My favorite customer review so far

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Richard Bowker

A satisfied Amazon customer writes about The Portal:

Product was sent on time and as expected. Thank you.

You may say that there’s some mix-up here: the satisfied Amazon customer actually thought she was reviewing something entirely different — a printer cartridge or a dog collar or a box of trash bags. I prefer to think that she likes my novels so much that, when she discovered that the The Portal was “as expected,” she was moved to give it five stars and express her deepest gratitude.

That’s perfectly plausible, right?

“Replica” is now free in England and Canada!

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Richard Bowker

I seem to have some readers there.

In England, it’s #7 among technothrillers on Amazon.

In Canada, it’s #8.

You still have to pay for it in Australia, alas.

Here’s a nice short review that just appeared on Barnes & Noble:

What a terrific book! Richard Bowker is one of my new favorite authors!

Why I’ll never get rich from writing, part xxxvii

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Richard Bowker

This is from Hugh Howey, via The Passive Voice — the way to become successful in online publishing:

The idea is this: Annual releases are too slow to build on one another. And not just in the repetition of getting eyeballs on your works, but in how online recommendation algorithms work. Liliana suggests publishing 5 works all at once. Same day. And she thinks you should have another work sitting there ready to go a month later. While these works are gaining steam, write the next work, which if you write and edit in two months, will hit a month after the “hole” work.

Why does this work? I think it has to do with “impressions,” or the number of times people see a product before they decide to take a chance on it. (In this case, the product is your name.) It also has to do with recommendation algorithms and how new works are treated on various online bestseller lists. From my own experience, I know that it was following WOOL with four more rapid releases that helped my career take off. I followed these five releases a month later with FIRST SHIFT, and I released a work every three or four months after that (SECOND SHIFT, I, ZOMBIE, THIRD SHIFT, plus several short works).

Here I am a year and a half into the writing of my new novel, and I’m close. But I’m not quite there. Maybe a couple more months… Will I have something ready to go a month later? Yeah. Sure. No problem.

People sure do like free ebooks

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Richard Bowker

I sold maybe two copies of my novel Replica in July, while charging a measly $4.99. We dropped the price to $0.00 a couple of days ago. The result? 800 downloads on Amazon (I don’t have any data on Barnes & Noble).

I don’t have any great insight to offer. People like free stuff. I just hope that some of those 800 folks read the book, like it, and leave me a nice review. And, maybe, buy one of my other fine novels.

“Replica” is now free on Barnes & Noble!

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Richard Bowker

For a limited time, we’re making my novel Replica available for the low low price of free. It’s currently free on Barnes & Noble, and Amazon will presumably follow suit when it gets wind of what’s afoot.

Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Replica:

“While maintaining a highly readable pulp-fiction style, Bowker takes the narrative through a gripping array of turnabouts, doublecrosses and twists. Readers will be guessing the story’s outcome until the very end.”

As usual, I would be forever grateful if you left a customer review after downloading and reading the book. Reviews matter.

Kindle Unlimited — threat or menace?

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Richard Bowker

Amid yesterday’s depressing news about bombs and rockets and body parts strewn on the ground, we find out that Amazon has created a Netflix-like Kindle subscription service to compete with Oyster and Scribd. The Passive Voice has a couple of posts about this, here and here.

For now, Kindle Unlimited appear to offer mostly indie books in the Kindle Select program, plus a sprinkling of mainstream books. There are none from the Big Five publishers, apparently, unless the author owns his or her own ebook rights. Presumably participation in Kindle Unlimited becomes yet another item to negotiate with these publishers.

My books aren’t there because the publisher I work with doesn’t like the premise of Kindle Select, which requires selling your ebook exclusively via Amazon. (BookBub, it turns out, gives preference in its decision-making process to books available from multiple sources.) Of course, if other ebook vendors collapse, things might change. And it’s also possible that Amazon could retool the Kindle Select program to make it more attractive to authors who currently aren’t signing up.

Some articles I’ve read think that Kindle Unlimited is another step in reducing author’s incomes, the way Spotify and its ilk are causing problems for musicians. Beats me. It also seems likely that, unlike Spotify and Netflix, Kindle Unlimited serves a bit of a niche market: people don’t read as much as they listen to music or watch TV. Ten dollars a month isn’t much money, but I couldn’t justify spending it, given the amount of reading I have time to do. And unless the selection were virtually unlimited, I’d probably find the service too frustrating.

The BookBub promotion for “Dover Beach”: a preliminary post-mortem

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Richard Bowker

The BookBub promotion for Dover Beach expired yesterday, I think. I just have the Amazon numbers at this point. I’ve sold about 600 copies there, plus a bunch of copies of its very fine sequel, The Distance Beacons. That doesn’t quite give me a profit, but the returns from Barnes & Noble and lesser markets probably will. At Barnes & Noble, Dover Beach peaked in the 100’s in sales rank and has now dropped back to about #1100; on Kobo, it’s still in the top 100 for Science Fiction Adventure and at #188 overall for Science Fiction.

Regardless of whether I end up in the black for the investment, I’m going to consider this a success. Anyway, because this is my blog, I’m going to mention that Dover Beach is still available for $0.99, and while I’m at it, I’ll subject you to a customer review. This one is from B&N and is titled “Excellent story!”:

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The writing style was easy to relate to and the characters had a realness to them that was very refreshing. I love books written about how a society survives after war and the author did a great job explaining the mood of the aftermath. I also appreciate that he didn’t have people being held as prisoners by some thrown together street gangs, that seems to be a plot that comes up way too frequently. It makes more sense that most people would go out on their own or team up with one or two other people. I will be buying more of his books.

