I am Spartacus.....man I wish

A few things before we get started:

1) I am trying to branch this blog out into areas other than writing and self publishing so this will be my first TV show review. Hopefully, I can do a few more of these as time goes on.

2) I had this blog ready to go at the beginning of last week but decided to hold off because of all the craziness going on in Boston. My thoughts are with all the victims and, hopefully, some day those people and the city as a whole will be back to some semblance of normal.

3) Go check out my editors new look blog and editing website. Pretty snazzy if you ask me. She is pretty amazing at everything she does with writers. Cannot recommend her enough. Even if you aren't working on a novel, she might be able to help with you essay, article or blog post. http://www.eclecticeditor.com/

If you are a fan of the show Spartacus: War of the Damned and have not seen the series finale "Victory" stop reading this and go watch it already.

I have watched a lot of TV in my life. Some of it really good like The Walking Dead (which may be my biggest obsession) and some of it pretty terrible (my wife "makes" me watch Teen Mom 2 and it doesn't get much worse than that).  Very few shows really got to me the way that Spartacus did throughout the course of its run.

Back in 2010, I stumbled upon the first episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand in a fit of insomnia one night. I figured the show couldn't be too bad so I gave it a shot. Boy was I wrong. The first episode of the series was not very good. I almost gave up halfway through, but there was something about Andy Whitfield's portrayal of Spartacus that made me want to actually watch the second episode. I DVR'd the next few episodes and decided to watch them on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Halfway through episode two, my wife walked in and thought I was watching a cheap porn. If memory serves, she walked in the room and yelled at me because she was so appalled. I explained to her that it was just Spartacus, not porn and she was surprisingly okay with it despite the fact that she told everyone this story for the next few weeks. This was the one aspect of the show that I felt was overdone in the first season and, as the show grew more confident, was needed less and less.  

Near the end of the first season, the show really hit its stride and Andy Whitfield became Spartacus in my eyes. The show looked like one that would last for years and years. I couldn't wait the year it was going to take for the next season to start. Not too long after I finished the first season, Andy Whitfield was diagnosed with and, tragically, passed away after a fight with cancer. I believe this was the point the show itself began to mirror the story it was telling. The show became tragic and hopeful at the same time with the casting of Liam McIntyre (glad to see the news that he was just cast to play a major role in the new Hercules movie) and the decision to not cancel the show.

This brings me to the last season of Spartacus. I was quite upset when they announced that there would only be one more ten episode season. The show finally hit its stride at the end of Vengeance and then they decided to end the show, I felt, one year too early. I believed there was no way they could give the show a proper send off in just ten episodes. I nearly decided not to watch so Starz wouldn't get the satisfaction of taking the show away from me (the hubris we have about things personal to us never ceases to amaze me). I still believe four or five more episodes exploring the stories of some of the new characters would have been nice.

There can only be one series finale, and if it is screwed up, it can ruin everything the series ever stood for. This was not the case with "Victory". Nothing extremely surprising happened (although my jaw did drop when I saw Kore up on the crucifix) and history was served fairly well by this retelling. That being said, a part of me still rooted for Spartacus to make it over the mountains even though, deep down, I knew he could never make it out. I still groaned a bit when the first spear went through him even when I knew it would happen (thanks Twitter for spoiling it for me).

The good (the impressive overhead view of the battle scene, Crassus finding out about his son's death and previous indiscretions with Kore, the meeting between Spartacus and Crassus on the hilltop, Gannicus' death scene in the arena) certainly outweighed the bad (Spartacus dying by being stabbed in the back despite the Caesar reference, Naevia's unceremonious death). All in all, I think the writers, actors and directors did every possible thing they could to give the audience closure. That is what I felt in the end, closer. I even teared up a bit when they showed Andy Whitfield from season one yelling "I am Spartacus" in the arena. The entire series came full circle.

Despite the sex, nudity and gratuitous violence, Spartacus was a show about hope, fighting for what is right, not giving up on your family, and brotherhood. Not too shabby for a show my wife thought was a cheap porn.

