Sunday, August 24, 2008

Flashy

In my unending quest to remain relevant in a digital world, I learned a bit of Adobe Flash and created a game to promote the book Afraid by Jack Kilborn.

It only takes a few minutes to play, and is hopefully worth a smile or two.

http://www.jakonrath.com/afraid.htm

Do flash games and video trailers and expensive interactive websites help sell books? I remain unconvinced. But I had fun putting this together, and dumber things have gone viral.

Let me know if you reached level 18...

10 comments:

Joe Moore said...

"Do flash games and video trailers and expensive interactive websites help sell books?"

My co-author Lynn Sholes and I use flash intro trailers on all our book promo sites. Do they help sell our books? Beats the hell out of me. Do they attract attention? Maybe. But they do introduce two additional elements in promoting our thrillers that are not normally found on static websites and blogs: visual motion and dramatic music. I believe that using visuals and music helps give our visitors a feel for the atmosphere and mood of our novels that goes beyond just reading descriptive text. And based on the email feedback, a lot of our fans enjoy the trailers. Until we get a shift in that reaction, we’ll keep using this technique.

Anonymous said...

Joe, Joe, Joe, you are indeed an evil man!

Karen Syed
http://karensyed.blogspot.com

Joe Moore said...

BTW, Joe, you got me good.

JA Konrath said...

There are a ton of games like this on the net, going back about ten years.

I was thinking about hiring someone to make one for me, but Flash isn't that tough to figure out, and I had a free afternoon.

kmt1976 said...

I counted and I got to level 18 - that is I played the game 18 times - just to see if you are still as sneaky as ever! On your site I am always looking for the hidden.

Stacey Cochran said...

Hey Joe, I thought you might find this interesting...

I just noticed this morning that Amazon.com is now selling a "video download" of a DVD I produced about a year ago...

It's the first "Video Download for Payment" that I've ever seen at Amazon, so I thought it might be interesting here...

Stacey's Video Download at Amazon.com

Hope you had a good weekend... and I can't wait to read Afraid.

MontiLee Stormer said...

Yeah, Joe -

Thanks goodness for earphones because while cute and fun, had I had the volume up at work (sometimes I stream radio stations) there would have been trouble.

"listen for the audible clues" isn't exactly "NSFW", as I was expecting pings or something other than what I got, which by the way, is kinda loud.

And I had the volume down.

Even when I clicked on "Return to Main Menu" it did it. Then it isn't fun anymore and I'm thinking "how the hell do I get off this page?" Finally I just closed the whole thing down.

And before you start in with the speech about surfing at work, more people surf at work than at home. It's where I order my books, my gifts, and look for new authors.

It's where I found you.

Flash and sound on webpages is all well and good, but try not to let your webpage be more entertaining than your books. Sound on webpages can be a little irritating, expecially when at work or trying to quietly surf at home. I often leave my volume off because there are some inconsiderate people who think I need to hear the latest Top 40 song when I surf to their page.

While this may go viral, it may not bring people to the parts of your site where they discover that you actually write books.

A good idea may be to check your logs for entry and exit pages. If more people exit to other parts of your site, you've done well. If they just click off, it may be time to rethink the page.

Anonymous said...

There must be a problem with my computer. I couldn't get past one. There was and ugly A-- face that kept popping up and keeping me from going forward.

Anonymous said...

Why do you relese a book about a Wisconsin Northwords Horry Story in the United Kingdon and Australia before releaseing it in the US. I don't want to call you unpatriotic. Mostly I am upset becasue I am impatient. Also I preordered the book on Amazon.uk Exactly what is the conversion of 19.95 Euros to American dollars?

Impatient in Wisconsin

JA Konrath said...

Authors have no control over when and where their books are released---once a publisher buys a book, it is all up to them.