Authors Electric

After two successful Bookbub promotions for The Survival of Thomas Ford earlier this year, which resulted in 70000 free downloads, and a combined profit of $2300 from 1300 Amazon sales/borrows when the book returned to its $2.99 price (followed up by 100 new Amazon reviews), I decided to reinvest a little of this profit in a third Bookbub promotion. The third promotion, which ran from October 26-30, was not for The Survival of Thomas Ford, though, but for its “little brother”, my story collection, Storm Damage. Storm Damage had won the award for Best Short Story Collection in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBooks Awards 2013, and, ever since, I had been looking for an opportunity to get the ebook out to more readers. Storm Damage was sent out to the Bookbub literary fiction subscription list on 26 October. There were only 6 or 7 books selected by Bookbub to be sent out to that subscription list that day, and Storm Damage was the only one of the bo...

Author, Linda Gillard, has written on occasion about the constraints of genre on fiction, or, more particularly, the problems “genre-busting” books can present to publishers, and their marketing departments. I’ve mentioned previously that my literary agent sent The Survival of Thomas Ford out to publishers, sometimes as literary fiction, and sometimes as a commercial thriller, and sometimes as a “literary thriller”.   In June, I wrote here about the Bookbub promotion I did in April, to Bookbub’s Mystery, Thriller, Suspense subscription list (which is now no longer available and has been split into two lists). This had a successful post-promo effect of about 50 new Amazon USA reviews, and 1000 sales at the $2.99 post-promo price. As a further experiment in “genre”, I submitted The Survival of Thomas Ford to Bookbub’s literary fiction list at the end of August. On this occasion, I also used EBOOKBOOSTER, which Mark Chisnell had mentioned using in an earlier...

I was offline throughout May, so I Googled my name in June to see if anything had happened out there on the internet ether while I wasn’t looking. The first discovery was this piece on the blog, NOVELIST ONLINE ONPAPER, by Kenneth C. Crowe: “SATURDAY, MAY 25, 2013 John A.A. Logan, a great writer It has been a while since I’ve found a great writer--and John A. A. Logan is certainly one. If there were a genre called “unsparing,” that is where I would list Logan’s novel, THE SURVIVAL OF THOMAS FORD. He grips the reader in the opening chapter by portraying a universal symbol of modern times, an aggressive driver whose irresponsibility wreaks havoc in other people’s lives. The protagonist in question appears different from you and I—and he is. The characters Logan creates in this story of a fatal traffic accident, spiced by cowardice, are universally selfish with some being essentially cruel. Unexpectedly, one character emerges who refuses to cross the line into evil. Logan...