Burnout is not just a Playstation game

 My life has been crazy lately. Work, coupled with family and trying to write got me to a point where I despised even looking at someone else’s book. I have been working on a few short stories for a collection and, even when I got positive feedback, I would tell the person that they were crazy because the writing was terrible. Nothing I was producing made me happy. Everything seemed like it was being written by a six year old. All the plot twists seemed obvious, even when I was told that readers did not see it coming.

Then it happened. I had a complete meltdown about writing. I decided that my blog tour was the dumbest thing I had ever done (mostly because I didn't sell five-hundred books the first day) and that my book must be a pile of crap because no one bothered to review it on Amazon. “That’s it. I’m done.” kept racing through my mind until I couldn't take it anymore (my close friends will recognize this as my response to getting destroyed by my wife and her team at a board game at one in the morning).

I stopped writing almost immediately. I posted one last time on my blog (the post that is going around on my blog tour, not even new content) and decided that was it. I wasn't going to do it anymore. I quit writing the short stories right in the middle of one of the stories, which incidentally might be the best of the lot, and decided writing wasn't for me. This is very out of character for me. I usually don’t quit things no matter how hard they get. Now my parents might tell you stories about me quitting guitar lessons when I was seven or how they put me in numerous activities until they forced me to continue bowling every Saturday morning until I was 10. Needless to say, I still hate bowling with a passion, but I digress.

I had a discussion with my wife and an email with my editor (another shameless plug for http://bee-editing.com/). It was then that I realized how burned out I truly was. I wrote the first draft of The Hunter’s Son in around 65 days. It was 84,000 words in it’s original draft. 1200 works a day does not seem like a lot, but I work full-time, volunteer with different organizations and help my wife out with extra stuff for her band program. I then launched into a full edit of the material. Three or four rewrites and numerous proof reads happened over the next few months. The only break I took was from May 2012 through August when I ran for a local political office which took up any remaining time I had.

My additional free time was spent researching publishing options, cover artists, formatters and the like. These things, initially, I decided to do all by myself. I got to the end of the process, launched The Hunter’s Son and began writing the sequel the next day. I pushed through 17,000 words before I got so sick of the whole universe that I quit writing it and decided I would tell my wife how the series ends and be done. She, needless to say, refused to listen. Instead of taking a break from writing, I decided to pump out a short story collection. I figured I could do five or six small stories around 2,000-3,000 words each and have the whole collection out in a month. Never once did I stop to think if I was putting too much pressure on myself. Working ten hour days, coming home and writing for two or three hours before bed, while fitting in dinner, time with my wife and friends, blogging and promotion was just the routine. A routine that was simply not working for my life style.

This has led me to a more normal pace. I am still shooting for 7,000 words a week but am okay if I do not meet that goal. I am still hoping to have The Hunter's Vengeance out by early next year and a short story collection out by mid-summer. If those things do not happen, it won't be the end of the world, but I am going to try. I hope it happens and I am going to work hard to make sure it does.

I guess, after all this I want to say a few things to those of you reading. If you were enjoying the blog posts and updates, sorry. Sorry to my wife and friends for having to put up with crabby Ben for a few weeks. Sorry I did not pace myself. Sorry I did not realize what I was doing to myself. Sorry if anyone was let down by the lack of content. I may have hurt my “brand” by disappearing for a few weeks, but I needed it. Everything was starting to suffer, not just my work, but my attitude in general.

Moral of the story: Take your time. Pace yourself. Your true fans will stick around. It is okay if you don’t sell 500 books right away. If you want writing to become your job, don’t make it too much work, just work hard.

Common sense, right? Well, tell that to the version of me three weeks ago.

