Finally, A Hit?

Recently, I decided to experiment a bit with writing and publishing. I decided to try to broaden my audience a bit and see what worked in terms of covers and content and so on. In writing this blog, I actually generate a lot of material that eventually gets buried and lost in time but is eminently re-usable. I also had the weirdest experiences growing up with ghosts, poltergeist and all sorts of strange paranormal phenomena. I hit upon an idea and wrote My Haunted Life as a small book, primarily designed for the Kindle paranormal and supernatural market. I took some blog articles and turned them into short stories and added several new short stories – all true. I topped and tailed it with some thoughts about reality as it relates to the supernatural and then put it out. It was also meant to double as a bit of a commercial for my earlier books.

At first, it didn’t get much attention. We changed the cover. That helped. We did a one-day free giveaway. That helped a lot. I send it to a review site on Facebook and got 5 reviews – that also helped. Finally, I understood that people looking at the free preview were only seeing an advertisement for The Last Observer and the Introduction which isn’t about ghosts initially anyway. So I edited the content and added a new pre-intro page with bullet points of what was in the book along with a few endorsements. We also did a banner across the cover for today – Black Friday and set it at 99 cents. It will go up in price in a week or so.

Interestingly, it seems to have started to sell. It is also being lent. OK, so its only a minor hit at the moment but it seems to have momentum. Amazon seems to have found it too and is actively merchandising it. Additionally, my other books seem to have started to move too. I think I have learned a lot in this exercise about publishing perhaps as opposed to writing. Thanks in large part to book publicist and fast becoming a friend – Nick Wale. I won’t say exactly what the secret sauces are but I am excited that finally something is happening with my books and My Haunted Life is on the best seller lists (not in the top 10 but still).

The next step in all of this is that in early December, My Haunted Life Too will appear. Probably on Kindle only at first. Let’s see if the momentum can be maintained and even made greater by the new book. The new book has a rather eye catching cover too. Just wait until we reveal it. It will scare the pants off you all! Meanwhile, I have discovered a new interest in the supernatural so expect more in the vein.

Meanwhile, The Lord of the Elements is still being worked on. Hopefully, by the time it comes out, it will have an audience.