Tomorrow I'm going to blog in some detail about the Draculas marketing plan. Because I feel it's worth talking about.Four guys, without any big NY print publishers behind them, managed to rank at #95 on the Amazon Kindle Paid Bestseller list and get 105 Amazon reviews all on this ebook's first day of release.
If you like horror, zombies, thrillers, vampires, or if you've ever been helped by this blog, I humbly ask you to buy Draculas for $2.99 on Kindle (it is DRM free, and can be converted to any format and read on any ereader.)
To read more about the ebook, visit www.draculasthebook.com.
Thanks!
BTW - Currently, the Amazon bestseller list Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror (which includes both Kindle and print books), Stephen King has five books in the top 30.
So do I.
:)
34 comments:
Good luck with Draculas, guys. I appreciated the ARC, enjoyed reading the book and was pleased to write a review.
Gretchen Rix
The Cowboy's Baby
Congratulations! A wonderful achievement.
Already pre-ordered!
I'd like to hear more about the marketing and future sales.
It will be the first book on my new Kindle!
Read that teaser, pre-ordered back in September and completely ignored the entire family while I read the full novel today.
It didn't let up! You guys did a damn fine job.
I really want to see this on the big screen one day.
Great book, but I already told you that, didn't I?
Glad to have read, reviewed, posted and been part of your innovative launch plan.
Congrats on a FANTASTIC launch. Glad I could be a part of it. Even more pleased that I had the opprotunity to scare the pants off of my hubby with your attention to evil clown taunting!
Yeah, bought it. Interesting that Amazon didn't add on the extra $2.00 non-US people usually get charged.
Smart move for them on their own exclusive books.
bt
I don't know where you get your information, Mr. Konrath, but DRACULAS is clearly at #79, not #95 as stated in your article.
Congratulations, and well deserved! Since I've been helped by this blog many, many times, I'm off to buy the book...
Congrats! I'm betting that #95 is far from where this one will end up. Subtract 94, methinks.
Congrats!
"Stephen King has five books in the top 30.
So do I.
:)"
Bwa ha ha!
Congratulations on the fantastically successful book launch. I was thrilled when you asked for my support regarding your innovative marketing plan. We free-thinkers need to stick together!
I like how the image on the official Draculas website makes the e-book look like a three-dimensional book :-)
#86 in literature and fiction
#20 for 'genre novels'
At 10pm Pacific time. 10/19/2010
There looks to be some momentum!
Neil
Congratulations! Hard work, talent, persistence, and a good marketing plan go a long way. Hope to be there some day.
Congratulations on your success. It's very exciting to see writers take on the new venue in innovative and collaborative ways. I didn't finish the ARC before the link disappeared, so I'm off to buy a copy. Kudos for your efforts.
Congrats and thanks for giving us indie writers hope (and the great tips!).
What's your approach to fixing errors found in the ebook? As written here ( http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1168181&highlight=konrath#post1168181 ) there seem to be a lot of them.
Anon, Joe already addressed that on the Huffington Post article where it was also brought up, saying that the errors were in the ARC but not the final copy. I would check the newest sample and see if they're still there (I personally am not going to, because I can't read hardcore horror and still sleep at night!). If they are, the nice thing about indie publishing is that you can upload a corrected version pretty readily.
Looks like it's at #75 now, Joe. You guys are getting off to a good start!
Hmm. I followed that link from anonymous, read the extremely smug and snarky "report" on all the "errors" (it listed several on the "first page"). Then I downloaded the free sample...
No errors. First of all, the errors this person listed would have extended well past the first page of text (he claimed to have stopped reading after the first page.) But they also weren't there. So either they were fixed on the fly, or he was just making them up.
Unless... He didn't mention this, but, as long as I'm here... Shouldn't it be "55-year-OLD Macallan?" It just says "55-year Macallan."
-- a different Anonymous.
Dear Neil: Our approach to fixing errors is to fix them so they aren't there anymore. The ARC of DRACULAS had less errors than the ARCs of some of my traditionally published books, and we corrected 20+ typos for the final edition of DRACULAS. I'm sorry the existence of errors in an Advance Reader Edition is causing you such consternation, but please sleep easy now knowing the problem has been rectified.
And if I may add, all that stuff from the link about how Joe is advocating doing stuff on his own is just NOT true. He's never, ever said, "Write crap and throw it up on Amazon without having it edited." EVER. That's a deliberate misreading of what he blogs and posts about.
I just bought a copy of Draculas, as you have been very helpful in lighting the way for me in my own quest to publish and market my first novel.
A Newbie's Guide to Publishing is great.
Thanks again Joe for all your guidance!
Joe,
How would you approach marketing a title under a pen name .... when you didn't want there to be any connection between the pen name and your real name?
Thanks,
Scott
Something I find interesting about this is how revealing it is of Amazon's bestseller system. You can actually track sales in something like real-time on NovelRank.com. Here's the link for Draculas:
http://www.novelrank.com/title/draculas-a-novel-of-terror-kindle-edition
It's interesting to note that although the book is ranked #77 on Amazon right now - it's had only 17 sales! Now, 17 sales in 24 hours is awesome by itself (that's about $1000 a month author-income for the book if it stays that high; I'll take that!). But what I find more curious is the way Amazon ranks those books.
Bestseller on Amazon seems to be a tricky sort of calculation.
Just did the evil amazon 1-click on it. can't wait to start reading it, I LOVE your books
Joe,
With four authors, whose agent will pursue a potential movie deal? (I'm assuming this is something everyone would be interested in?)
-Ken
KevinMc, NovelRank is absolutely NOT accurate when it comes to sales figures. It tracks store ranking (which is public) and uses some sort of algorithm to figure out sales. Its algorithm is pretty much worthless when it comes to high-selling items. It is so far off as to be completely useless for trying to figure out someone else's sales figures. (The site says so in the fine print, too.) I can pretty much guarantee that if you're in the top hundred, you've had WAY more than seventeen sales in a day!
Ellen is right, that NovelRank site is freakishly inaccurate.
Yup, I see that. Joe commented earlier that they had already sold 800 copies - which is a far cry from 17! So the tracking system is not just "off a little", but dramatically off. Too bad... But good to know anyway. ;)
Congrats, Joe & Co!!!
Well done!!!
Joe --- I took the fabulous marketing & pub advice you've previously given-out and also made three Amazon Bestseller Lists within about 72-hours of my book's Amazon release (2 - # 1 slots and a # 2 spot too)!!!
You are sooo right in your approach to publishing success!!!
Thanks bunches!!!
Smart & Sassy MUSE THERAPY Wishes --- D. D. Scott
Hello,
Do you know what's the deal with Amazon's international pricing? Amazon lists your book as costing $5.74 for me, and while I understand that Europe gets VAT added, almost double the price seems like a pretty big difference between the regions.
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