April News & Updates

Hard to believe it is April already. Time keeps grinding inexorably forward, and it's not willing to wait for anyone. I'm working on a bunch of different projects this month, and it'll be hard to tell exactly which projects will get released or updated anytime soon.

The first major news, in case anyone hasn't heard, is that Kindle Scout is shutting down.

Losing Kindle Scout means one of my avenues of publication has disappeared, but in general I've been having better luck with other avenues anyway.

We got the email early in April, and it was an immediate shutdown without a lot of knowledge or consideration. There are a ton of campaigns still running and there was no warning that it was coming. Sure, the program has been faltering a little bit, but it's been a great way for indie authors to get exposure in the Amazon ecosystem.

I am going to miss having it as a tool for authors, and I spent a lot of time and energy working on my kindle scout guide and blog posts. I've already been working to remove those posts and redirect my energies, but it still sucks that the program had to end so abruptly.

In other news, I'm working on my newest Alexa skill: Word Hacks. It's massive, and ties into a lot of different APIs to find and deliver information. I tried to imagine it as an assistant that could do anything from translate to track progress on writing to get definitions. It's a huge and overwhelming task, and I'm pleased to say that I'm basically done with it. I have a few last pieces to wire up and test out, but then I'm going to unleash it into the world in the next couple of weeks.

Keep your eyes peeled for that, because I would love for anyone who has an Alexa enabled device to help me find bugs and problems that I can fix before May. That will be the big month for the application in getting it into the big life hacks competition that is coming up.

Apart from that, I'm planning on running some more free promotions during this month and May and getting ready for the launch of Crispr.

November 2017: Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday Sales!

November is coming to a close and it is hard to believe that it is already Thanksgiving. This year really flew by and it feels like everything happened so fast. It's been a wild year, and I've released several new books, including a new series that just came out.

The biggest problem I ran into this year was Pronoun shutting down, something which put a huge damper on all of my plans. I was building up my career to have my books released wide and free myself from Amazon, but this seriously messed all of that up.

The biggest reason was because it meant all of those listings I used to launch my book were useless. Apple Books, Google, and Barnes & Noble don't merge books together, which means that once I lost all of my reviews and traction on those websites it would have been difficult to try and regain it. I could have put the books back out through the platforms or on Draft2Digital, but it simply wasn't worth trying to salvage all of it right now. 

Eventually, I would like to offer the books are more locations, but Amazon Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity, and the the only alternative would be to release on all networks simultaneously. Passing up on Amazon's network to go wide was a huge gamble I took when releasing The Everett Exorcism, and it ended up backfiring to such a huge extreme that I don't think I'm going to be willing to risk going wide again for a while.

I'm sorry for everyone who loves reading on other platforms than Amazon, but considering Barnes & Noble is selling Nook and combined all other networks only make up about 25-30% of the entire market, being in Kindle Unlimited is just a much better way to gain some visibility. If only the other networks would actually offer something to make their services worthwhile, but considering how badly MacMillan just damaged indie authors I only see Amazon's strength growing.

Anyway, right now it's time to just relax, spend some time with family, and enjoy the end of the year.

I'm working on three more books right now with three different strategies: first, I have to finish The Bishop's Legacy and end out the World of Shadows series. It's been fun writing and launching these books, but I'll be glad to be able to turn away from paranormal horror and get a break from it for a while (especially with the Pronoun fiasco and how much that screwed up my launch).

Second, I'll be working on the space opera horror book I've been planning for a long time. This book is going to be run differently through a new Instafreebie beta program, so publishing it is going to be something completely new and different for me. I'm excited to try out something new and it could lead to a new publishing model for me.

Third, I'm planning to write another book to submit to Kindle Scout about modern genetic engineering. I've got some ideas for it, and it would serve as a follow-up to UAV with maybe some of those characters crossing over into it. It's meant to be a fast-paced and fun mystery/thriller, but I'm not completely sure when I'll be able to work on it.

Along with that, I want to finish another Graveyard of Empires novel plus write some more short stories to submit to magazines. So, big plans for 2018 with launching new books and trying new things.

Anyway, on to the sales:

Pretty much everything is going to be free on Cyber Monday. Some books are going to be on sale the entire weekend, and others (like Everett and Vatican Children) are only going to be on sale for that one day.

Check them out while they are discounted and before they go back up to full price! The free period is meant to sort of play catchup for everything I lost from Pronoun!

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Tweet it: The Everett Exorcism is on sale now! Get your copy today of this #horror novel!