Subterranean Peril, my short adventure story, is now free for Goodreads members for a limited time only. You can read it on your computer screen through the Goodreads reader or download it onto your ereader by clicking right here. Once logged in to Goodreads, just look below the book details to “Get a copy”. Next, click on the green button to the right: “download ebook” . You will get the option of either reading it online or downloading it so you can read it on your ebook reader. The downloaded file will be in the epub format which is great if you have a Nook ereader. If you are using a Kindle you simply have to convert it to the mobi format using a conversion program like Calibre eBook Management. BTW, it really is a breeze to use!
Anyway, back to my short adventure story. It is set in the storyworld of Strange Metamorphosis, my fantasy adventure novel, and follows more extraordinary adventures of Marcel, Brim, Bea and Rhino.
Here’s the description:
When 14 year-old Marcel leads his crew out of a dark and disused snake tunnel in search of fresh air, little does he know he is entering the labyrinthic galleries of an ant nest.
With Brim (an inchworm), Bea (a honeybee) and Rhino (a beetle) at his side, he not only discovers the smell of danger but also the essence of friendship and the power of perfume.
Set in the storyworld of Strange Metamorphosis, this action-packed short adventure story offers a thrilling sneak preview of a boy’s fabulous and terrifying adventure of self-discovery.
I am thrilled to announce that Subterranean Peril is now available on Kindle.
When 14 year-old Marcel Dassaud leads his crew out of a dark and disused snake tunnel in search of fresh air, little does he know he is entering the labyrinthic galleries of an ant nest.
With Brim (an inchworm), Bea (a honeybee) and Rhino (a beetle) at his side, he not only discovers the smell of danger but also the essence of friendship and the power of perfume.
Set in the storyworld of Strange Metamorphosis, this action-packed short adventure story offers a thrilling sneak preview of Marcel’s fabulous and terrifying adventure of self-discovery.
I’ve published this short adventure story to give readers a feel of the storyworld of my fantasy adventure novel. But if you’ve already read it then you might like to read Subterranean Perilto discover more extraordinary adventures of Marcel, Brim, Bea and Rhino.
Having recently run my first month-long campaign I thought I’d share some of my findings and thoughts on how long and how to run a Goodreads giveaway.
My Goodreads Giveaway lasted 32 days from the 2nd October to the 2nd November (inclusive) 2013 and totaled 1043 entrants. Given that the average according to Goodreads Team is around 825 entrants, this turned out to be quite a success. More importantly, though, as a result of the campaign 475 people added my novel Strange Metamorphosis on their to-read shelf.
If I were to put my mathematician’s cap on I might say that it works out to an average of roughly 32 entrants and 15 books added on to-read shelves per day.
But the truth is different. As you can see from the table below, 82% of the books added were done so at the very beginning and at the very end of the competition. That’s 103 on the first 2 days and 287 on the last 3 days. This corresponds to the periods the giveaway is given most exposure on Goodreads itself.
You first start off at the top of the recently listed list then sink into oblivion as the hours and days go by. Then the more you approach the end of your goodreads giveaway the further up the ending soon list you move.
So how long should you run your Goodreads Giveaway?
It goes without saying that the closer the distance between the beginning and the end the more the daily average goes up. So, wouldn’t it be better to do a 3 day giveaway as some people suggest? In this case, your book would benefit from both recently listed and ending soon lists in a short space of time. If I’d held my giveaway over say 5 days my daily average would have shot up to 85 books added per day instead of the 15 previously mentioned.
That said, there is at least one advantage of doing a month-long giveaway, in a word, EXPOSURE. You get exposure by running a Goodreads ad campaign at the same time. Although I didn’t get a great click-through rate until towards the end (after having played around with various ad formulas), at least the book cover was seen over 60 000 times at a cost of only $14. And you know what marketing experts say, a product has to been seen 3 to 7 times before a person will buy it.
Conclusion
For the sake of exposure I would not run a giveaway campaign for only 3 days, it would be depriving my book of that all crucial visibility. Instead, I would run it for at least 2 weeks maybe 3, a whole month seeming really too long, especially if you want to program other types of marketing campaigns.
