Relentless Promotion with a Twist

All the best advice I've seen about how to succeed as an indie published author claims that you have to be relentlessly upbeat in all your social media posts while you're trying to market your book. I've tried this to the best of my ability, but it has become increasingly difficult to do given my lackluster sales numbers and the fact that, even though everyone tells me to my face that Speedster is a real page turner, hardly anyone has bothered to go to Amazon or Goodreads or Barnes & Noble or any of the other places where the book is retailed and give me a nice 4 or 5 star rating or post a review. Staying relentlessly upbeat is requiring ever greater amounts of gin and vermouth and repeated trips to the grocery for olives and/or lemons. Just sayin' . . . in the most relentlessly upbeat possible way.

BTW, if this piques your interest in any way, Speedster is now FREE for a limited time in virtually all ebook formats, including Kindle, from the Smashwords Store. Just follow this LINK.

People who have read it really do say good things about it, and I tend to believe them even though the only posted rating I have from someone who is not a friend or relative only gave it two stars. Two stars in the Goodreads universe means okay. To have any chance of respectable sales numbers, I apparently need to have an average of 4.5 stars.

I really want to know what people think. If the book is not as good as I think it is, as I've been led to believe by others that it is, then I want to be able to to make the next one (already in progress - working title, Hiding Teeth) that much better. I need some thoughtful and independent feedback. If you want to help me out in this regard, I promise to love you forever in the most relentlessly upbeat way possible.

SPEEDSTER: availability update!

My novel, SPEEDSTER, is now officially published and available in a number of popular formats. You can get it as an ebook or Kindle file from Smashwords or in just Kindle format from Amazon. (Click the links to go right to the book at the store or your choice.) Sometime today (hopefully) it will also be available as a paperbook print book from CreateSpace. (I'll post the CreateSpace link here when it's ready.)

This was a lot of fun for me to write, once I got in the groove, and by all accounts it's an engaging read. It looks and feels like a men's action adventure suspense thriller, but it's more than that. At least I tried to make it more than that. It has lots of humor and a few surprises along the way. I think you'll like it. My wife thinks you'll like it. If you do like it, be sure to go to Amazon or Smashwords or CreateSpace...or all of them, and write me a nice review.

Thanks, everyone, for your support.
Jonah 

Half Full, Half Empty, Less than Zero

As many of you know I am busy trying to accumulate $749,000,000 using the so called Law of Attraction. You can read about it here, and here, and also here. I thought it would be useful today to mark my progress so far in raising this not inconsiderable sum. To wit I have prepared the following chart:

As you can readily see the universe has so far provided none of the requested, believed, visualized, and accepted funds. ZERO is the thus far accumulated total. My thinking is that the universe better get freaking busy!


Forbes magazine puts Bill Gates net worth at somewhere north of $40 Billion. I'm putting mine at somewhere south of $1 Billion. In other words I am ascribing to myself approximately 1/40th of the value of Bill Gates. I am not one of those people who think that Bill Gates in an evil genius bent on world domination. I think Bill Gates works hard to make the world a better place, and he deserves every good thing that comes his way. So do I, and I am willing to settle for less than 1/40th of what Gates gets. I don't think this is unreasonable, although, apparently the universe does, at least so far.


I only have anecdotal evidence to go on, but after a careful analysis I have come to see my personal claim on the world's bounty like this:

As you can see my portion in life is less than half full, less than half empty, and less that a nice dram of Balvenie Double Wood Single Malt Scotch in a glass that is too big for it. It is less than ZERO because there is just enough spilled to let me know what I have missed, but not enough to lick up off the table.

If just one person buys my eBook at the Amazon Kindle Store, I will be 35 cents closer to my goal. I am more than willing to help the universe out a little. $749 million is no paltry sum, after all, even for a limitless universe. I'll do my part.

If that same person is then among the first five readers to post a review of my eBook on Amazon (see details here), I will send them an 8x12 print of the artwork of their choice from this blog, to include any photos and works available at my Etsy store (see the shop aimless arts tab above or just click here). In this case I would be out about $18 in materials, labor, postage and handling, but I would still count myself ahead of the game. I would still mark that I had made some progress, although of course I would have to subtract that sum from the red juice in the ball of the thermometer and hope to make it up in volume.

These new images are among those available in this sweet, sweet deal:

Milestone: 10,000 page loads

Hit a milestone of sorts yesterday: 10,000th hit on the blog. It's been a real slog, way more arduous than I would have hoped...plus, to forestall any confusion, I'm talking lifetime, not daily. It's a long, long, long way to 10,000 a day or 1 million plus per month, which is where my dreams live. Perhaps I should try to be more interesting.


On another note, I am about to upload my first eBook to the Kindle Store on Amazon. It is a collection of short fiction titled Buses & Bears, Bullets & Stones. It contains 4 short stories and one piece of flash fiction. I'm offering it for 99 cents, so it it comes out to less than $.20 per story. That's pretty good value for your entertainment dollar these days. I'll be having a fabulous giveaway offer as part of the publication launch festivities, which, truth be known, mostly consist of me having a couple of belts of Balvenie single malt even though it's Lent. Watch this space for details.

Cover Art - love the lettering. The 1+ million dollar bus conversion from Marathon Coach is pretty nice too.