A look inside Arthur's brain...
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Finally! Book III of the Hunchback Assignments is out in stores all across Canada. Empire of Ruins is the story of Modo, a trip to Australia, crocodiles, and, of course, airships. There's also a sabre involved. Oh, and 3% more romance, 5% more bromance, and 117.7% steampunk.
>My author's copies of Empire of Ruins: The Hunchback Assignments III have arrived. Don't they look all comfy in the box? Very colourful!
It's in stores in Canada on Monday.
>Well, a long time ago (April 21st, 2009), I tried out Facebook's ad campaign to mixed results. Enough time has passed and I've saved up enough cash that I decided to try again.
I chose to advertise my recently released eBook DUST.
As you can see I made up a clever ad (which is relatively easy to do with Facebook Ads) and pressed the "go" button. Facebook allows you to choose your target audience, so I selected America (because the eBook is only available there) and young adult/horror. I chose to pay $5.00 a day for three days. Because I published this version of DUST it meant that I could track sales exactly. My hope was that people would see the ad, click on it and go directly to the Amazon kindle site, then voila--buy the book. And I'd pay off my mortgage (okay that's more of a long term goal).
Here were the results:
As you can see there were 91,000 impressions and 49 clicks. And the number of books sold during that time period = 1. Yep, only sold one. I needed to sell at least 8 to break even.
Now I didn't expect the ad to sell bundles of books. First the person who clicks on the ad would have to own an eReader, then they'd have to have $2.99 to spend, and finally be willing to take a chance on an unknown book. So obviously this ad wasn't hitting the impulse buyers (all I need is about 100,000 impulse buyers...is that too much to ask).
I have been told that advertising usually takes 3 months to imprint onto your audience's brains. At that point they are more likely to buy the "product." But I'm not prepared to buy 3 months worth of ads. I may try Project Wonderful next, which is much cheaper. And have been itching to give Goodreads a try, too.
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Well, Steve Jobs is pleased to announce that Draugr is available on iBooks. That's right -- 40,000 words of YA fright is waiting to spring into creepy life on your iPad (or iPod Touch or iPhone or iBrain). Just click the corresponding link.
iAustralia! iCanada! iUS of A! iUK! iFrance!
Yep, I'm a Macgeek. Sorry.
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G'day Australia! Howdy US of A! Bloody top of the morning UK! Bonjour France!
Dust is officially up for sale on iBooks in the above countries. I am enough of a Mac geek that I find this thrilling (alas, again I must mention it is not for sale in the Canadian store because of "negotiations" etc--I can't even download my own book!).
It has been ten years since the book was released. When I talk to students they often ask me which of my 15 books is my favourite and I always answer Dust. It is the one that I feel "worked" the best out of all my novels.
