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The 1st Page Critique Offer

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slademail Let me read your writing! The first page of your writing project is the most important. It's where you hook the readers. This is the same truth whether it's a short story, novel, or non-fiction piece. So I'm offering to do a critique of the first page of your piece of writing for anyone who's a subscriber to my newsletter. The actual offer will be in my next newsletter (to come out on June 16th) and will be available until June 30th, 2015.

Hmmm. The word critique bothers me. It implies criticism. Instead I should call it here-are-my-humble-suggestions-take-them-or-leave them. I've been doing this sort of work for over twenty years. In fact I just finished spending nine months as a writer in residence. The most important part of my job was to go over the writing of other writers, mark the work up line by line, then have a one on one discussion (we talked out heads off).  I read everything from memoirs, to poetry, to fantastical fiction. Oh, and one engineering paper.

So this is my way of offering a similar virtual experience to you. You can even submit the 1st page on behalf of someone else (a student, your offspring, an elf...even literary pets). Just sign up by visiting the link here: My Newsletter Signup Page

The newsletter itself is monthly-ish and has lots of goodies for fans, readers, teachers and other humans. And there's often a prize and competitions. I have so much fun putting the newsletters together--it's the perfect way to procrastinate.

So, please hop on board. And if there's anyone else you think might enjoy this offer (and the newsletter) just click and share on the links below.

Keep on rocking!

Art

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The Brobdingnagian-sized Ebook update!

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Yep, I'm going all literary with this update on my ebook sales. We all know from Gulliver's Travels that Brobdingnagian means giant-sized.* And this is a giant-sized report! Well, actually it's kind of small. It's more Lilliputian. But, really, who would click on a headline that says, "Author shouts out about lilliputian book sales!"? Anyway let's start with a chart!

Eeek! My sales have gone all Lilliputian! I was warned about the doldrums of August by other ebook publishers. Apparently sales do drop in August. Get off the beach and buy books everyone! Anyway, here are the numbers.

Feb 12 March 43 April 377 May 204 June 139 July 154 August 72

Abandon ship! That's it mateys, all hands off deck and swim for shore. Oh, wait there were some grand developments. I crossed the 1000 sales barrier. That's good.  And my little experiment last month of giving away this Norse horror book for free worked:

I gave away 7545 copies. But when I switched the book back to "paid" status Amazon's magical algorithms made it shoot up the charts and it sold 33 copies in two weeks (the highest it had averaged was 18 copies in a month). So there was some small immediate benefit to giving it away (plus it now has several new positive reviews). And I hope over time those 7500 readers will look kindly on the other books in the series.

Hey and there's other good news. I released The Hunchback Assignments  and The Dark Deeps in the UK.

The Dark Deeps

That's one of the clever things about ebook publishing. My agent sold the rights to these books to several countries, but the UK hasn't picked it up yet. So, with the click of a button, I can invade the UK. My hope is to make a little noise over there. So far...3 copies sold! C'mon Britain, remember when we Canucks helped out with that Boer war thing? You can finally pay us back!

I am doing a few experiments at the UK amazon with free books...which I'll update at a later date (see, I'm trying to make this all sooo mysterious).

Overall, I had hoped to be further ahead in the ebook world after 7 months. I think the real test of this experiment will come over the next few months which are traditionally the busiest in book sales. And, as I've said before, every copy sold is a copy I wasn't selling before. All of these books were either out of print or not for sale in selected countries, so I'm making money on them now.

And someday that Brobdingnagian load of royalties will come my way, right Gulliver! Right?

Cheers,

*next time you go to Starbucks refuse the Grande Latte and demand a Brobdingnagian latte. That'll shock their organic socks!