Tag Archives: Depraved Difference

June 1, 2011

May 2011 Summary

By J Robert Kennedy

Lots happened in May.  I’ve been extremely busy with non-writing things like life and the day job, so not as much on the writing front happened as I had hoped.  Here’s a run down:

  • I did manage to edit and release a new short story, To Be With You in Heaven.
  • Smashwords is still not live. It’s back with them for I believe a fifth attempt.  The last rejection was due to two hard carriage returns in the licensing message that was copied from their own website.  They should rename themselves to Analwords, or better yet, AssWords.  Here’s a suggestion from someone who has been in business for twenty years: do one review, identify all the reasons for rejections, then reject.  That way, the author fixes everything, and your employee wastes his time only once.  This would bring the process down to tops two weeks, rather than two weeks each round.  We are now in month three of trying to go live on Smashwords.  Amazon Kindle method: 1 day.  Result: hundreds of sales and revenue for both parties.
  • The print edition is live and selling slowly as I expected.  Print books from unknowns don’t sell–this is more a vanity thing for friends and family (have you bought yours yet?!?!?)
  • Sales are doing great in my opinion.  Specifics below.
  • I set up a Twitter account.  Please follow me: @jrobertkennedy
  • Amazon.com killed book tags (more in a separate post).
  • Amazon.com moved all promotional discussions to a separate board which at first concerned me.  My sales however have increased dramatically.  Not sure if there is a correlation.

Sales Summary

Sales were great.  In May I sold 161 digital copies of Depraved Difference, plus 5 copies of my short story, Loving the Ingredients.  Considering LTI is a short story and the same price as a full-length novel, I think that’s a good indicator that if I were to have more books available, there would be significant spin-off sales.

Memorial Day long weekend saw huge sales, with several days in a row selling 15+ copies a day, which would be a 500 a month pace.  I’m curious to see what happens in June since it is my assumption that it was holiday related. That being said, yesterday was a great day as well, with 16 sales and it wasn’t a holiday.

I peaked momentarilly it seems at #94 (I have the printouts to prove it!) on the best sellers list for Police Procedurals in the US.  And I do mean brief.  So brief it only showed on the book page, but none of the actual bestseller lists which I guess are updated on a different schedule.  Since this was so brief, I wasn’t able to test out my theory of “top 100 generates its own sales to keep you in the top 100″.  I am now at 206th which I still t hink is phenomenal.  In the UK I keep floating between 28th and just out of the top 100. 

So overall sales to date:

241 Depraved Differences

8 Loving the Ingredients

Am I still happy with these numbers?  Very!  My sales for May were almost double April’s with the only promotion being once-a-week postings on the Amazon discussion boards, and the occassional tweet or blog post.

Looking forward to seeing what June brings!

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May 18, 2011

Order Signed Copies of Depraved Difference

By J Robert Kennedy
Depraved Difference

Depraved Difference

Since I have so many friends around the city, country and world, I keep getting asked, “How can I get a signed copy?”  In response, I have set up a page on my website for your to order.

Here you can order a signed copy using PayPal.  I set the shipping for the US at $10 because I don’t know what it will be. Once somebody orders, I’ll adjust it, most likely down, and refund the excess if it is ridiculously over.

So, all you friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, fan-boys, etc., here’s your chance to show your support and order a signed copy of Depraved Difference.

Here’s the full link:

http://www.jrobertkennedy.com/order_autographed_copies.htm

Thanks for your support!

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Depraved Difference, Indie Publishing, Print Edition, Self Publishing, Uncategorized

May 8, 2011

Indie Publishing Tip: Removing Tags Made by A**holes

By J Robert Kennedy

One feature of Amazon is they allow products to be tagged by their customers.  This allows other customers to search by keywords such as “mystery” and find products that other customers have tagged with this word. It’s a great feature if products are tagged properly. Customers can agree and disagree with tags by clicking on checkmarks beside each word. The more customers that agree the higher in the list your product appears.

But here’s the bad part.  Anybody can add anything to your product and the conventional wisdom on this is that there is nothing that can be done. Take Depraved Difference for example. The other day I checked the book and noticed the following tags had been added overnight:

  • dharma
  • god
  • hinduism
  • karma
  • love
  • marriage
  • ram
  • romance
  • short stories
  • short story
  • sita
  • tulsidas
  • v?lm?ki

Clearly these have nothing to do with  my book. Once I saw these I remembered the horror stories from other authors when this happened to them, sometimes with far worse words than those above.

But, rather than panic, I contacted Amazon with the following message:

Last night somebody improperly tagged my book Depraved Difference (ASIN: B004UB8OJE). These tags have nothing to do with my book and are not “opinion” tags. The tags are:

dharma, god, hinduism, karma, love, marriage, ram, romance, short stories, short story, sita, tulsidas, v?lm?ki

Can you please remove these tags, as they are inappropriate, and are clearly either an error, or a spamming attempt.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

Within less than a day I had a response, and all of the tags disappeared over the next 48 hours.  except for “romance” and “love” because another customer had gone and agreed with those tags.  Oh well, there is a little bit of that in the book, so I guess I can live with those.

