book – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

Diabolical Giveaway

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that on every Friday in September (i.e. the 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th), I will be giving away the Kindle version of my very small short story collection Diabolical: Three Tales of Vengeance and the Sorcerer Jack Thurston…

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that on every Friday in September (i.e. the 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th), I will be giving away the Kindle version of my very small short story collection Diabolical: Three Tales of Vengeance and the Sorcerer Jack Thurston. Follow the link to get yours on any of those Fridays. Here is a quick synopsis from the book’s webpage:

“Jack Thurston is a retired professor of medieval literature and history. He is also a widower and father and a retired sorcerer who has returned to the black arts to exact horrifying revenge for the death of his wife, daughter, and brother. Jack has an intriguing position in the universe at a focal point of life, the afterlife, logic and reason, anger and hatred, the ancient and the modern worlds, grief and his attempts to escape grief through self-destruction. Though he wants to have the peace he once found with his wife, Agatha, he is pulled in many directions by circumstance and by his powerful negative emotions. These stories are included in the collection A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.”

While you’re there, check out the other books I have available or go to Slattery Publishing to see what blank notebooks are available.

Check back on both pages frequently. I occasionally give away Kindle versions of my works. Unfortunately, Amazon won’t allow me to give away hard copies of my books, but I try to keep the prices as low as I can.

Although I am experimenting with different sizes, most of the notebooks are 6″ x 9″ and contain 200 lined, paginated pages with colorful covers. If you purchase one, please leave a review of it on Amazon, so that I can learn how to improve.

Diabolical Giveaway

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that on every Friday in September (i.e. the 3rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th), I will be giving away the Kindle version of my very small short story collection Diabolical: Three Tales of Vengeance and the Sorcerer Jack Thurston. Follow the link to get yours on any of those Fridays. Here is a quick synopsis from the book’s webpage:

While you’re there, check out the other books I have available or go to Slattery Publishing to see what blank notebooks are available.

Ideas for Revamping the Website

I have been watching some YouTube videos today about how to sell books on Amazon. The speaker showed the Amazon pages of authors who sell lots of books. While he talked about keywords (which are important) I looked at the page layout, colors, and number of books listed, which were a lot for each other. Long story short, I started thinking about how I can change some things on the website to sell more books. Rethinking keywords is just a part of the overall plan.

The obvious thing hit me a few minutes ago. I should check out the websites of famous authors and learn from them instead of assorted unknown hacks on YouTube. Don’t get me wrong. I love YouTube and watch it way more than any other channel and there are a lot of pros and artists on there, but I have been paying more attention to the hacks lately.

I checked out stephenking.com, danbrown.com, jkrowling.com, and jgrisham.com. Again the obvious hit me. First, unlike my website, theirs are not weblogs. Theirs are primarily about their books. But their websites are more than simple bookstores.

Each author’s works fall into a genre, a theme, or a certain atmosphere. In effect, each author builds his/her own universe. The websites, intentionally or not, draw the reader into that universe. For example, Stephen King’s universe is one of horror while J.K. Rowling’s is one of magic and youth. Dan Brown’s universe is one of mysterious symbols. Authors exist in parallel universes.

Therefore I need to do some literary navel-gazing and decide what my universe is and draw the reader into that. Each of my works is a doorway into that universe.

Anyway, those are my revelations for the night. I must go to bed. I know this is all very obvious, but sometimes the answer is in front of you all along and you have to bang your head into it accidentally in order to realize it’s there.

More to come. I will be revamping the website soon.

New Edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror to be Out Soon

As I may have mentioned, sometime back I decided to publish a print edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror on Ingram Spark as well as with Amazon. I have been working diligently toward that goal over the last few weeks. As I get ready to go to publication, there are a few things I would like to point out:

As I may have mentioned, sometime back I decided to publish a print edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror on Ingram Spark as well as with Amazon. I have been working diligently toward that goal over the last few weeks. As I get ready to go to publication, there are a few things I would like to point out:

This new edition will be a glossy paperback 5″x8″ in size and 238 pages. The cover design is below. I am still working out the price (somewhere around $15-$20 maybe), but I am keeping it as low as I reasonably can and still make a reasonable amount off each book sold.

I am finding out that shipping costs make the biggest part of a book’s price.

I am enjoying working with Ingram Spark much more than I did with Amazon. Amazon’s process is faster, much simpler, and easier, but I don’t think the product is as good as Ingram Spark’s will be. Ingram Spark gives you much more control over the final product. They also give you much better advice on how to maximize sales.

