Stay at Home for Black Friday! (read a book instead)

Wish you could stay at home and read the Hunger Games instead of volunteering as tribute on Black Friday?

As much as I love seeing folks shopping at local retail, I know that most of those dollars don’t actually stick in our area economy and go to big box stores. (I imagine billionaires in a secret room watching live streams of holiday retail madness as they cackle like Mr Burns from the Simpsons.)  Rather than risk life and limb for a new flat screen which you’re going to feel compelled to repurchase again next season anyway, maybe #shoplocal and pick up some sale priced books from me to read in all that free time that you won’t need to be spending in the hospital. I’ve got four books on sale right now! (And feel free to read them right away and do your holiday shopping all from your living room. Stay safe my peeps!)

50 Shades of Worf
A back-alley brawl between the furries and the bronies.
Deadpool cosplayer keeps stealing all the erotic pegasus artwork.
Someone used a necronomicon to open a tentacle portal in the men’s room.
Two cops must go undercover at a comic-book convention to stop Wil Wheaton’s murder. You’ll love this buddy cop comic-comedy if you love Discworld, Hitchhikers Guide, or Bimbos From the Death Sun.
https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/8705a392-fcb9-11e9-b3dc-5fabe5bfea32

The Kakos Realm: Grinden Proselyte Book 1
They took everything from him.
They branded his hands and killed the girl he loves.
Revenge is all Rashnir has left—but when it is suddenly offered, the ranger wonders what comes after. When a mysterious outsider shows up, everything changes and Rashnir must choose sides in the brewing holy war.
https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/0dfb80ac-91f7-11e9-9ecf-3f6fd3dc1db8

Wolf of the Tesseract Book 1
Yesterday she was in Freshman seminar…
…now she’s running for her life.
What’s chasing Claire shouldn’t exist.
She’s convinced a homeless, ex-classmate of hers is stalking her. He says he can travel between alternate realities… but he also claims he can shape-shift and that she has magic in her veins. Only Claire’s blood has the power to unleash the great Devourer God and breach a gate that must never be opened… Blood that Claire wants to keep, but everyone else wants.
https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/f86a6d2a-4bdd-11e9-99cc-fbcab6a35865

Dekker’s Dozen: Weeds of Eden Book 1
Dekker Knight has a secret past.
Vivian “Vesuvius” Briggs has a sword and a chip on her shoulder.
Together they run a delinquent team of space mercenaries: the Dozen.
The Dozen fight to keep their debts settled, fuel in their ship, and some equilibrance to their moral ledger as they race from job to job… which always goes sideways. They are more than mercenaries: they’re practically family—and the theft of an interstellar seed threatens to tear it apart… this seed, which some claim comes from the very Garden of Eden, could wreak unspeakable evil across the galaxy.
https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/fe2a806e-555c-11e9-9eee-7f5124604f1f

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Monetize your Newsletter for Holiday Sales With Your Mailing List

If you’re like me, you try to plan in advance. That does NOT mean actually taking action (just because it’s snowing out here in Minnesota that doesn’t mean it’s time to play Christmas music yet!) I write this in my local coffee shop. Jingle Bell Rock is on their house sound system.

Anyway, mailing lists and promotions take a good deal of forethought to do well, so this is a timely blog post. Hopefully, young padawan writers, you have been systematically building your mailing list throughout the year(s). It’s time for it to pay off for you!

If you aren’t utilizing your newsletter or author’s mailing list, you are leaving cash on the table. I’ll show you just how much potential below!

State of Writing

I had a killer weekend and more than tripled my previous sales event record! I sold 173 books at #galaxycon minneapolis. It was a very good show–I did a little pre-release special and had paperbacks of 50 Shades of Worf available… a big box of them. Like the normal amount of books I sell total at a con. They sold out on day 1. I could have sold 100 copies or more and underestimated the response to my new humor book (now with more paperdoll action!)

I’m taking today off to focus on the writing that I didn’t do over the weekend and to relax a little. Now if I can just keep all the distractions away.

How one Indie Author sells 400-500 books at ComicCon

If you’ve read some of my back articles, you know I’m a big fan of tabling at events to meet new readers and sell books. I’m also a fan of math… but I also really hate math—at least I hate algebra. I like the kind of math that helps me decide where my boundaries and expectations can be set. For example, I know that I generally make about $9-11 per book sold at a convention so I need to move about 15 books to break even on a table or booth that costs me $150. For small/mid-sized cons I typically sell about one book per 2-0.5% (I usually sell about 25 books per every 2,000-3,000 people in attendance. I could get a tighter average, but I don’t generally trust the accuracy of attendance numbers for cons that size—they tend to rely on table sales to stay afloat and want their headcounts to look good and feel they are “technically truthful” by counting folks twice if they enter, leave, and re-enter. They might also count vendors and con staff, etc.)

Knowing what you normally do is obviously beneficial. But so is knowing what could be possible. While I tend to sell about 30 at these sized events, I’ve doubled that figure almost 50% of the time (1 part increasing product, 1 part being good/getting better at cold sales, 1 part good product, 1 part great marketing materials.) I had a chance to chat with Lydia Sherrer on a Facebook Group we are both a part of. We do much of the same things, but she scaled up her efforts and hit where I’d like to get to with her sales booth. I’ll be giving it a run soon, but she lays out exactly how she sells hundreds of books at the conventions she does.

Check out her methods …