Musings About Writing Another Novel

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Walker Chronicles IV Almost Ready to Release


It’s taken me a while to write this novel.  That’s not because I’m slow or didn’t work at it, either.  Nope, part of it is because I ran way over the Amazon suggested word count for a Kindle novel.  Also, because I’m becoming more fussy, I guess. 

The Prologue isn’t written yet.  But the text is probably done and mostly edited.  I’ll give it another read during the week and see what kind of errors I can find.  The problem with that is that I usually add more to the story line and then have to edit again.  

Okay, so now we come to the part about making a book cover again – which is never one of my happier moments for the project.  I was playing around with this for a while.  It sort of works with the storyline:

IMAG0256

I’m not sure that will be the one to get published, but it might. 

So then I’ll have four novels at Kindle.  They’ve been selling a little, but not all that much.  Of course, I haven’t done any advertising yet.  And by any, I mean nothing whatsoever.
Three guys have been helping me in the background just a little, though.  As I mentioned before, two big city politicians took an interest in my books.  It wasn’t exactly a favorable interest, either.  Now a third from another city joined in. 
I have no idea if these three guys know each other, but their questions and comments seem to be similar.  

Anyway, I’m not writing about their city.  As readers may realize, no city is mentioned in the novels.  The setting could be any large city.  That most large cities have the same types of crime by politicians is understandable – there are only so many types of illegal things they can get into and keep their office.  

The ideas for the novels come from reading the newspapers from major cities over the past fifty years.  So, yeah, most of these things happened in one form of another somewhere.  And, unfortunately, most of them are still happening in big cities somewhere.  Such is the nature of life. 

Therefore, when a politician writes to question me, I just kind of chuckle a bit and wonder if maybe they are not seeing some of that at their city hall.  Who knows, they could even be part of it.  

More importantly to me personally, now that I will have four novels published on Kindle, it becomes time to try to market them. 

And, sure, I’ll admit to being a newbie at that.  Fact is, I know absolutely nothing about promoting and marketing books.  So, I just started learning. 

All of the “best sellers” on Amazon have blogs and a few have written “how to do it” books.  Nowadays, sometimes when I should be writing, I’m reading about marketing tips instead.  

Along the way I’ve noticed that there are many people marketing their services and “expertise” on various aspects of editing, formatting and marketing novels.  But, when I search for the novels they sold, I find zero.  They push themselves as experts, but never did it themselves.  I’m staying away from those. 

On the other hand, there are quite a few authors who make a very good living selling novels on Amazon.  Some of those are nice enough to give out some rather useful tips.  So, I have a lot of reading to do in the next few weeks.  Studying, actually. 

When I’m not around, it’s not that I wouldn’t rather be blogging, writing zappy one-liners on Twitter, of browsing Facebook.  But for me this is like going to school again and carrying twelve credit hours.  Yeah, when it comes to the marketing aspects, I often feel like I’m pulling a few all-nighters studying for the finals again.  

But, in this case, a better score on the tests will mean more money in my retirement account. 

So, after a couple weeks of fooling around with marketing ploys, I’ll start on novel number five.  Actually, I already have a good start on it because it has been well foreshadowed in books three and four.

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2 comments:

  1. Nice post and good luck with the book....The cover looks interesting.

    I have just had my cover completed, thankfully I have a brother for is a designer and he has done a great job.

    I am a first time writer and my story is based on true events.

    Follow me if you wish at
    http://thewrongplaceatthewrongtime.blogspot.pt

    Good luck with the fifth book...

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  2. Thanks. I followed you.

    Covers have been my stopping point all along. The one above may or may not be used. I was playing around and designed another one that should be posted here soon. I may go with that one.

    Good luck to you. My fourth novel is now ready to publish. I'm just going to read it over one more time first.

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