8 Things I wish I knew before publishing on Amazon

This is the guest post that appeared on a few blogs during my recent blog tour:

When I took the plunge and became a self-published author, I thought to myself “How hard can this be?” I quickly found out being a self-published author can quickly become a full-time job, even if the pay isn’t quite there yet. The Hunter’s Son is live on Amazon (http://amzn.to/YawdEr) and I’m pretty happy with the finished product. These are eight things I learned right away that I wish I knew before I started:
1. Writing is Lots and Lots of Work- Being an author, whether self or traditionally published is a ton of work. Writing can become an afterthought if you are not careful. Blogging, tweeting, website maintenance, and general promotion can take up all your time. Be prepared to work hard, but in the end, it will pay off.
2. Please don’t make me read it again- I believe I have written a really fine novel and some solid short stories. However, there is a certain point where I simply cannot read them another time. During the novel writing process I think I read my entire manuscript at least fifteen times. I could quote passages word for word and began to get glassy eyed when I saw it on my screen. The thing that helped the most was taking long breaks from working on my novel during the revision process. This might mean a few days or a few weeks. Each time I came back I felt refreshed and found new things to enjoy about my writing.
3. Sometimes I have no clue how to use commas- Revisions are one of the most critical part of writing and probably the most boring part, particularly the edits after the final proof read. Professional editing services are a must and I have a great editor (shameless plug for http://bee-editing.com/) but spending hours on end placing punctuation can get old. My advice would be to pay close attention during your second draft process and don’t be afraid to read some things to brush up on grammar. There are plenty of great resources online you can look at (you can even use my errors from the post to help you out!).
4. People aren’t just going to buy my book because I think it is great- I never knew how much work promotion would be for my book. It is easy to think that you can put a book on Amazon or Smashwords and people will just buy it. At first this may happen when your friends and family snatch up the book right away, but those sales will dry up quickly. My biggest regret is not starting promotion before my book was finished. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
5. Everyone has a question for me- I never thought I would have to talk about my book so much. At first, I thought I was bugging people by talking about it so much, then I realized I was talking about it because everyone I ran into wanted to ask a question about it. Be prepared to answer “When did you write a book?” more than fifty times in the first month. At some point, this questions is going to be really cool and at some point this questions will get annoying. Just remember that most people are really proud to know an author because so many of them can’t imagine writing a whole book.
6. Everyone judges a book by its cover- Go to any online bookstore and imagine seeing a book with a terrible cover. Do you think the book contained within that cover is good? Do you think the person put a lot of time and effort into their writing? I was guilty of cheaping out on my cover when I first launched. I took my rudimentary skills in Adobe InDesign and thought my cover looked pretty sweet, until a few days passed and I started to hate what I had done to my good friend’s picture. Needless to say, a few dollars and a nice lady named Cheryl at http://www.ccrbookcoverdesign.com/ made me feel much better about my book. Unless you are a graphic designer, pay for a book cover. You will make your money back for the cover at some point, and, if you don’t, at least you don’t have to be embarrassed when you show your book to friends.
7. Self-published authors are the nicest people- Think the self-publishing word is scary? I used to until I met some pretty cool people who are doing alright for themselves in the self-publishing world. Everyone is more than willing to share their experiences and tips on how to sell books. The best part is, most of them don’t even charge for it. Since I published my book, I have been in touch with people from all over the world. Each and every one of them is more than happy to help. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or to contact someone who has a good book. Twitter is a great place to do this. In fact, you can follow me @jewellbe. I would love to talk books, sports or anything you want.
8. I never knew I would smile so much over something I created- I felt proud when I finished my first novel. I know how proud my wife and parents were of me when I told them it was done, but what really stuck a smile on my face was seeing the finished product online. I have a book and it is for sale. I have sold books in the US, Japan, Germany, England and France. People in other countries thought my idea was good enough that they would spend money on it. That is a pretty great feeling. One I plan to have more and more in the future.
There are plenty of other things I have learned since I published my novel, The Hunter’s Son (which incidentally is available on Amazon http://amzn.to/YawdEr). Check it out if you are interested and let me know what you think. If you want to chat some more, reach me @jewellbe on Twitter or check out my blog (jewellbe.blogspot.com). Thanks for reading and best of luck in your pursuit of self-publishing glory.

