought it would sell very quickly at the highest level. Two miserable years ensued, ending with a whimper, not a bang. She said, “There’s just no other place I can try.” And so, with her blessing, I put the book up on Kindle at the end of March.

At the beginning of April, THE SHOP spiked. By the end of April I’d sold almost nine thousand copies of THE SHOP alone---and I had other books up as well.
My idea in March had been simple: I wanted a Big Six deal. I would go the Boyd Morrison route and rack up a ton of sales, which would parlay into a six-figure deal with Random House or Penguin. But my thinking changed as I learned how much fun it was to design covers, write cover copy, market a book my way, and, yes, count the money rolling in. It made me feel smart and savvy. And I remembered a road trip two years before, a conversation with my husband all the way from Ruidoso, New Mexico to Lordsburg (that’s a good piece of distance) about our strategy for selling THE SHOP. 1) We needed a powerful, top-flight agent. 2) She had to get the book in front of the best editors at the best houses. And we agreed then: we wanted as much money up front as possible, because we knew that by the second book the publisher would be disillusioned and would kick us to the curb. Not the best model for a career, is it?

And so my attitude changed. I no longer wanted to sell to a Big Six publisher. I did sign with Thomas & Mercer (THE SHOP and two other thrillers), but I kept my Laura Cardinal series and plan to keep one foot firmly planted in the indie camp.
You ask me what I did for marketing. I didn’t buy any ads. I didn’t guest blog a lot. We did Tweet and Facebook the successes as they came, like getting on to the Top 100 list. I spent a lot of time on Kindle Boards Writer’s Café, sharing experiences. I truly believe that Writer’s Café taught me what was possible. When you see so many people reach 1000 sales, 5000 sales, 10,000 sales and more, you begin to think you can do it. Your own Vince Zandri inspired me. He said he was selling 1000 books a day for a week. So I thought: I’ll sell 1000 books a day for one week. And I did. I know it sounds crazy, but just knowing you can do it really helps.

It also has helped tremendously that I have great quotes from John Lescroart, T. Jefferson Parker, Gayle Lynds, and David Morrell.

I think marketing comes down to Joe Konrath’s creed: good books, good product descriptions, good covers. I would add that we emulated the look of Big Six covers, because we wanted to capitalize on the familiarity factor. So we studied the Edgar Award book covers, paying particular attention to fonts. We wanted a unified look for our books, but knew they should stand out from one another so no one would be confused and buy a book twice. Hence the colors and different themes: THE SHOP has a thriller look with menace and a silhouetted protagonist. THE DEVIL’S HOUR is blue, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN is red, and DARK SIDE OF THE MOON is mostly yellow, navy and white. We didn’t consciously come up with these colors—they just happened. But the art, which I always feel is secondary to the font, fits each book. I see the art as behind the font, which is super-imposed over it. I think books need to have a uniform look. If they’re thrillers, they have to look like thrillers. You can be creative, but you have to maintain the brand.
When we were really broke last fall and were coming to the end of the line with publishers, I was within sight of a deal with a real bottom-feeder of a publisher. I figured we’d get $2500, and at that point I was willing to take it.

They turned me down.

Favorite song: Garth Brooks’ “Unanswered Prayers.”

http://jcarsonblack.com



Author Aaron Patterson: Blog: The Worst Book Ever.

WRITE FASTER!

If you are a writer and have been doing it a long time you might remember how writing one book a year was the goal. Publishing took FORRREEEVVVVERRRR, and some crazy writers would publish two or three books in a year.

Two and sometimes four years was expected to get your book in print and all the money it took to advertise, and go on tour and blah... blah... blah...

It was a game of polish, think... think some more and a writers life was filled with days on the beach, or out "Doing Research."

Now the game has changed. eBooks are taking over and the demand for content has never been higher. Readers are eating up books like hungry dogs. Sales are going insane and the chant is, "Where is your next book?"

It is numbers, content and how fast you can get more content out there. This, with trying to put out quality is the new era of writing and publishing. If you have one book you may sell okay, but if you have three or more you stand the chance to really make some money and build a huge fan base.

It is all speed, the eBook is NOW, the reader demands it NOW. You can publish an eBook NOW, and the more you have the more you make. It is an instant world and authors like J.A. Konrath, Amanda Hockings and Vincent Zandri are trying to keep up with the demand.

What should you do? Write faster, no more laying around or drinking coffee to be happy with one book a year. You need to do 2-6 books a year at least. Now, if you keep up with your hungry fans you stand to make a great living. We are no longer in the time of the easy writers life. So, if you have a short story sitting around... Publish it! If you wrote a story in high school... Publish it! Content, content, content! Back list, out of print, old works... anything and everything just get it up and for sale, you never know what book will take off and lead the change for all your other works.

Cheers