I did it using prezi, I then created a video of the presentation so I could add a soundscape and a tune from my old piano. The whole thing took a little time, but cost less than $100 to make. If you’d like to find out more on how I made it check out my post on How To Make A Book Trailer With Prezi. BTW I’ve left the template on prezi public so that anybody can use its architecture as an inspiration for their own book trailer.
Well, it’s been a wonderfully successful giveaway for Strange Metamorphosis so a big thanks to all those 1059 people who entered! For the record the winners of the paperback copies are:
I did an author interview a few weeks back with Jill Marie who runs Little Hyuts on the occasion of a giveway for Strange Metamorphosis. It was an interesting exercise. Basically, I was asked to answer a series of set questions. This is a great way for both contract and indie authors to give away a little of themselves. I know that, as a reader, I enjoy reading this kind of interview, it allows you to get a better psychological picture of the author you enjoy reading or one that you’d like to read. You can read my answers to Jill’s interview as well as her review right here >>> http://littlehyuts.blogspot.fr/2013/08/indie-author-spotlight-week-pcr-monk.html.
Few will deny nowadays that making a book video should be on any author’s must-do list of marketing tools. But other than just juxtaposing a series of images picked from iStock and adding music, how do you make an original book trailer while conveying the story without having thousands or even just hundreds of dollars at your disposal? This was my dilemma and it may be yours whether you are an indie or contracted author. This post aims to show one way of making an original DIY book trailer on a tight budget.
The biggest mistake in taste to my mind would be to try to copy cinematographic techniques using your home video camera or smart phone and your friends as actors. Sure, some people are really talented at this but most authors are all thumbs and two left feet when it comes to mise en scene, lighting and camera positioning. There is one way, though, of making a quality video that is easy to do, doesn’t call for a graphic designer, animator or a video pro, and which won’t put your book to shame. In a word, Prezi.
Prezi is a presentation program based on zooming in and out of a scene, image or set of images. It creates a dynamic, interactive nonlinear way of telling your story while conjuring surprises all the way. To put things into perspective from a financial point of view, the method I am about to relate for Strange Metamorphosis cost, barring the price of the licenses ($59 & $99) which I already had, less than $100 to make. Here’s how I did it.
1) Get to know Prezi
Prezi (http://Prezi.com/) is a presentation program that, unlike PowerPoint, offers a nonlinear approach to presentations by zooming in and out of documents. There are plenty of templates to choose from which you can use to structure your trailer or just get inspiration from. It is very intuitive and there are plenty of tutorials. I had already done one presentation for my job using an existing Prezi template so I already had a good idea of how to go about creating my own template from scratch. It took me about a week to get it to how I wanted it. You can sign up to use Prezi for free or buy the Enjoy license which costs $59,00 USD per year. If you buy the license the Prezi logo will not appear on your video.
2) Brainstorm and layout
Once you have explored the possibilities Prezi has to offer, sit down and think about how you can portray your story using image layers. You see, unlike cinema, which sets images one after the other, you zoom in and out of them. Write out your layout, this will give structure to your thoughts. You can also brainstorm with others via the Prezi platform.
3) Write a short script
Write out your script using as few words as possible to convey the bare essentials. You’ll have to hold back your writer’s impulses here.
4) Research and buy content
Next, you have to find the suitable images and/or video to build the content of your Prezi trailer. I used www.istockphoto.com for the photos and the video clip at the end, but there are many other platforms you can choose from like, fotolia and shutterstock to name but a few.
5) Assemble your images
I used the cover picture of my book as a base in which to zoom in and out to create surprises. Once you have created and perfected your Prezi presentation of your book, it is time to film it. At this stage my Prezi looked like this:
Now you need to do a screencast of your Prezi, which is basically a video of your computer screen. It is important that the zoom in/out effects are smooth, otherwise it will look amateurish. The best program I found in terms of frames per second, i.e fluidity was ScreenFlow. I was lucky enough to already have a license through work but it costs around $99. You can try it out for free but you will need a license in the end. The disadvantage of this program is that it only runs on mac, so I borrowed one to shoot my Prezi and came away with an editable video file (mp4) of it. At the risk of trying to teach your granny to suck eggs, don’t forget to shoot the Prezi in full screen mode. And by the way, the cursor will disappear when placed somewhere at the bottom, I’ll let you find out where for yourself (without having the mac in front of me I can’t remember exactly where).
