April the 22nd is Earth Day. A perfect opportunity to promote Red Rock. And also to test out Kindle countdown deals.
So for one week in the run up to Earth day, from the 15th - 22nd April, Red Rock will be available for the reduced price of 99p (UK) and 99c (US).
I will do my best to promote it on social media during this time. Let's see if I get an uptick in sales.
I don’t intend doing a great deal of marketing and promotion for Red Rock. This is a re-release and in my mind it’s already had its day. But rather than simply press publish and leave it there to gather dust, I’ve decided to do a few things to give it a boost. It will be interesting to see which, if any of these, result in an uptick in sales.
1. Author social media accounts, twitter, Instagram, other? In the end I decided to set up an author Instagram account. I then generated a set of promotional graphics using Midjourney and Canva which I will publish to this account at regular intervals.
2. Run a giveaway. (Unfortunately Goodreads only allows this for US authors so I will run it from my author IG account and try to boost on Twitter) The giveaway will be for an e-copy – that way I can run it internationally. It might be good though to have some additional swag or a prize to make it more interesting. The easiest thing for me to offer is a chapter critique.
3. Countdown deals on Kindle Unlimited. I could offer it free or at 99p to coincide with a special event such Earth day.
4. Review copies. Offer review copies in various ‘groups’ I belong to in the hope that they will enjoy it and give it a boost.
5. Participate in indie author events eg #indieapril on twitter
I will report back on these and what effects they have, which appear to be the most useful, and which don’t appear to make any difference to sales. This will be useful for me when I come to self publish my next book, which won’t be a re-release. The next one will be something new.
Here is a very simple checklist for formatting your book for publication using Amazon. This is for both kindle and print. Make sure that before you start this stage that your novel had been fully edited and proofed.
Formatting for Kindle:
• Clean document: Ctrl A to select all. Set to ‘normal’ from headings section.
• Set up title page, copyright etc format to centre set book title to Title, other text to normal.
• Insert hyperlinks.
• Inset page break at end of section
• Set chapter titles to Heading, set text to normal,
• Put page break at end of each chapter: On the Paragraph screen, under Indentation > Special: select First Line, and indent it by 0.38”
• Remove spacing before and after
• Click on normal and update normal to match selection
• Edit title and heading style in the same way so they do not indent.
• Generate epub/MOBI files (I use Draft2Dignital for this stage but I don’t press ‘publish’ as I’m only after the files.
I find it useful at this stage to send the novel to my kindle to check it is displaying correctly and also to pick up any last minute errors that may have crept in.
Formatting for print:
• Use your clean kindle file as your starting point.
• Set book size 6x9 (or 15.24: 22.86)
• Ensure that you have no clickable hyperlinks in your book.
• Add page numbers at bottom of page in the centre.
• Select different first page to remove the page 1 number.
• Check page breaks are where you want them
• Export to pdf
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I now have my rights back for Red Rock and I intend to self publish it. I hope it will be the first of many, and I will be sharing the process with you as I go.
I will be republishing Red Rock under the name Kate Kelly which is how it first appeared. But I also have a second author pen name, KM Kelly under which The Sleepers was published. I intend to keep both these going. Children’s books will join Red Rock under Kate Kelly and my adult fiction will join The Sleepers under KM Kelly.
I did vacillate about whether my thrillers and adult SF should also be separate, but since my thrillers tend towards speculative anyway and my SF tends to be thrillers, I think they will work well together, and having them together under one name will make the marketing and promotion easier.
There are a number of stages to self publishing a book and I will be exploring these in detail and sharing what I learn along the way on this blog. But broadly they are as follows:
1. The Written Word
2. Editing
3. Cover Design
4. Formatting for Kindle and print
5. A Marketing Plan
6. The launch
7. Managing Expectations
For Red Rock steps 1 and 2 are already covered. The book is written and has been professionally edited. So I will join the process at stage 3.
Today I received my rights back for Red Rock, almost nine years to the week since it was published. For now it is still available on Amazon, but it probably won’t be long before it is taken down. And then it will go back to being unpublished once again.
But this isn’t the end. I have a clean edited copy so at some point in the not too distant future I will self publish it on to Amazon, possibly along with a couple of other titles that I wrote but never sold – books that I believe in, even though I wasn’t able to persuade the publishing industry to take a punt on them.
For Red Rock all I will need is a new cover and to format it for kindle. The latter will be easy. The former less so as I’m not a graphic artist. I may be able to buy a cover off the shelf though – there are quite a few available.
So this isn’t the end for Red Rock. It’s only a pause before the next phase of its lifecycle begins.
Today I have been interviewed over at The Mystery of Writing. This is through the International Thriller Writers which I signed up for about a month ago. I should really have done so sooner. They feature all new releases in their magazine The Big Thrill which has a huge reach. They also conduct author interviews such as this one. So if you are writing thrillers or suspense and have a publishing deal do check them out! It costs nothing to join but the benefits are huge.
Anyway. Here is my interview: The Mystery of Writing
Today is launch day - The Sleepers is out in the world and has already been gathering some great reviews. It is still only 99p so grab yourself a copy before the price goes up!
As you can probably tell I've been having a lot of fun playing around in Canva to create some promotional graphics. This one tells you a bit more about what you can expect to find within those pages!
And now - off to celebrate with some bubbly! It's never too early - not on launch day!
