It's been brought to my attention that there may be a demographic of readers who will not chance purchasing books they deem "cheap". Apparently the assumption goes that a book priced too low is priced this way because it is a bad book. The recommendation, therefore, was to bring the price of my book up from the 99 cents I had the eBook version listed for to a more "prestigious" price point.
As those of you who've kept up with my previous blog postings may recall, the reason I priced the book so low in the first place was because this isn't about the money now so much as it is about attracting readers and establishing an audience. I figured a well-priced book would entice readers who have never heard of me to give my book a chance. After all, what's 99 cents, right?
Well, if I'm missing out on potential readers because they think all 99 cent books are crap then those are potential audience members lost. So, for now I'm going to try a slight price increase to see if it affects sales. Considering my limited attempts at marketing so far the book has done modestly well at 99 cents. Time to see if the marketing gurus are correct. I'll give it a few weeks at $1.99 but if I don't see any bump in sales I'm going to go back to my original plan and list it at the 99 cent mark.
Transparency in action.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The best things in life...
...aren't things.
When I look back on life fifty years hence, it's not going to be the big flat screen t.v. in my living room, the number of DVDs in my video library, the nic-nacs cluttering every flat surface in my house, or the watch on my wrist that come to mind. It'll be the friends I've hung from cliffs with, the rush of adrenaline I felt the first time I leapt into the rapids of a wickedly flowing river, the remembrances of flying low over the deserts of the Middle East, of seeing the bedouins with Mercedes SUVs parked outside their tents, the loves and the losses and then finally the look in my wife's eyes when she said "I do" at sunset. I'll remember my motorcycle tour through Europe and those exquisitely seductive roads curving through the French, Swiss and Austrian Alps, the silence of a ship with failed boilers in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the taste of a blood orange on a tortuously hot day in the Gulf and the first time I felt the skyscrapers of New York towering above me. I'll remember my first flight in an airplane and the view of the clouds from their topsides. I'll remember my first taste of a good scotch, the satisfaction of completing my first story, the euphoria after finishing a triathlon and a marathon, and especially the pain I'd feel the day after a marathon. I'll remember the sensation of "floating" through space as I looked into a bottomless abyss SCUBA diving in the Pacific, the jungle waterfalls I rappelled down with friends in Guam, the goosebumps on the back of my neck the first time I felt the true power of the wind at sea, the love of my animals and mine for them, and the loss I felt at their passings. I'll remember the barbecues with my friends and family, the backpacking trips into the backcountry of America, the beers over campfires, and the last moments I've spent with loved ones.
I'll remember a lot of things in life when I'm at the end of mine, but I'll be hard pressed to remember the furniture I had when I was twenty-six, or the clothes I wore when I was thirty-two.
When I look back on life it is those meaningful experiences and interactions that I'll remember most dearly, and not my material possessions. Buying something nice might put a bandaid over whatever void you're feeling in your life for a minute, but bandaids fall off with time. A good experience lasts a lifetime.
When I look back on life fifty years hence, it's not going to be the big flat screen t.v. in my living room, the number of DVDs in my video library, the nic-nacs cluttering every flat surface in my house, or the watch on my wrist that come to mind. It'll be the friends I've hung from cliffs with, the rush of adrenaline I felt the first time I leapt into the rapids of a wickedly flowing river, the remembrances of flying low over the deserts of the Middle East, of seeing the bedouins with Mercedes SUVs parked outside their tents, the loves and the losses and then finally the look in my wife's eyes when she said "I do" at sunset. I'll remember my motorcycle tour through Europe and those exquisitely seductive roads curving through the French, Swiss and Austrian Alps, the silence of a ship with failed boilers in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the taste of a blood orange on a tortuously hot day in the Gulf and the first time I felt the skyscrapers of New York towering above me. I'll remember my first flight in an airplane and the view of the clouds from their topsides. I'll remember my first taste of a good scotch, the satisfaction of completing my first story, the euphoria after finishing a triathlon and a marathon, and especially the pain I'd feel the day after a marathon. I'll remember the sensation of "floating" through space as I looked into a bottomless abyss SCUBA diving in the Pacific, the jungle waterfalls I rappelled down with friends in Guam, the goosebumps on the back of my neck the first time I felt the true power of the wind at sea, the love of my animals and mine for them, and the loss I felt at their passings. I'll remember the barbecues with my friends and family, the backpacking trips into the backcountry of America, the beers over campfires, and the last moments I've spent with loved ones.
