Lee Goldberg has an interesting post on Mark Terry, whose books for Kindle aren't selling well. His book Dancing in the Dark, is ranked around #104,000 in the Kindle store, and Terry says he's sold about thirty copies overall this month. He's also quoted as saying, "On the basis of what I've seen so far, I'm still leaning strongly toward traditional publishing venues."
I commented (though my comment has not yet shown up) saying I hadn't seen Mark posting on the Amazon boards. Maybe he has, and I just haven't noticed. But if he hasn't, I'd advise him to start there first. Part of the problem may be that established authors don't necessarily have a lot of time to wander around Amazon posting a whole lot. But there is really no other way to make yourself known over there, and you don't have to spend hours a day doing it-- in fact, posting too much is as bad as posting too little. Also, I notice Dancing in the Dark is priced at $1.99. If I were him, I'd drop one of my books to 99 cents for a month (yes, even despite the upcoming royalty change) and advertise THAT, too.
But all this still might result in books that doesn't sell. Some books just don't catch on, for no reason anyone can determine. He's got several others, too, and they all have good covers. But some of them are fairly recent. I'd like to think that one of them will catch on eventually, and lift the others. But if they don't? I don't know...
Anyway, if you're feeling like a thriller, this one might be worth checking out:-).
In that I'm a full-time freelance writer, editor and novelist, I don't necessarily have a lot of time for additional promotion--I did spend 9 weeks spending a big chunk of time and energy promoting my latest novel, The Fallen; and no, haven't spent much time on the Amazon boards. As I mentioned in my original blog post, The Devil's Pitchfork and The Serpent's Kiss, which are the e-versions of my out-of-print Derek Stillwater novels, have only been up on Kindle for a couple weeks and they're the best sellers by far and as far as I'm concerned they're the most important of the bunch, in that I hope they'll generate some interest in my other Stillwater novels, whether in hardcover or e-book.
ReplyDeleteExactly, Mark, I get that. It's hard to find enough time to promote here, there, and everywhere. Still, tossing up a promo post on Amazon every week or so might help. Or it might not. I don't pretend to know exactly what makes things sell on Amazon, more's the pity:-).
ReplyDeleteI saw that you have new stuff up on Kindle. If it's only been a couple of weeks, wait and see what happens with that. It might start rolling. Also, putting it on the front page of your website (maybe at the bottom, in smaller covers) might drive some traffic over to check it out, too.