7) Add sound
Now that you have your silent Prezi in video form you can add sound using a video editing program. I used KdenLive (for mac and Linux) because it is free and enables you to use multiple sound tracks. I used the royalty free platform www.audiomicro.com to research and buy the sounds I needed. I made up the simple music line on my piano (and left the metronome ticking), but you can also buy that too from a royalty free music platform. I was tempted to add a voice but mine sounds awful, so I didn’t.
8) Render and publish
Once you have added the sound tracks you can render the whole thing, video and sound, into a video format such as mpeg to publish it on the various platforms (amazon, youtube, goodreads etc.). To recap, here are the ingredients I used again:
This is how my DIY book trailer looked once finished:
CONCLUSION
Remember you will have to spend some time getting used to the programs but they are intuitive and the cost is minimal. From scratching out the first layout idea to uploading the finished trailer it took me about 10 days which includes at least 2 days finding the right images and sounds. The whole thing cost under $100 and that includes buying the images (about $14), the video ($56) and the sound effects ($19). I have not included the licenses in this price as I already had them through my work. So you would have to add an extra $99 for ScreenFlow and $59 if you decided to purchase a Prezi pack instead of using the free version. That said, for your next trailer not only will you be better and quicker, you will not have these licenses to pay.
Drop me a line if you have made your own trailer on a tight budget, I’d love to hear how you did it.
Thrilled for the winners of the giveaway organized at Little Hyuts. There were 5 winners of the digital version of Strange Metamorphosis. The winner of the signed paperback copy is Oliver Dahl, author of The Dreamers.
Hope you all enjoy the book, I’d love to hear from you.
This post follows on from How to Get Your Indie Book into the Hands of Readerswhich speaks about the first steps in marketing your indie novel. It explains how I got my all important first reviews from independent reviewers.
Amazon Top Reviewers
One way is to seek them out by going through the top reviewers at Amazon. A useful ressource will be found here >> http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/RNCWTLEMV71VM Once you have found someone that corresponds to your book’s category you simply send them a message to inquire whether they would like to read your eBook or printed book which you would be glad to send to them free of charge.
Book Reviewers Lists
Another way is by reading through book reviewer lists. The one I used was at www.indieview.com. It takes time to read up on each of the reviewers to get to know their taste and if they are accepting review requests, but it is the way that brought me the most number of readers willing to review my book.
Very often the reviewer will explain how they wish you to submit your book. In most cases, you should first send an inquiry email. This should state the book’s genre, who you are (a line saying you are an indie author will often do), a short description of the story and in what format you could send the book to them (mobi file for the Kindle, an ePub file for the Nook).
After sending requests to 100 reviewers I got about 20 people saying they would like to review the book. Reviewers will generally place their comments on sites like Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble.
Remember reviews have to be individually submitted to each of Amazon’s websites. This means that you will only see the same review on amazon.com and amazon.uk.co if the reviewer has posted the review to both platforms. The reviewer will often be prepared to do this when asked kindly.
Have you managed to get reviews in a different way to me? Or used a different list of reviewers ? If so I’d love to hear from you.
And, by the way, what do you do if you get a bad review from a reviewer? This is what happened to me and I’ll discuss this in my next post.
She is also giving away digital books and a signed copy of Strange Metamorphosis along with other fantasy books which include The Dreamers By Oliver Dahl, Ghosts of the Void By Timothy Burns and The Bride By Kacie Taylor.
Subterranean Peril, my short adventure story, is now free for Goodreads members for a limited time only. You can read it on your computer screen through the Goodreads reader or download it onto your ereader by clicking right here. Once logged in to Goodreads, just look below the book details to “Get a copy”. Next, click on the green button to the right: “download ebook” . You will get the option of either reading it online or downloading it so you can read it on your ebook reader. The downloaded file will be in the epub format which is great if you have a Nook ereader. If you are using a Kindle you simply have to convert it to the mobi format using a conversion program like Calibre eBook Management. BTW, it really is a breeze to use!