Blog tour update or what the heck is tweeting or twating or whatever you call it

Just a quick mid-week update. The blog tour is in full swing. The Hunter's Son was featured on  peacefrompieces.blogspot.com yesterday and there are a number of book reviews, guest posts, and author interviews coming up. I will periodically post the links the day of each particular blog feature, but if you want to see the full schedule, go to my author page at Orangeberry Book Tours here. Unless the reviews are bad, in which case do not go to the blog pages that day (this is my worst nightmare by the way).

Today, as part of the tour, I did something called a twitter view. It was like an author interview through Twitter. It went alright I think. I'm not certain I really knew what the heck was going on. Which brings me to my next topic.

I'm pretty sure I use Twitter completely wrong.

In the past, before my days as an author, I used Twitter for one purpose and one purpose only: Sports. I found it was, and still is, a great way to connect with local sports reporters. Most of the guys and gals are very accessible through Twitter and will give great in game updates and respond directly to fans. Being a sports nut (mostly Chicago teams) this is have become a fun and eventful way to get information about my favorite teams and players.

That is where my experience with Twitter ended. Since learning more about marketing my book, I have been told numerous times "Man, you have to get on Twitter to sell some serious books". I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I feel like I am completely lost. I think this is how my parents felt, or maybe still feel, when trying to use their computer (sorry Mom and Dad).

I always forget to use hashtags, and when I do, I get the feeling I am using them wrong. I'm not really sure, when I reply, who gets to see my reply verses who gets to see my direct tweets. This is definitely something I need brush up on because I believe Twitter can be a great marketing tool. Some people apparently swear by it.

So I pose this question to any of you who stumble across this blog: How have you used Twitter to market your product, website, book or any other thing you have sold on the internet? Also, can you point myself or any other self-promoter in the direction of some good resources about Twitter?

Hopefully I get the hang of this thing quick because I feel like I'm losing out. I don't plan on tweeting my every movement but I also do not want my followers to feel like they are getting nothing but spam about my book. Maybe some day I'll be able to tweet or chirp or whatever with the best of them.

Thanks for reading.

These Books Are Not Going to Write Themselves

I have been working so hard on promoting The Hunter’s Son that I forgot the most important part of being an author: Writing. Writing has become a bit of an afterthought in my life and it is starting to stress me out. I’m not sure I will ever be at the Stephen King level of production (read “On Writing”, it will make you want to be an author even if you don’t right now) , but I try to put down at least 5000 words a week plus blogging, Facebook and Twitter. All this plus my full-time job is starting to wear me down. I am battling the voices in my head that scream for sleep when I’m writing and scream for writing when I should be sleeping. I definitely need to find a bit of balance in my personal life, writing life and career. That should be easy, right?

I have taken a few days off from writing The Hunter’s Vengeance (currently about a quarter of the way finished) and am considering pumping out some short stories over the next week to get up on Amazon in the near future. I have some ideas for some short story collections I may try to put up for free or 99 cents to get some buzz going for The Hunter’s Son and because I think I have some pretty good ideas. I figure the more I have online for readers to stumble across the better off I will be.  

I know I need to get my priorities straight with my writing. I decided to become an author so I could share my love of storytelling with the world, not so I could be Don King behind a keyboard. The land of promotion for self-published authors appears to be uncharted at times. That being said, I have run into some really great people out there who are more than willing to share their ideas, experiences and tricks. I figured self-publishing would be like anything else; a cutthroat competition to see who can move the most units the quickest. I have seen over the last few weeks that I was totally wrong.

All the self-published authors I have run into have been friendly, gracious and helpful. It truly is one of the nicest communities of people I have been a part of online. Everyone seems to have the same goal in mind and they are plenty happy to see other authors succeed. I have tried to pass this on to some of the people I have met recently and have had the opportunity to share what I have learned. Heck, maybe my next book should be about self-publishing. Someone has to write the next 99 cent bestseller on how to sell 99 cent bestsellers.

Where did all the sales go?

