Free Write Good or Die by Scott Nicholson Page A

thousand hits per day, and some
of those readers wind up becoming ebook buyers.
    3. Low price. I've found the sweet spot for pricing to be $1.99,
though that will go up to $2.99 when the royalty rate changes.
Perhaps I could make a bit more money selling at $2.99 now, but
that would mean some fewer sales, which would negate:
    4. Being on the Kindle genre
bestseller lists. The bestseller lists are
chances for browsers to find you when they're looking for
well-known books by well-known authors. In my case, they'll buy a
Stephen King, James Patterson, or J.D. Robb, see me next to that
author for only $1.99, and it's a one-click impulse purchase. It's
worth a lower price to stay high up on those lists. Last week I had
ten titles in the Police Procedural Top 100. I believe these lists
become self-fulfilling prophecies. The more you sell, the more you
sell.
    5. Word of mouth. Or in this case, word of Google. If you Google me,
you get a lot of hits. Lots of folks link to me, review me, read
and recommend me. I did a lot of self-promotion for my print
career, and that foundation still stands in over 100,000 mentions
on the world wide web. This extends to Twitter and Facebook, and
the kind folks who retweet and link to me.
    6. Promotion. Strangely, I don't do much self-promotion for my
Kindle books. Especially compared to my print books, where I've
signed at over 1,200 bookstores. I've posted my titles on a few
Kindle forums, done a few Amazon blogs and Listmanias, and been
lucky to get a lot of reviews and a few mentions by the mainstream
media. But for the most part, my Kindle promo strategy has been
hands-off. In fact, I know that Kindlers hate too much blatant
self-promotion, and will label you a spammer if you toot your own
horn a lot.
    7. Cross Pollination. It's no secret that I write scary books under the
pen name Jack Kilborn. I want all JA Konrath readers to know this,
and all Jack Kilborn readers to know he's really JA Konrath. So
I've tied the two names together by writing the novella Truck Stop,
featuring my series character Jack Daniels, and my villains from
Afraid and SERIAL. I wrote SERIAL with Blake Crouch, ensuring his
fans discover me. I wrote novellas with Tom Schreck, Jeff Strand,
and Henry Perez, to make sure their fans know who I am. And I
recently put ebook excerpts from my other titles in the back of my
ebooks. Plus, I'm now trading excerpts with Robert W. Walker to
hook even more readers. Remember my Virtual Paper blog?
    8. Decent stories. Name recognition and cheap prices only go so far.
If the ebooks aren't any good, sales will drop off. Not only should
the writing be stellar, but the Kindle formatting should be
perfect. A great story with terrible word formatting won't sell.
Period.
    9. Good covers and product
descriptions. I just improved some of my
covers, and saw an immediate uptick in sales. I'm also constantly
adding to/tweaking my book descriptions. I've found that more
information leads to stronger sales (as opposed to teasers with
less info.) I also make sure my first line of description is "Only
$1.99 for a limited time." By announcing the low pricing is
limited, I encourage impulse buyers.
    10. New content. Every few months I try to add another ebook to my
Kindle store. The more books you have on Kindle, the greater your
chances of being discovered. And if someone discovers you, and
likes you, they'll buy more of your ebooks.

    J.A. Konrath—http://www.jakonrath.com
    ###

    33. KILLING THE SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING:
SELF-PROMOTION
    By Dean Wesley Smith
    http://www.deadwesleysmith.com

    The myth simply is: “All self promotion for a
writer is good.” Nope. Completely false. The truth is sometimes
self promotion of your own book can hurt you, sometimes it can help
you. The key is not falling for the myth that all self promotion is
good.
    Right now, in late 2009, the publishing
industry is changing so fast that it is often hard to keep up for a
writer with his head buried in writing the next book.