Bottom line: don’t panic when something like this happens.  Do a professional, polite email to Amazon with a cogent argument, and they just might agree and help you out.  Afterall, they are there to sell books, not be Facebook.

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May 7, 2011

Bonjour! Depraved Difference now Available in France

By J Robert Kennedy

Oui! C’est vrai! Ok, not sure if that is right, but I think I just dispelled one myth that all Canadians speak French.  Non, ce n’est pas vrai.  Most of us don’t.

The Depraved Difference paperback is now for sale in France for all mes French amis:

http://www.amazon.fr/dp/1461075858/

And wow! They even have free shipping on just one book.  I guess when your entire country fits inside one of our provinces, you can do that.

Rolling Rrrrr… Robert

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May 6, 2011

Depraved Difference now Available on Amazon.ca

By J Robert Kennedy

For all of my Canuck friends, family, co-workers and dare-I-say fans, the paperback edition of Depraved Difference is now available to order on Amazon.ca.  Here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/1461075858/

Again, this make a great gift, coaster, bullet resistant vest, and, since it’s for sale in Canada, it is of course maple flavoured (<– Canadian spelling)!

Rob

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May 5, 2011

100th Copy of Depraved Difference Sold

By J Robert Kennedy

It’s not much, but it is a milestone, and doesn’t include the paperbacks which have been flying off the proverbial shelf here at my office. I only have one left so I’ll have to bring in a bunch more tomorrow. A later post will share how you too can order an autographed copy.

What’s the next goal?

I guess 200.

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May 2, 2011

Week #4 Post-Mortem

By J Robert Kennedy

Another busy week. Here’s what happened:

  • Depraved Difference managed to stay in the top 100 in the UK Police Procedurals for most of the week.  It keeps dropping in and out each day. I  had hoped to get it into the top 25, but never had time to do the promotion necessary.
  • Sales were about the same as the previous week, but I decided to only promote on the Amazon discussion boards once a week, rather than almost every day, which saved me a lot of time, and seemed to have the same results as promoting every day.
  • The print edition has been approved and the first batch has been shipped.
  • The print edition is now live on Amazon.com.
  • I think I might have finally got the SmashWords to work.  I won’t really know for at least a week.

Here’s the sales figures:

Week 4: 29 new, total 91
Week 3: 27 new, total 62
Week 2: 16 new, total 35
Week 1: 12 new, total 19
Week 0 (partial): 7 (5 of which were friends/family/review copies)

This week will be another crazy week at my day job, so I don’t expect to get much done. This week I just want to try to get some things cleaned up on the Amazon site, so I can finally put that behind me and move forward.

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April 29, 2011

Depraved Difference (and me!) Featured on Indie Author Showcase Today

By J Robert Kennedy

Fellow author L. David Hesler features Depraved Difference and me on his blog today.  Check it out, follow him, tweet him, friend him, comment on the posting, and most importantly, buy both our books! I think he’s even donating his profits on April 30th to charity, making him a far better man than I.

Enjoy!

http://ldavidhesler.blogspot.com/2011/04/indie-author-showcase-10-j-robert.html

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April 28, 2011

Depraved Difference Going to Print!

By J Robert Kennedy

I just received and approved the second proof. I’m informed it will be live on Amazon for purchase within 3-5 days, so hopefully some time next week! 

This is a trade paperback (6×9 inches), 273 page, full length, 103,000 word novel. Despite it being Indie published, the Print on Demand (POD) service provided by Amazon through their CreateSpace subsidiary is phenomenal.  I compared it to a dozen others on my bookshelf and couldn’t tell the difference (except mine was much more riveting to read!).

So, next week, remember to buy as many copies as you can.  They make great birthday, Christmas, Independence Day, Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, Arbor Day and the all important Groundhog day, gifts.  They double as handy coasters, and can balance tables that are really out of whack.

Remember as well, that more is always better, so never buy just one.  You need one on your night stand, one in the bathroom, and one in the car.  At a minimum. 

These are also hot first editions, so twenty or thirty years from now, these will be collector’s items, available on eBay for dozens of inflated dollars.

For those who are within stalking distance of me, if you want a signed copy, let me know and we’ll arrange a meeting.  Five book minimum.  Kidding.  Mostly.  I can also be bribed with a steak dinner at Hy’s.

As soon as the book is live, I’ll let everyone know.  And I do mean everyone!

Rob

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April 27, 2011

Indie Publishing Tip: Novelrank.com

By J Robert Kennedy

This was a very cool find.  All you need to do is visit Novelrank.com, enter the URL for your book on Amazon, then it will start polling Amazon every hour, on the hour, and show you charts of your ranking and sales.  No historical data, so make sure you do this as early on in the process as you can.  I for one will be trying to remember to do this with every book as soon as the link goes live on Amazon.

Another cool thing? You can track other books as well, so you can compare yourself to your fellow writers to see how you’re doing.  Currently JA Konrath is whipping my ass in the US, and just spanking it in the UK.

Here’s the link to Depraved Difference:

http://www.novelrank.com/asin/B004UB8OJE

Enjoy!

Rob

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