The Hunter’s Son was doing pretty well on Amazon for a few weeks. I figure this is because my family, friends and Facebook acquaintances were busy snatching up my book as soon as it came out (mostly because I bugged them like crazy until the submitted). Then things started to dry up. I did a free promotion through KDP Select without much outside promotion to get the book in the hands of a few hundred people, which is exactly what happened. For a few days, I was #13 on Amazon’s list of Teen Horror books. That was pretty cool, but I did not enjoy the post giveaway bump (something most authors have been saying has disappeared without further promotion).

At first I was pretty upset about this, but was talked back down to Earth by my editor. Did I really expect to sell 10,000 books because I gave away 400? Part of me answered yes to that question. I mean, my book is pretty awesome so it should just sell. Those crazy ideas are gone and have been replaced by my first Orangeberry Book tour. I am going to hit 10 blogs over the next 15 days and will get some promotion on Twitter. It was a pretty cost effective way to get some promotion and I will update on how things go as it progresses. Hopefully, I will sell a few books, get some more good reviews on Amazon and start getting back to writing.

That’s what this is all about for me after all. I want my life to be about family and writing. I just hope I have the time for both. We shall see. 

Refresh....Refresh....Refresh...

That's what I have done hundreds of times over the last week. I've refreshed the Amazon page for reviews and I have refreshed the sales reports more times than I can count. Needless to say, I am not a rich man or able to quit my day job yet. Despite not being able to buy my own jet or even my own toy drone, I have received a few sales. My current royalties might only pay for dinner from the McDonald's dollar menu, but I could not be more proud. The feeling of actually selling a book is greater than I could have ever imagined, however, after that first sale, I was at a complete loss as to how to sell more than three or four books.

I did extensive research and came up pretty short on how to get the book into the hands of readers who aren't already on my Facebook page. There is a startling lack of detail on how to really market a debut novel. Most of the sites and blog posts speak in such general terms like "make a marketing plan" and "promote before you write" that I nearly gave up. I finally ran across a blog post by Ryan Casey, who I reference before, simply telling me to put the book out there for free to get some downloads. Don't promote like crazy, just get the book to some readers and go from there. So, that's what I'm doing.

 The Hunter's Son is going to be free on Amazon for two days (February 24 & February 25).

I have only put word out to a few places. Facebook, twitter and Goodreads. I am hoping a few hundred downloads turn into twenty or thirty reviews. I then plan to do a blog tour once the book goes back to paid. I plan to update with my findings in subsequent blog posts and tweets (you can follow me on twitter @jewellbe). I will also update before and after the blog tour. Should be a fun ride to see if I can move a few more books in anticipation of the second book in the series.

And in other news....

50% of all Amazon ebook sales are planned sales.

According to a recent presentation at the TheMediaBriefing's Digital Media Strategies conference in London, half of all Amazon sales are planned sales. This means that half the folks purchasing books on Amazon are not discovering them by way of the Amazon rankings or through the ever popular "Also bought..." feature which apparently only counts for about 10% of purchases. The other 40% was a mix of promotion, best seller lists and miscellaneous ways to find books.

So what does this mean for the indie/self-published author? I, honestly, don't think it means a whole lot. I think that everyone always knew that the Amazon promotions only take a book so far. Buzz has to be generated in other arenas to get a book to really sell. If selling a lot of books was just as easy as putting the book on Amazon and having readers find it, then there would be a lot more people making a living off of writing than there are now.

Many across the web are saying that this means stores like Barnes and Noble are selling a lot of books. That people are willing to stand in a store, browse and, ultimately go home and purchase a book on Amazon. While I believe this happens for Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, it does not explain how self-published authors who have no presence in brick and mortar stores sell books. What I think it shows is that you have to have the "marketing plan" and "promote before you write" like it is a second job (at least once you figure out what the heck those two things are).

I think it goes without saying that promotion, both in person and on the web, are going to sell you more books than sitting back and waiting for people to find you. You can only do so much promotion on Amazon before you hit a wall. Reviews will only get you so far. The question is what promotion works best for you as a person and within your budget. I am going to try out a few approaches and, hopefully, help other self-published authors figure out just what a "marketing plan" for a debut ebook really is.

