Since last night, I have been toying with some ideas for new covers for my e-books in order to generate interest in my works and thereby increase sales. I have tried to create eye-catching designs. Let me know what you think. I have already incorporated a few into my works. See how they compare to the others by visiting my author’s page. The photos are all from the public domain.
And here is one I developed just for posting on Facebook.
I will probably develop a few more over the next few days.
Within the last few days, I have made a lot of new friends on Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, as an introduction to my writing, I giving away the Kindle version of my highest rated work (5 stars), the action novelette Click on June 2. Click is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N0F6Q2X. All I ask in return is that you please give me a quick review on either Amazon or Goodreads.
Check back on Fridays to see what other works I will be giving away.
Synopsis: Frank Martinez, a policeman with the Corpus Christi Police Department, has unintentionally shot and killed an unarmed man when called to intercede in a domestic violence case. To recover from the guilt while the incident is under investigation by the CCPD, Frank’s fiancée arranges for him to stay on a secluded island owned by her father’s former law partner. While dozing one night on a lounge chair in the yard, he awakes to find two hitmen slipping onto the island and breaking into the cabin. Are they after him? Are they after the cabin’s owner? Most importantly, how is he going to reach his pistol in his luggage in the bedroom?
I need to use WordPress more for quick posts than Twitter, because WordPress can feed to six other social media automatically, whereas it’s much more of a chore with Twitter to post to other media. Twitter is more fun though and more of a challenge to get a complete idea across in 140 characters. You can be much more impulsive with Twitter.
I can’t say for certain, but I believe I (i.e. My fictional character @jthurston666) am getting more followers on Twitter, because I noted in his profile that he is fictional. However, I did follow a few hundred more just before announcing that Jack is fictional, but several of Jack’s new followers are not being followed by me.
Right now, Jack is living in Piste, Mexico, but I will have him move soon to the Farmington, NM, area, where I live. I can update his daily activities in more detail and be truer to life than I can if he lives in a town where I have never been. My ostensible reasons for bringing him here are threefold: 1) Jack spent time here as a boy, 2) he has family in the area, and 3) he can try conjuring spirits from the local Anasazi ruins, which are scattered throughout the area (not including the local national parks).
In Jacob’s Ladder, I originally had Jacob’s wife be Italian, but I changed her to Navajo for several reasons. First, they live between Santa Fe and Los Alamos, so it makes more sense for her to be a local. Accordingly, I made Darren (his first name) half-Navajo. I am not fully decided whether he’ll be half-Apache or half-Jewish or what. Second, although I halve been to Italy for a few days total, I have spent nearly six years in the Farmington area, therefore I am much more familiar on a personal level with the Navajo culture, third, I want to break the stereotype of native Americans as being impoverished, not highly educated, and limiting themselves to living on the reservation.
That’s all for tonight. Check out my earlier posts today at @philslattery201.
I have been in deep contemplation today about how a novice like me can best sell my works in this age of social media. I have come up with a rough idea for a complex strategy based upon the theory that you don’t sell the book. You sell the characters in the book. This is akin to the old salesman’s adage that you don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.
I have been sitting on my sofa the last few hours trying to develop a plan to market my books. I was contemplating that successful books are character-driven, when I glanced at my nearby DVD collection and realized that most are named for a main character, e.g. Hannibal, King Rat (an old movie), MacBeth, Blade Runner, etc. or they have such (a) powerful main character(s) that people remember the characters first and the movie title is almost an afterthought: V for Vendetta, Breaking Bad, Silence of the Lambs, Angel Heart, and so forth. Therefore, to sell my books I must sell the characters in them. This may seem patently obvious to the old, successful hands at writing, but to me this basic truth seemed to hit exceptionally hard today.
So, without going into the details and risking ridicule should my plan fail dismally, I will attempt to simply make my characters as real as possible to my readers in my new PR campaign and make them so vivid as to almost be alive.
Of course, suspense will hopefully keep bringing readers back, which is another reason for not divulging the plan.
By the way, I did spend some time reading up on hashtag strategies today, which explains the hashtag in the title. I’m testing out a hashtag tactic.
Just now, I created a facebook page for the Art of Horror at https://www.facebook.com/slatterysartofhorror. Drop by, check it out, and friend me. Posts from this blog should feed automatically to Facebook as well as from my Twitter account.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 