NEW DEADIES COVERS

NEW DEADIES COVERS

 

Guess who's back on the blog? My last blog was in January. I need to blog more often. I've been busy writing. I'm working on REBIRTH, the third book of the First Blood Novels. This was the first month that I checked my Amazon/Kindle eBook sales and I hadn't sold one book. The first five days and no sales. I was in a panic. Correction, I am in a panic. What to do? What to do? What to do? Although I'm a writer I am also an avid reader. After some internet research I found some common words of wisdom from the self published experts.The eBook gurus say if you have good reviews (that's me) but your books aren't selling you need to:

 

1. Lower you eBook or paperback book price.

2. Edit your book to remove errors and typos.

3. Redo your book cover image.

4. Change your tags. Some readers may not be able to find your books in searches.

 

First my eBook prices are already low. I learned a long time ago that cheaper is better. People like to get a deal. It may be taboo to some writers but I offer one book for free on Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple ibookstore Scribd and Diesel. It was a no brainer. Deadies: Run For Your Life had been bootlegged by so many different sites that offered it for free that I kind of had no choice. Why pay for it when you can find it free in a random internet search. At first I was pissed. How dare they hijack my book. But after awhile I was like if you can't beat them, join them. I am proud to say Deadies: Run For Your Life has been downloaded for free over 3,000 times. Huh, if only they were actual sales.

 

Point number two, editing. I am not an editor. I have tried to proofread my books. Believe me I have read my books over and over again. For some reason I can not find all the typos and grammatical mistakes. I even give highlighters to friends to help me out and as a group we still can't find all the mistakes. When I start raking in the big bucks I would definitely hire a real editor. But if you look back at the beginning of this blog you'll see I'm not in the big leagues just yet. (No sales in five days.)

 

I'm not an expert on tags so I have to look into that. So I'm left with one option, change the cover image on my some of my books.  All my original book covers were made with Paint. I just learned to maneuver around the Gimp software. Gimp is hard and difficult. Thank you for YouTube. I am no expert at cover design. Maybe one day I can pay someone to do it. I came up with the three eBook covers displayed above. When I asked my friends and family which were better the old or the new. Half said they liked the original covers and the other half liked the new covers. So that was no help at all. So I decided to give the new covers a thirty day trial period on Amazon.com and Kindle to see if they generate more sales. If not I will just revert back to the old book covers. I have my fingers crossed.

 

I did notice I have a new 5 star review on Amazon.com. That makes me feel better. Even if my book covers suck my writing doesn't. I'm a newbie so I guess I'm allowed a few mistakes.