BookBub results, one day in

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Richard Bowker

I don’t have any sales figures, alas, for my BookBub promotion for Dover Beach. But I do have some sales rankings.

Yesterday, before the promotion, Dover Beach was ranked 129,749 among books in the Kindle store. (This isn’t actually too terrible, by my standards. It may reflect the price reduction, which occurred a few days ago.)

Today, it’s ranked #470 in the Kindle store. It peaked in the low 300’s, I think. It’s currently #13 in the Science Fiction Action category, which puts it in the neighborhood of books by George R. R. Martin and Hugh Howey. It’s even higher in a couple of Technothriller categories. (This categorization is insane; don’t read Dover Beach if you’re lookiing for a technothriller.)

The book is ranked #135 on the Barnes & Noble site.

On Kobo, which I never visit, it’s ranked #15 in the Science Fiction category.

This seems promising! What is also promising is that the book’s very fine sequel, The Distance Beacons, has also moved up from about #270,000 on the Kindle store to about #60,000 (on Barnes & Noble, it’s around #15,000). The hope, obviously, is that people will gobble up Dover Beach, and then quickly move on to the sequel. After that, they will be ready to move on to volume 3, which I’m close to finishing if I’d just quit blogging for a while.

Because this is my blog, I’ll take this opportunity to reprint one of the five-star reviews for The Distance Beacons:

The President is coming to town and Walter, the one and only private eye, isn’t given an opportunity to say, “No!, when the government requests his services after threats are made against the very distinguished official. From the beginning, nothing the government does makes sense (LOL) but Walter keeps chipping away at the case, in between repeatedly being beat up and thrown in jail. The closer he comes to solving this complicated case the worse things get for him. You will love this unusual story and get to spend more time with Walter’s menagerie of friends. You will also bellow out a few good laughs at poor Walter’s expense. I can’t wait for another book about this private eye of the future!

Dover Beach goes live on BookBub!

Posted on June 28, 2014 by Richard Bowker

My novel Dover Beach is now featured on the BookBub website, and it’s in the email BookBub sent out to 400,000 science fiction readers. The book is on sale for the ridiculously low price of $0.99. Here’s where I discuss the economics of a BookBub promotion. (If you want to buy the book, click the link on the BookBub page — they’ll get some revenue, and if they get enough click-through sales, this may help convince them to feature another one of my books.)

My publisher came up with this blurb for the book–there is presumably a word limit:

A Philip K. Dick Award finalist set in a harrowing world devastated by war: Believing himself a clone, Dr. Charles Winfield enlists the help of Wally Sands to expose a top-secret government project. But in his pursuit of answers, Wally uncovers truths about himself — and crosses paths with a killer…

This manages to get two or three things wrong, but whatever; I probably couldn’t have done any better. Here’s a customer review, titled “A Different but Wonderful Private Eye Story”, that does a better job of capturing what the book is about:

Walter is a quirky private eye like none you’ve ever experienced! The poor fellow stumbles into one disaster after another, making you laugh, cringe, and pity the lovable, determined character. By the way, Walter is a survivor of the downfall of America so he’s familiar with overcoming challenges. As the story unfolds, tidbits are revealed toward understanding what happened. To assist Walter is an eclectic and interesting collection of friends who assist him along the way. They will become like friends to you also. This book has twists and turns, great wit and humor, and very colorful characters. I loved book so much that I ordered the next novel in the series (A Distance Beacon) right away. Great job!

This reviewer gets everything right, except the name of the sequel. But it’s close!

By the way, there has never been a better time to get one of my books. Senator is also available for $0.99, and The Portal continues to be free. Here’s a recent five-star review of The Portal, titled “A Lot of Heart”:

I thought at first this was going to be another YA gimmicky novel with kids complaining about their lives and using the device of dimension travel just to come up with random quirky things, but this book is much more than that. You really get to know and care about the characters, and things move along quite well and not predictably. The really surprising part is the life lessons learned by the characters – they really leave you with something more than just a fun little read. Glad I read it!

Amazon vs. Hachette: The competition starts taking advantage

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Richard Bowker

For all the articles I’ve read about Amazon’s hardball tactics in their battle with Hachette, I have seen little discussion of the risk it’s taking. They are obviously leaving an opening for the competition. The Times finally ran an article about what’s happening on that front. An independent Seattle bookstore hand delivered copies of J. K. Rowling’s new book along with a “Hachette swag bag.” And the big vendors were also taking advantage:

On Walmart.com on Thursday, “The Silkworm” was one of three books featured on the books’ home page at 40 percent off, or $16.80. Walmart has also promoted the book with ads on Facebook and through mass emails to its customers promoting Hachette books. On Barnes & Noble’s site, “The Silkworm” was one of four of “the week’s biggest books.” A digital edition for the Nook was $11.99. It was Barnes & Noble’s No. 2 best-seller on Thursday. On Bookish, the website that the major publishers started last year to combat Amazon, it was the first “new and notable” release featured, and was selling for $19.60.

This doesn’t mean Amazon will back down, or that it won’t win. But it surely is taking a risk.

“Who’s going to blink first?” mused Mr. Sindelar, the independent bookseller. “That’s what everyone wants to know. I have no idea. But a lot of our customers told us they were buying from us explicitly as a protest against Amazon. We live in Seattle, where people go to farmers’ markets. They don’t want to limit the diversity of where they shop. I think this has helped people realize that if Amazon is the only option, that’s putting way too much power in one company.”