Although Amazon supposedly uses the same distribution network as Ingram Spark, I suspect/hope that I will have much better print sales. Amazon requires an author to price his/her print book at least 20% more than the Kindle version. Apparently, they are pushing their ebooks over print because they are cheaper to produce and probably much easier to distribute. I suspect they may be doing the same in distribution.

After A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror comes out on Ingram Spark, I plan to publish Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover with them as well. That may be in about a month more or less.

I am going to experiment with advertising on Pinterest by promoting the cover design for A Tale of Hell… on there. I am also considering just developing a spectacular but subtle ad and seeing how that does.

Let me know what you think.

Hasta luego.

“How to Get Your Book Into Libraries: from Booklaunchers.com via YouTube

New Print Edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror is Coming Soon

The new cover for A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror as of November 15, 2019. — The cover for A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror as of November 15, 2019.

The current print edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror has been prohibitively expensive from the start. Amazon priced it at $53.99. I didn’t see my mistake until yesterday. When I published it, I chose the option for full color, which is always expensive. I am working on a second edition now to bring down the price and expand the distribution to mortar and brick stores. The cover will be similar to the Kindle edition (as I just love that painting by Adolphe Bougereau). Hopefully, I will have it out by the end of the week. I don’t have a price for it yet.

Photo of man wearing a coronavirus mask — Prevent the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19 for the sake of yourself, your friends, and your family.

New Print Edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror is Coming Soon

Update of August 13, 2020: Kindle Keywords

Phil Slattery portrait — Phil Slattery
March, 2015

Since Tuesday, I have spent some time trying to improve my book sales by using keywords better on my Amazon site.

When I set up the site, I saw that they had seven fields for seven words up to fifty characters long. Mistakenly, I thought you could have only seven keywords, I feel like such a dummy now.

I read two articles today: 7 KINDLE KEYWORDS: USE ALL 50 CHARACTERS OR NOT? and Make Your Book More Discoverable with Keywords. What I took away from these and what I decided to do are two different things.

Below are the things I decided to do. What I took away is not as important as I what I decided to do, so I won’t bother you with that.

First, for Kindlepreneurs, jam as many words into each of the seven boxes Amazon gives you. The maximum number of characters is fifty. I did not see anything that said the words have to be separated by commas.

For keywords, choose words that are not in your title or description. This makes sense because that would be redundant.

Google search engines put more emphasis on the titles and description than keywords. So, maybe it would be good to put any words you would use as keywords in the title and/or description.

Sometimes it might be useful to think of an exact phrase that someone would use in searching for your book and put that in as a keyword. Google search engines sometimes look for that.

I tried to think of as many keywords as I could for my books, but after a few, my imagination was crapping out on me. I came up with an idea to help with this though. This is something not taught in either of the two articles I mentioned. I would think of a word describing the essence of my book, something that people might search for, and looked up its synonyms on line. My reasoning is that words have nuances and the meaning and nuances may vary somewhat from speaker to speaker. For example, someone wanting to read my book Diabolical: Three Stories of Jack Thurston and Revenge (I may change this title to make it more marketable), the primary theme of this book is evil. Thesaurus.com gives 48 synonyms for evil. Therefore, I selected several keywords from this list trying to choose one used widely today such as: wicked, malevolent, depravity, misery, suffering, etc. Then I moved on to another descriptive word and its synonyms. I changed all my keywords on Tuesday and still haven’t seen any results, but it is only Thursday.

Try out some of the suggestions and let me know how they work out for you. Leave any recommendations of your own in the comment box below.

Hasta luego.

New Print Edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror is Coming Soon

Update: May 3, 2019 Bobby the Brown Pelican

Tonight, I submitted the manuscript for my children’s book, Bobby the Brown Pelican to Shadow Mountain Publishing. I should hear from them in about twelve weeks.

Bobby is a young brown pelican who is afraid to fly and to dive into the sea, which is the way brown pelicans hunt. His parents, particularly his dad, give him positive reinforcement and teach him to have confidence and to do what he needs to in spite of his fear. He follows his dad, who teaches him to fly, and then he teaches him to dive and catch fish. In critical points in the action, the narrator asks the reader what he is thinking and feeling in order to establish a connection between the reader and Bobby and to give any parent reading this to a child a chance to discuss how the child would feel and what he would do if he were in Bobby’s place. This book also helps parents talk with their children and help them overcome the fear children have of disappointing their parents. This books promotes interaction and discussion between children and parents on very basic fears common to children, such as of disappointing their parents, fear of being hurt, etc.