I'll remember a lot of things in life when I'm at the end of mine, but I'll be hard pressed to remember the furniture I had when I was twenty-six, or the clothes I wore when I was thirty-two.
When I look back on life it is those meaningful experiences and interactions that I'll remember most dearly, and not my material possessions. Buying something nice might put a bandaid over whatever void you're feeling in your life for a minute, but bandaids fall off with time. A good experience lasts a lifetime.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Ho! Ho! Ho!
This holiday season, why not show your significant someone how much you love them with the gift of a crass-speaking, hard-drinking
anti-hero. Buy them The Missionary Position: A Tale of
Adventure on the South Seas today on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can find it on iTunes too!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Thanksgiving Haters
After a visit to the local big-block hardware store, I was moved to re-post a blog I'd written around this time last year...
Thanksgiving. It’s the ‘lost’ holiday.
It was the end of October when it hit me. I walked into a home improvement store and what did I see? Christmas-topia…Fake lighted Christmas trees, ten foot inflatable Santa’s and Frosty the Snowmen, animatronic talking reindeer, and ornaments galore. But not even a paper cutout of a turkey to decorate the yard with (not that I would).
And then there’s the retail angle where stores are effectively erasing Thanksgiving by starting Black Friday ON Thanksgiving. Sure, maybe it’s great for some shoppers, but what about the employees who work for these companies? Shouldn’t they get some holiday time with their families too? Apparently over 190,000 people think they should, according to this petition.
The last straw for me though was laid down by a local radio station that began playing 24-hour Christmas music in early November, with another station advertising they’ll start doing the same thing tomorrow.
Are you kidding?
We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving for crying out loud, but all I hear or see that’s holiday related is about Christmas. When I was a kid I didn’t see Christmas decor until after the big turkey day, and you could forget about Christmas music until December rolled around.
Thanksgiving has gotten the royal shaft.
Thanksgiving. It’s the ‘lost’ holiday.
It was the end of October when it hit me. I walked into a home improvement store and what did I see? Christmas-topia…Fake lighted Christmas trees, ten foot inflatable Santa’s and Frosty the Snowmen, animatronic talking reindeer, and ornaments galore. But not even a paper cutout of a turkey to decorate the yard with (not that I would).
And then there’s the retail angle where stores are effectively erasing Thanksgiving by starting Black Friday ON Thanksgiving. Sure, maybe it’s great for some shoppers, but what about the employees who work for these companies? Shouldn’t they get some holiday time with their families too? Apparently over 190,000 people think they should, according to this petition.
The last straw for me though was laid down by a local radio station that began playing 24-hour Christmas music in early November, with another station advertising they’ll start doing the same thing tomorrow.
Are you kidding?
We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving for crying out loud, but all I hear or see that’s holiday related is about Christmas. When I was a kid I didn’t see Christmas decor until after the big turkey day, and you could forget about Christmas music until December rolled around.
Thanksgiving has gotten the royal shaft.
-J.M. Park
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Social media marketing and writing
So, a little thought on the social media aspect of the game when it comes to writers and writing. Frequent updates to one's blog draws more attention to your website from the search engines. This, in turn, allows the writer more chances to captivate potential readers with alluring blog tales (okay, so mine aren't really that alluring), and then hopefully engage them to the point that they want to purchase your book.
But here's the dirty little secret. The more time a writer spends writing blog posts the less time they spend actually writing. But the less time spent on marketing, which social media represents a big chunk of these days, the less sales and thus less of an audience writers have for their publications.