Personally, I am going to start out by trying the tips that Ryan Casey had in his blog along with promotion on Twitter, Goodreads and Facebook. I'm then planning to do a blog tour and re-evaluate from there. I don't have thousands of dollars to throw into this book, but am hoping to earn some money to do more for book number 2.

Do you have any marketing tips or tricks that have worked for you? Leave a comment if you want to share.

Your first time is your best time, right?

This week has been one of many firsts.  My first self published novel (shameless plug here for The Hunter's Son available on Amazon), the first time I almost threw the computer against the wall formatting said novel, and my first blog post.  When I started this journey 16 month ago, I thought writing a book wouldn't be so hard.  I mean, I write every day, how hard can it be?

That hubris probably cost me about four months of good solid writing.  I became so frustrated with adding commas and reading through edits that I almost quit.  In fact, I "set my book aside" for a few months to pursue other ventures only to feel so guilty that I came back to it.  Without the help of my editor Brenda (shameless plug of her website here) and the support of my wife, none of this would have been possible.  

I was so happy when I finished the last round of edits, because writing is the hardest part, right?  Then I realized that book cover design, self-promotion, marketing, website design, book launch and blogging were all left to be done.  For a while, I was so overwhelmed that I didn't know if I could really do it.  I also thought that I could save a few bucks by doing everything myself, which was probably my biggest mistake.

That’s not to say that the website doesn't look good or that the promotion is going terribly, it just means that, if I had to do it all over again, I would probably throw a bit more money into my book at the beginning.  The ease with which we are able do things on the internet can make someone quickly forget that we get what we pay for and those people who specialize in certain areas get the big bucks for a reason.

This has led me to the decision to put any money I get from my first novel right back into my second.  The Hunter’s Son is the first book in a trilogy and I want to make things a little easier on myself the second time around.  I also suggest to any new authors like myself to really do research on marketing and self-promotion prior to releasing their book to save a huge headache.

To start, I released The Hunter’s Son on Smashwords without really doing any research.  Now, there is nothing wrong with Smashwords and the Style Guide is quite effective for designing ebooks for Kindle.  That being said, I released my novel on a Sunday night and was on the front page of Smashwords for nearly twenty-four hours but received only about seventy-five page views and eleven downloads of the first twenty percent of the book that was available for free. 

I did sell a couple of books that first day, although one of them was to my wife who I insisted could simply give me three dollars and I would give her a copy off of my laptop since she insisted on being the very first purchaser .  The second day of release on Smashwords, my page views went from seventy-five to ten and then down to three on the third day.  It was this point that I began speaking to my editor Brenda about Kindle Select and their “free promotion for exclusivity” deal.  I was unsure about giving anyone exclusive rights to my book; however, Brenda pointed me toward two blog posts. The first was from  J.A. Konrath (found here) and the second from one of Brenda’s clients named Ryan Casey (found here).  The evidence they presented was overwhelming and if you are having doubts, they are well worth read.

So I decided to go with KDP and immediately took my book off Smashwords.  I had already finished my print edition on CreateSpace and received the proof copy.  I figured, heck, why not just get them both on Amazon at the same time.  So I pressed publish on both the e-edition and the print edition only to find out that the e-edition has a waiting period of 12-24 hours and the print edition has a waiting period of 5-7 days before appearing on Amazon.com.  Never did I run across these time frames in all my research.  I could have left the book up on Smashwords for a few more hours, but that might have only meant two or three more page views.

Despite these hiccups, I am gearing up for my free promotion days on Amazon and will keep everyone up to date when the promotion will happen and what the results are.  I've seen everything from 20,000 downloads to 500 downloads.   Who knows what will happen.

I look back at my first week as a self-published author and realize how different everything could have been and how different everything could be.  A little research here on promotion and a little money there for some website design and my life might have been much easier.  This is not meant to take anything away from the finished product which I am very happy with.  I just realize, now that I am done, how much easier it all could have been.

Maybe the second time will be the best after all.