Beyond The Law

At the end of March 2015, I used the Kindle Countdown Deal (KCD) to promote A Taste of Honey.

I’d never used the KCD promotional tool before, but I had to know if it was effective. The idea is that the title is set at the lowest possible price, and then the author sets increments to move the price up every day or every other day. By the end of the week the title is back to regular pricing.

Did the KCD promotion work for me?
Yes, I’d say it did. I gave average figures at the time, but I’ve since calculated the sales of the individual title. Over a six day period there were 50 downloads across the various price settings for the promotional book.

Did the KCD promotion work in any other way?
Yes, the promotion achieved a few things for me.

1. A Taste of Honey has been selling almost every day since the promotion.

2. For the first time since publishing A Taste of Honey in December last year, it has overtaken Beyond The Law in daily sales. To put that point in perspective, since a few days after publishing Beyond The Law in October 2013, there has hardly been a day when that title hasn’t sold at least one copy.

3. I’ve seen an increase in sales in the Amazon.com arena which was one of my aims.

4. I have also enjoyed an increase in sales of my other novels and my short story anthologies since the promotion. All of my titles are listed in the back of each of my books, so if a reader enjoys any one of my books, the other titles are there at the back with a blurb. I’ve found it’s better to capture the reader with the title they bought, and then that book must act as my publicity machine.

Will I use the KCD with any other titles in the future?
Yes.

Would I recommend the KCD to other indie authors?
Yes.

If you bought into my brand during the promotion or since, I’m grateful to you.

As always, thank you for coming by and reading my thoughts. Please leave a comment if you feel so inclined.

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In Part 1 on this topic, I wrote about using a basic three verse poem to expand on a story idea.

In Part 2, I took it to the next level with three more verses to beef up the information about the story.

In Part 3, I listed the ingredients I would consider when writing a short story.

I have now written a short story from scratch, based on that simple poem displayed in Part 1 and Part 2. Until I completed the story, I used the same working title as used with the poem. A working title allows the writer to get on with the writing. Too much time can be spent procrastinating about the right title.

Like everything else you’ll read in my blog, I have my own theory with regard to titles. I believe it’s much better to work on the title after the story is written. The story may change slightly from the original idea (which mine did), but the title must still do its job – and attract interest. As soon as the first draft of my story was done I found I’d gone over my self-imposed 1500 word limit by 150 words, so I trimmed it to 1500 words.

I saved the story and then spent about 15 minutes writing out every title idea that came to mind. The whole story was fresh in my mind so I ended up with about 20 titles. Titles are easy, but the appropriate title is the one that works. Here are my top three:

– Death and Glory

– Diary of a Warrior

– A Time for Courage

In my final post on this topic I’ll produce the short story, which by then will only have been edited in a couple of rapid sessions, so it may yet change. I do feel it will still round off the task I set myself with this mini-series of posts.

Remember, there’s no reason why you couldn’t use this system to write a novel. My novel ‘Beyond The Law’ started out as an experimental poem, which stretched into a series of 26 poems.

As always, thank you for your indulgence.