The sword cuts both ways. So, why am I mentioning this? It's a long and roundabout way of apologizing for the time between my posts over the last month. Wish I had the big marketing teams to do the dirty work for me that the King's and Koontz's and Patterson's have. Then again, they didn't have them in the beginning either.
Think I just shut myself down. Bummer.
But here's the dirty little secret. The more time a writer spends writing blog posts the less time they spend actually writing. But the less time spent on marketing, which social media represents a big chunk of these days, the less sales and thus less of an audience writers have for their publications.
The sword cuts both ways. So, why am I mentioning this? It's a long and roundabout way of apologizing for the time between my posts over the last month. Wish I had the big marketing teams to do the dirty work for me that the King's and Koontz's and Patterson's have. Then again, they didn't have them in the beginning either.
Think I just shut myself down. Bummer.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Explanation!
Finally, a chart and a quote that, when put together, explain my existence.
“The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.”
| — | Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts, 1931 |
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Why I like historical fiction
Someone asked me the other day why I like writing historical fiction. The truth is I like writing in several genres, but historical fiction offers some perks I can't find in most others. If I were writing a contemporary thriller, for instance, say in the vein of Vince Flynn or Tom Clancy, there are a lot of ways for me to steer a false course. You see, you readers today are much more knowledgable, or are at least able to gain access to facts more conveniently than what authors had to worry about in days past when either the reader knew whether an author got the facts right or not, or they had to spend significant time looking the facts up at a library. Google and Wikipedia changed all that.
Now if I want to play the modern thriller game, I've got to be plugged in to the latest and greatest tech-savvy toys available to super spies and how all the three-letter agencies go about their work. Problem is, much of that info is tough to dig up because it's...well, it's superspy-y. That is, it's not so well advertised. If I choose to write a story that takes place in the past, however, then the tech's already known, the boundaries of the "world" my characters inhabit are known, and it's simply a matter of getting the facts straight about stuff that's already happened or been. No problem, right? Well, not really, but that's another story.
Here's the quick and dirty of my pros and cons on writing historical fiction:
PROS:
CONS:
Now if I want to play the modern thriller game, I've got to be plugged in to the latest and greatest tech-savvy toys available to super spies and how all the three-letter agencies go about their work. Problem is, much of that info is tough to dig up because it's...well, it's superspy-y. That is, it's not so well advertised. If I choose to write a story that takes place in the past, however, then the tech's already known, the boundaries of the "world" my characters inhabit are known, and it's simply a matter of getting the facts straight about stuff that's already happened or been. No problem, right? Well, not really, but that's another story.
Here's the quick and dirty of my pros and cons on writing historical fiction:
PROS:
- Don't have to worry about keeping up with the latest technologies.
- Sense of nostalgia. I love the feel and atmosphere of some of those old worlds. Whether completely true to the day or not, it is the remembrances each of us have from the experiences told to us from previous generations or through old Hollywood films that sometimes make us wish for simpler times.
- Gives me an excuse to explore, read about and research periods of history that interest me.
- Gives me an excuse to explore, read about and research places in history that interest me.
- It provides automatic boundaries for my world and characters to operate in.
CONS:
- Keeping things historically accurate requires work. True there's not the latest tech I have to know about, but I still have to do the research to make sure I'm at least keeping things respectably accurate.
- As an aside, I do veer off on language occasionally to make things contemporarily accessible. After all, who wants to read in old victorian English? When I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy years ago, I had to keep a dictionary at my side the whole time.
- History is what historians make of it. What one historian writes of a period may not mesh with what another writes, so you've got to pick your poison while doing your research and sell it to the reader sufficiently well enough that they don't bother questioning your facts and just live in and relish the story.
I do want to publish in multiple genres as time goes on. I've got the stories in mind already. This is not necessarily the smartest way forward as a writer. Most say it's best to stick with one genre and develop your audience. But I'm not sure if historical adventure is the best to stick with. While it's fun, it's also a very small niche in the market. As a fledgling author it's important to experiment and see where my voice is strongest. I don't know, but some of those erotica titles my book got listed next to on Amazon looked pretty interesting.
At the very least, the research would be a hell of a lot of fun!
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